Avenue Flo

Avenue Flo is an amazing simulation game with lots of challenging puzzles and quests to solve. Flo is back in this enjoyable sequel to Diner Dash games. So, get ready for a new adventure with lots of exciting surprises.

In Avenue Flo game, you need to help the main heroine save the most awaited wedding of DinerTown! Something strange is going on here and it’s up to you to figure out what. Join Flo as she sets on a quest, help her explore DinerTown, interact with neighbors, find the missing objects, and solve numerous puzzles and quests along the way.

Featuring more than 40 scenes with 20 challenging puzzles, extremely addictive game play, and great voice-overs, Avenue Flo is an intriguing adventure to follow.

• Over 40 scenes to explore
• 20 in-scene puzzles or mini games
• Engaging story with full voice over
• Hear Flo’s voice for the first time

Paradise Quest

Paradise Quest is an arcade game developed by I-play.
In this game you will take control of the main character who is an ecologist, his name is Dr. Finch and he is trying to recover nature’s equilibrium. He travels to the Isabela island and there he finds some strange artifacts, your mission will be to help him solve a fascinating mystery about the island.

You will learn about the story through the first assignment where all you have to do is match some pieces, so you will create lines of three or more wooden pieces and they will disappear from the board. You will be able to have extra points if you collect golden coins which are hidden in all the puzzles.

You will also find challenging mini games, for example an incredible tornado which sucks everything into it, a very helpful map and new surprises are regularly introduced, from sandy patches that hide pickaxes and rafts (which are mandatory when it comes to climbing high walls, crossing rivers and going through other obstacles), to vine bonuses that will let you instantly shift locations on the map.

Another thing that you will find is a diary, which will have more puzzles to solve, some of them are animal’s photos that you have to put in order, and you will unlock new destinations for those animals to inhabit.
The environments are great, the visual are awesome and very colorful. You will notice that the sound effects are well done and the soundtrack is nice, but somehow repetitive. The game play is very simple you will only use your mouse.

To sum up, Paradise Quest is an incredible game for all ages and you will enjoy it as much as your kids.

Review by Software Informer

Build-a-lot 4: Power Source

Once upon a time a company called HipSoft had the crazy idea to develop a casual game about real estate management. For sure a lot of people asked themselves: “Who would actually play a game with such a dull topic?” Well, with the recent release of Build-a-lot 4: Power Source, which is the fourth installment of what is now one of the most successful (and copied) series in the casual game market, HipSoft can proudly answer: “Everyone and her brother!”

Build-a-lot 4 features four different campaigns, namely Tutorial, Main, Challenge, and Expert campaign, all in all offering a healthy 68 levels. On top of that, players can even chose between timed and casual mode, which means that people who don’t necessarily like games with hectic paces can enjoy it nevertheless.

The basic premise of the game hasn’t changed much, and should be both instantly familiar to fans of the series and easy to adapt to for newcomers. By ordering materials and training workers, you are able to construct houses like A-Frames, Craftsmans or expensive Apartments, which then offer you a regular income. The most important new feature of Build-a-lot 4 is the addition of energy as another crucial resource. To supply your buildings with enough energy you have to construct power generators such as Wind Farms, Solar Towers or Nuclear Reactors. If you are at risk of running low on energy there will be a warning sound, quickly followed by a blackout of the whole neighbourhood, during which time you won’t earn any rent.

There are also various ways to increase the rent of houses, such as upgrading them with fancy interior accessories and colorful paintings, or adding beautiful gardens. Apart from that there is also the possibility to upgrade your houses with energy savers, which do not affect the rental income, but noticeably lower the amount of energy a house needs. Other than rent, the appeal of a neighbourhood is of major importance. It can either be increased by painting and landscaping houses, or by building recreations such as Public Pools, Tennis Courts, or Amphitheaters.

However, houses are not necessarily your only resource of income in Build-a-lot 4. Bakery, Cinema, Grocery Store and Boutique provide you with a massive amount of income, too, though their rent cycle takes longer than that of houses. Finally, there are buildings like the Workshop, the Tech Center, the Recycle Center or the Business Center whose construction activates even more advantages and strategies for the player.

What makes Build-a-lot 4 even more challenging and addicting than its predecessors are the vast variety of goals, the remarkable number of distinct strategies the player can try to beat certain levels, and the numerous factors the player has to consider while playing. Bad surprises like additional goals that appear in the midst of a level can force the player to immediately restart the level, because the current strategy does not work anymore under the new circumstances, but these unexpected challenges just add to the fun.

