Archive for April 2010
A bunch of easygoing settlers depend on you! Once your band of laid-back guys managed to escape a the criminals and found a vacant archipelago in the middle of the sea they decided to settle down and enjoy the view. The chain of aisles offers enough challenges to satisfy the most adventurous. Colonizing is never easy but sometimes it’s downright grueling especially when there are ill-tempered natives to consider.
Island Realms made by Alawar Melesta offers you an amazing opportunity to explore and succeed proving who is the better man!
This strategy game offers you to move your wagon of goods from island to island (and simultaneously from level to level). You are supposed to fill the wagon first and then move it from one island to the other. Every island has a choice of waypoints. The game dictates where you are to build a store or a grain mill. Your men are to build roads where necessary e.g. between the waypoints.
Don’t rush to begin the construction. If you need to build something, you’ll need to buy necessary blueprints. Everything looks like real life! To continue with real life tendencies everything you plan to build or upgrade consumes a certain number of resources. Sometimes in cases you are not able to directly produce necessary resources you can barter or trade them. Don’t forget to build and upgrade your warehouses since each building can hold only so many goods.
In Island Realms everything is animated. Watching your people move around doing things is an entertainment in itself. Also the more work you have the more people you need. If in trouble go buy some settlers (a true bargain – one coin per settler!). Sounds somewhat ominous but really rather amusing.
As I said before there are natives who ruin your efforts. The roads get destroyed, goods stolen, buildings ruined. They even knock over your people! First time it happened I even cried out in indignation! There is a rather humorous solution to this particular problem though – make your men build some idols here and there. When a native soldier faces one of the idols he can’t help to dance about hooting. Downright hilarious!
Your main strategy in Island Realms is to move quickly and keep the work going. The graphics are interesting; music wasn’t irritating me. Once you understand somewhat lacking tutorial you’ll get a real kick out of this game!
A marvelous new time management title developed by GameHouse comes from the Delicious series. A well-known and well-loved by fans series brings us a glimpse into an amazing world of cooking shows. An enterprising Emily teamed up with