The game requires the player to keep an eye on the level goals, the remaining time to finish a level, the energy reserves, the materials, and the condition of houses at the same time, so that each level is very hectic and demanding from the very beginning. The fact that it seems as if time is flying by is of course good and bad. Good, because this proves a really engaging game, bad, because it can be really frustrating to finish some of the more complicated levels, especially in the challenge and expert campaign.

However, there are two main flaws which slightly diminish the otherwise great rating of Build-a-lot 4. Firstly, the quality of the graphics has not changed at all compared to previous games. The appearance of houses still does not change after star-upgrades, and the maps are rather inanimate, without cars, inhabitants, or animals that would normally enrich every neighborhood.

Secondly, the energy-feature feels a little bit incomplete. The player can only estimate if there are still enough energy reserves. There is no way to check this before the warning sound, which indicates that the next construction will cause a blackout, and then it is already too late. Fixed and visible numbers with regards to the energy reserve bar, how much energy the different power generators provide, and consumption numbers for all the buildings would have been a much better solution for this issue.

Altogether, we nevertheless strongly recommend Build-a-lot 4: Power Source, even if you have already played the three previous games in Build-a-lot series. Despite some minor points of criticism the game still manages to deliver a top notch gaming experience, and you won’t feel like you have already played this three times before. Give it a shot and the game will provide you with easily more than twenty hours of intense gameplay and fun.

Review by David Becker

Gamezebo Inc.

Ranch Rush

An iPhone version of Ranch Rush recently launched, and Ranch Rush 2 is on the way for PC. While we’ve yet to get our hands on a demo of Ranch Rush 2, we have the next best thing: an interview with FreshGames President Stephan Smith where he talks about the making of the original Ranch Rush (a game we liked quite a bit).

What was the inspiration behind Ranch Rush?

An idea had been brewing in the back of my head for a while that I wanted to do a time management game where you moved things in the environment around, unlike other time management games where things are stationary.

We had been talking with Aliasworlds and they had a game that was about 25 percent done. There was no real name for it, and no storyline, but they had the basic mechanic of Ranch Rush were you had orders and could move things around on the screen, and farming. I really loved the concept; I just saw potential with what could be done, so struck a deal with them to co-develop the game, and from there developed the design document that outlined things we’d like to see incorporated into the game.

We started with the base ideas and built upon it, tweaked things as we went along, but it fully grew into what you see today.

How did the main character and story evolve?

Aliasworlds had a main character but it wasn’t a person. It was an animal – basically they had their Snowy character in there, a little white bear. We knew we couldn’t use it; it was cute and it looked good, but the bottom line was we needed something else. We thought that a southern female character would be kind of cool and interesting, and we went through several art iterations and added the clothing and the boots to give her a little bit of a unique personality.

One of the bigger elements that took quite a lot of time was the story. The story is very simple but crafting the words, making it flow, and making it interesting are a lot easier said than done sometimes.

We knew that we had to make it short and sweet and really craft the wording so that it flowed well. At first we talked about just having a little comic strip, but I didn’t like that at all, so we wanted to do something a bit more interesting with panning and zooming on the screen. Once we got the story nailed down, it needed something more compelling. So we worked with SomaTone as far as getting the voice-over and we interviewed several females and came up with this girl for the voice-over; that I think was really a compelling element.

What features did you add to Ranch Rush to make it stand out from the crowd?

What we wanted to do with Ranch Rush, which I think made it stand out, is having the ability to move around in this game unlike, and create your own strategy. All time management games pretty much involve coming up to a counter, picking up something in a restaurant, running around and doing a chore, and it’s almost the same forums over and over again. You can’t really control the environment or make anything in your favor if you want to.

And two, typical time management games are a little bit too stressful where you don’t know what’s going to happen, you just wait until someone comes up to the counter and asks you for food, services or whatever, so we wanted to give clear objectives up front about what all you had to do.

The third key element that we thought was unique was the ability to carry over chores or things that you were harvesting into the next level. We all hate the fact that if you lose a level, one you start over from scratch. I think that resonated well with people that they just didn’t lose everything and have to start over, but it also gave you a chance to plan.

I’ve had a couple people say, ‘Oh we’re getting one over on the developers! We’re able to plan this thing and jump into the next level way ahead of what they think they might be able to do,’ but really that was the strategy as far as designing the game from day one.

Any last words?

The bottom line is that we see so many games that are just rehashes of the same thing over and over again. We wanted to redefine the genre a bit without breaking it, and I think we accomplished that with features like moveable buildings that peple obviously love. I think it’s a great thing; it just gives you more freedom to do what you want and strategize. Simple addition, but I think it was critical to making Ranch Rush stand out.

By Erin Bell

Gamezebo Inc.

Burger Shop 2

It’s safe to say that if you liked Burger Shop, you’re going to love Burger Shop 2. The fast-paced assembly-line time management game is just as fun as the original and, like any good sequel, expands on the formula with additional levels and fun new twists like extra dishes, characters and trophies.

At the end of the first game you were on top of the world thanks to the BurgerTron 2000 machine, but by the start of Burger Shop 2 your restaurant empire is in shambles – and you don’t know why. All you know is that you woke up one morning in a dumpster with a bump on your head to find that all your restaurants have been shut down and boarded up. When a shady character appears and offers to sell it all back to you for a dollar, you take him up on it. As you retrace your steps to try to find out what went wrong, you’ll also rebuild each of your eight restaurants back up to their former glory.

The premise at first seems like a contrived and rather lazy way of all-too-conveniently making you start from scratch again – until you realize that the developers are in on the joke too. The story is peppered with self-referential humor and snappy dialogue that doesn’t overstay its welcome and really makes you want to keep playing just to see what happens next.

The layout is the same as the first game: customers arrive at the bottom of the screen and your job is to their food and beverage orders by clicking on the correct ingredients as they’re spewed onto a conveyor belt by the Burger Tron 2000. To serve a BLT sandwich, for example, you must click on the top and bottom bun halves, bacon, lettuce and tomato, then deliver the sandwich to the customer.

Serve customers quickly and they’ll leave cash and big tips, but take too long and they’ll storm off. By earning a certain amount of cash you can advance to the next level and even earn an Expert score. There are eight restaurants and 15 levels per restaurant for a total of 120 levels.

Like the first game, there’s much more to Burger Shop 2 than simply serving sandwiches. In between levels you can upgrade your restaurants to serve fries, beverages, ice cream, condiments, and more. There are more than 100 different recipes to make in the game, and you’ll always be adding one more upgrade to the shop right up until the last level.

The ingenious thing about the upgrades is that many of them do double, or even triple duty. Take the vanilla ice cream machine. You can fill a glass with ice cream then drag it onto the milkshake machine to make a vanilla milkshake, or fill a glass of cola with ice cream to make an ice cream float. Combine ice cream with a paper cup to make vanilla soft-serve, to which you can add sprinkles, a cherry, chocolate sauce, sprinkles with chocolate sauce, chocolate sauce and a cherry…. You get the idea.

Burger Shop 2 features new breakfast, lunch and dinner menus that introduce a ton of new foods and ways of preparing them. Breakfast plates include eggs, sausages, hash browns, orange juice and different kinds of cereal, as well as English muffins, toast and waffles that can be placed in the toaster one- or two-at-a-time. New dinner options include steak, pork chops and salmon that must be baked in the oven, various pizzas, and vegetables and pasta that have to be boiled. There’s also a selection of soups, desserts and donuts.

Many of the customers will be familiar, but there are some fun new ones as well. The clown – with his crazy orders of vanilla ice cream with mustard on top, empty fry cartons and lettuce burgers – is still my favourite customer, but I also got a kick out of new customers like “animal lover,” a highly impatient who can be placated by giving her dog a biscuit, and “shirtless guy,” whose flabby, exposed torso offends other patrons until you can slap a T-Shirt onto him.

Although the pace is relentless, the control is exquisite and you’ll never find yourself fighting with the mouse. There are some nifty tricks and short-cuts that you can use to make the controls feel even smoother, all of which are clearly explained in tutorials. The game’s graphics and audio are equally enjoyable.

Once you’ve completed Story Mode’s 120 levels, there’s still plenty to do. You can go back and try to beat your score on individual levels, try the more difficult Expert mode, play Challenge Mode to see if you can achieve a Gold rating in every restaurant, or chill out in Relax Mode where customers never get upset. Trophies you’ve earned along the way – 120 in all – can be admired at any time in the Hall of Fame.

As long as you don’t mind your time management games a little on the frantic side, Burger Shop 2 is a must-download.

Review by Erin Bell

Gamezebo Inc.

Jessica’s Cupcake Café

Aunt Margaret’s bakery is in serious danger of going out of business, but all the ingredients for sweet success are here. Help Jessica in this tasty time management adventure as she takes control and grows her aunt’s small cafe into a deliciously successful empire. Design and create your own cupcakes, or use the built in recipes to delight your customers and keep them coming back for more!

Jessica’s Cupcake Café game features:

• Play over 42 different levels in 9 exciting locations
• Upgrade with cool power-ups and amazing machines
• Built in cookbook with real cupcake recipes to make at home
• Earn online medals at PlayFirst

My Kingdom for the Princess

A great casual game is one that’s simple to learn, yet challenging to master. It has high production values, addictive game play, and a great story to tie it all together. That’s probably why My Kingdom for the Princess is so fun to play – it’s a resource management game with all of those core elements, and more.

When Princess Helen was out visiting her uncle King Sigmund, a horrible tornado hit the kingdom. The castle survived, but the tornado woke up an evil dragon named Firemouth. Legend said that he wouldn’t return to sleep until he ate 37 people. To make matters worse, Helen’s father, King Olgert, was struck by lightning, and no one knew if he’d live or die. Princess Helen knew she had to return home to her own kingdom and father as soon as possible, but the roads were all damaged, and the dragon was wreaking havoc.

Luckily for Helen, a famous knight named Arthur offered to help her return to her father and rebuild the kingdom. King Sigmund promised him a shiny new castle as a reward if he could pull it off, but Arthur was more interested in the love of the princess…and so the game begins.

In general, your goal is to make all the repairs you can in order to clear the road and fix a bridge to get to the next board. Of course, Arthur doesn’t do the manual work himself! He has workers to do it for him. Since workers can only do one task at a time, you need more of them to work more efficiently.

For his very first knightly task, you need to clear the northern road of trees that were blown down by the storms. To do this, you need to click on the branches, and the worker will rush over to clear them.  Once removed, these become a new resource – wood.

Workers also need food in order to keep working, and you don’t always have enough provisions. This means that you need to build farms. Building and repairing structures is easy. You just click over the designated area, and it will be constructed for you. As you play, you’ll encounter lots of ruined structures this way, and can repair them in order to make use of their added resource bonuses.

Other tasks, like breaking rocks, also require gold. Your total resources (wood, food, and gold) are shown in the top right hand corner of the screen. Along the way, you will sometimes spot extra resources and provisions lying on the ground. You can click these to collect them.

Sometimes you’ll be asked to complete special tasks, like picking and planting flowers, or gather clams. There are plenty of twists to keep you on your toes. The dynamics change frequently, encouraging you to form new strategies with each level you play.

As you’d expect, there are also special bonuses you can use. These are really helpful, like a worker speed bonus, one that stops time for 10 seconds, and one that gives you a temporary extra worker.

Each time you complete a level before nightfall (shown when the time indicator changes color), you add to the castle King Sigmund is building in Arthur’s honor. You can replay levels to try for a better time and score.

By my estimate, there’s around 8 hours of game play if you play straight through, and more if you go for all the castle upgrades. Because things change slightly on each level, it’s never stale. It may seem easy at first, but play a few levels, and you’ll soon find it challenging. As for production values, they’re good. The game play is smooth, the graphics are cute, and the music is fun. There are good voice overs in the cut scenes, and the story is genuinely amusing.

There are a few little things that could be improved in future versions. For one, you can’t chain tasks in advance, which means you can’t plan too far ahead. Also, your workers insist on running back home before you can send them out again, which mean they sometimes waste time having to go back towards where they just came from. If you’re playing in full screen mode, you shouldn’t try to minimize the game, or you may have a game freeze. These are small things, however, and you quickly get used to them.

My Kingdom for the Princess is a really fun diversion, with easy to learn rules, yet lots of opportunities to form strategies.  It offers plenty of hours of entertainment in a simple resource management framework, making it an impressive casual game.

Review by Lisa Haasbroek

Delicious – Emily’s Taste of Fame

The newest installment of the Delicious series, Emily’s Taste of Fame takes you on a journey with Emily and Francois as they make their way to Emily’s new cooking show. With all sorts of hazards and detours along the way, it will take creativity and strategy to proceed in this outstanding new time management title brought to you by GameHouse.

The game begins with a flashback to one month ago, where a wrecked car sits on the side of the road near a diner. Emily and her friend Francois enter the diner to think of what to do next: they’re on their way to Emily’s new cooking show, but they don’t have enough money to repair their car. Instead, Emily strikes up a deal with the owner of the diner to do what she does best: cook and work in the restaurant and earn enough money to get their car fixed. Emily and Francois find themselves in interesting new places at every turn as they make their way to Emily’s cooking show, but time is running out and the producers are waiting!

Delicious: Emily’s Taste of Fame is the fourth official Delicious title in the series. Continuing the legacy of the series, Emily’s Taste of Fame is a restaurant-based time management title controlled solely with the mouse. Emily must cook and prepare food in a variety of combinations for a variety of customers, all while being careful not to make them angry and instead have them leave satisfied.

Delicious features two daily goals: a standard goal that will allow you to progress, and an expert goal. Achieving the expert goal allows Emily to earn extra money, which can be used to decorate the restaurant. Each decoration has a special quality that will improve Emily’s service or the customer’s actions in the game. True to the previous installments, Emily’s Taste of Fame also features five main restaurant areas with ten days each, for a total of 50 bustling levels. In each of the 50 levels are hidden a mouse, allowing for bonus play and challenges all while maintaining the restaurant. There is also a variety of Easter eggs that GameHouse has cleverly slipped into various levels.

Emily’s Taste of Fame is a whole new animal compared to the previous and even recent Delicious titles, improving and expanding with flying colors. This particular title features a new and refreshing feature in which every single day has a particular challenge or task that needs to be accomplished in addition to running the restaurant.

Tasks can be as simple as picking up packages, or complicated as saving a life. The tasks are also varied in style, some departing completely away from time management and straight into the genre of hidden object. With a strong non-corny storyline and lovable characters, and furthermore an entirely new cast of customers, this game is a beautiful blend of heart-warming adventure, hidden object, strategy, and of course true to its core, time management.

Featuring an improved sprite and animation style, in addition to a thoroughly enjoyable and environment-complementing soundtrack, Delicious is more expressive and enjoyable than ever. But that’s not all. Instead of taking place solely in restaurants, this title allows Emily to also work in shops, and even on a farm. While previous titles may have felt repetitive due to the strict restaurant environment, this one is anything but.

The only drawback to this title is the fact that “Emily’s Diary,” a feature in the previous game Delicious: Emily’s Tea Garden, will not be returning. Emily’s Diary allowed the player to play through various days with various special challenges, including a non-stop game mode in which you served as many customers as possible until three left angry, or allowing you to perform such challenges as cooking strictly barbecue for customers. Hardcore fans of the series may be disappointed to see this feature gone, but Emily’s Taste of Fame still provides a good amount of replay value in the mice, Easter egg, and trophy challenges.

Without a doubt, Emily’s Taste of Fame is the best game of the Delicious series yet, and takes it in a whole new direction without straying from the core and heart of the series. It does an excellent job of balancing old with new, providing a seamless adaptive gameplay for veterans of the series and an outstanding tutorial and hint system for people new to the game.

Hints and tutorials can be skipped or turned off at any time, but even more impressive is the adjustable difficulty, allowing each player to choose exactly what fits them best. Hardcore fans can play at the super-hard difficulties and those new to time management can play it at easy. The normal difficulty level is a very sound line that should be comfortable for old and new players alike. The difficulty can be changed at any time, even during gameplay. It’s an excellent feature that should really be implemented into more time management titles.

Delicious - Emily’s Taste of Fame is a truly wonderful game for anyone: young or old, new to the series or well-acquainted, and has rightfully proven itself as one of the best time management titles released yet.

Review by Tawny Ditmer

Gamezebo Inc.

Wandering Willows and Game Narrative

My childhood fantasies always began with being orphaned. Nothing against my parents, you understand — the details of their untimely demise were always airbrushed out of the story as too upsetting to contemplate. But no really good adventures could happen to me while they were around.

I imagined that once free of parental protection I would spend my time foraging, picking nuts and berries, building a primitive shelter, digging firepits and catching fish.

It was a scenario that drew heavily from Island of the Blue Dolphins, Little House in the Big Woods, and Julie of the Wolves, but minus the gritty realism.

My imaginary wooded island had plenty of every food; its weather was temperate; its stones were automatically the right shape for building walls without mortar.

This universe seems to have escaped my imagination and is now the setting for Wandering Willows, a casual PC RPG from Playfirst. The protagonist lands in a damaged balloon on a mysterious island. It is a land where every kind of metal can be found ready-pressed into ingots just beneath the surface of the soil; where blackberries and raspberries grow at the tops of trees; where animals carry worked precious stones, but are happy to share.

Cotton, wheat, sugar cane, and vanilla can be planted and grown in a matter of minutes. The abundance becomes more and more surreal as the protagonist discovers a need for sulfur, petroleum, hot lava, dinosaur teeth… all of which may be dug out of the yielding earth and transported in her capacious backpack.

This mystery island is, of course, full of odd travelers from other times and places. These welcome the protagonist, but invite her to perform an assortment of quests (some kind of local hazing ritual, perhaps).

Unlike Westward and its sequels, Wandering Willows involves no fighting and no action sequences; the most morally dubious thing the protagonist ever has to do is help the other characters deceive one another on occasion, and an obvious antecedent and inspiration is Nintendo’s popular Animal Crossing series, though it does diverge from that model marginally.

For the most part, life is a giddy round of sewing (the other characters do like their costumes), cooking (a huge range of recipes is available), planting crops, exploring the environs and collecting resources. There isn’t even any hunting or fishing: everyone in Wandering Willows appears to be vegetarian, and the animals are pets and companions rather than foodstuffs.

These pets are the chief mechanism of the game. The protagonist does relatively little work. Most of the hard labor of climbing trees for fruit or digging up the ground is done by pets. The protagonist may be accompanied only by one pet at a time, but can build up a stable of different pet species and rotate among them. Pets need to be fed, and they level up with enough experience. Different species are good at different things.

(I found myself fleetingly wondering about the slave-labor hierarchy of this society, since the long-term inhabitants mostly rely on the newcomer to provide them with food and clothing, while the newcomer in turn manipulates the cunning but speechless animals into doing all the really hard work. But I am fairly certain the designers did not intend me to think about any such thing.)

What about story? There is a loose framing arc about assembling enough goods to repair your balloon and get off the island, but it isn’t the kind of story one is invited to take seriously. The thing is a pastiche of every sort of childhood fantasy element: aliens, pirates, sea monsters, rocket ships, time machines, ancient ruined temples.

As for the gameplay, if you approach it with a goal-oriented, game-winning agenda in mind, you’ll find it is largely busywork. You collect quests, you pick fruits and dig up commodities, you fulfill your quests. If you want to, you can go off-script and bake or sew something you weren’t explicitly asked to bake or sew, but there is no need to do so: you can earn friendship points by giving gifts to the other characters, but you’re likely to end up with their friendship anyway, simply by going through the assigned tasks.

Thoroughness is the key to victory. There is nothing to figure out, and little to optimize. Even the small amount of strategy involved in selecting one species of pet over another is rendered more or less unnecessary because the pets are so trainable: you can stick with the first one you find and win handily with him.

That this is nonetheless somewhat entertaining is largely down to the game’s excellent production values. The island is beautifully rendered; the characters have a certain charm; the animals wriggle and bounce when they are happy, and droop pathetically when they run out of food.

(Given all the elements — the easy gameplay, the playful jumble of children’s storybook tropes, the indulgence in a kiddie fantasy of life on an isolated island — I started to wonder whether Wandering Willows was meant for younger players. But it doesn’t present itself that way, and there are some bits — the goofy cross-dressing character, the oblique references to impotence and constipation, the man who wants you to make fuzzy animal suits for a party — that seem to assume a more mature view of the universe. Ultimately, I figure it’s fine for kids, but not meant to be for them exclusively — the same way that Muppet movies have adult-friendly jokes that sail over the heads of the younger listeners.)

But I have the strong sense that I played the game wrong. The press release for Wandering Willows contains one clue to this, and the narrative arc another. First the quote:

“Wandering Willows is a unique title in PlayFirst’s portfolio as it offers a much more open ended experience and heightened interaction”, said Dan Chao, lead game designer. “Player progression and customization are the key elements that were crucial to our overall design process enabling a unique and more engaging experience for every player.”

This customization is the ability to dress up the player and all the other characters in wacky suits of clothes, and to feed them from a menu so extensive and indiscriminate as to put the Cheesecake Factory’s to the blush. If casual players enjoy dressing up Flo in costumes and refurbishing her diner, they may also enjoy dressing up the protagonist of Wandering Willows. I can’t really speak to this point: I rarely buy cosmetic upgrades unless I have to.

But here’s the thing: the story is about the protagonist working to get away — and becoming so fond of the island and its inhabitants that she starts to wonder whether she really wants to escape. That I didn’t play it that way is partly a matter of personal taste and disposition. My hard-headed gamer’s mindset made me determined to get through and finish as efficiently as possible.

Perhaps if I had played more casually — spending more time making recipes and costumes just because they looked fun, customizing my character, buttering up my friends — I would have found the gameplay lining up better with the story. Perhaps I would have settled in to enjoy the ludicrous abundance of this imaginary world while baking blackberry crepes for everyone I knew.

I’m a little too impatient to find this pace of gameplay satisfying now, but I bet six-year-old me would have loved it.

By Emily Short

Gamasutra

Winemaker Extraordinaire

While there does not seem to be a week going by without a release of a new hidden object or time management game, the number of options for people who enjoy strategy games like the Chocolatier or Tradewinds series’ is rather limited. All the better that Winemaker Extraordinaire turns out to be a compelling and well-made game in the same line. Instead of making coffee, truffles and chocolate bars the player travels the world to acquire new wineries and collect more and more blends of wine.

Maria Bellaventura is in a sorry plight: exhausted from her job, unhappy in the big city and grieving for the death of her grandfather. In a particularly touching introductory scene, Maria receives a letter from her grandfather who tells her to return to the family vineyeard in Italy. There she gets to know the first of fifteen members of the Guild of Extraordinary Winemakers,an organization that fell apart many years ago due to greed and selfishness. She also learns of the “Vino Ultimae,” the world’s most glorious wine. Maria’s grandfather tore the recipe to pieces and gave one piece to each member after the guild’s separation.

The main objective is to gather and reassamble those pieces, but this task will require a lot of orders and favors, which Maria has to fulfill for the former guild members. In the beginning you only have one winery in Italy and two different wine blends, namely Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. As you progress in the game, new locations in Germany, France, Australia and other countries will be unlocked, and you get the chance to purchase five more wineries altogether, allowing you to make more profits and to expand your variety of wine blends.

The process of buying supplies, selling wine and unlocking new blends is quite similar to Chocolatier, as is the world map and the layouts of the different locations. In each town is one supplier, where you can fill your stock with differently shaped bottles and various types of grapes, at the cellar you can sell wine, from the travel terminal you can reach other locations and at the guild you will get new quests and orders.

However, not every grape is available in every country, and the costs may vary, too. A very realistic touch of the game is that you can plant some types of grapes at your wineries, for example Riesling in Germany or Nebbiolo in Italy. Furthermore the production of some wine blends is also restricted to only one country; highly expensive Champagne can only be made in France and Malbec has to be produced in South Africa.

While the number of wine blends is extremely small compared to the large variety of different recipes in Chocolatier, the actual process of wine-making is more complex. There are three different mini-games that really spice up the game. If you decide to grow grapes in your vineyards, you can handle this process by yourself or hire someone for a large amount of money. The rows of soil have to be planted, watered and pruned. The number of grapes that you grow strongly depends on your performance in this time management-like game.

You are also able to influence the quality of your wine, which will increase its price remarkably. Therefore you have to remove leaves and little twigs from a grid by selecting three or more of them. According to how pure the grapes are your wine will get a one- to five-star quality. The third mini-game deals with the production of the wine itself – in the style of Tetris, rows of grapes have to be reordered according to the formula of the recipe, thereby constituting the amount of wine you produce a day.

Winemaker is definitely as addicting as Chocolatier, thanks in particular to the variety of mini-games and the interesting storyline and characters. You’ll find detailed descriptions for each person you can find a detailed descreption, the same applies to the wine blends which may be an interesting feature for wine connoisseurs. The graphics are very easy on the eyes and the retro-style of the game goes very well with its theme and creates a highly appealing atmosphere.

Granted, the game might be far too easy for people who have already finished similar games, and the length is not that convincing either. After approximately five hours you should have completed the game’s main goal and be ready to test your abilities in the free mode, which does not offer any additional challenges.

Nonetheless Winemaker Extraordinaire is definitely a recommendable game for both fans of and newcomers to the genre. The quest to help Maria bringing her family business up to its former glory is undeniably entertaining and compelling. It is up to you to find out if this wine is to your taste.

Review by David Becker

Gamezebo Inc.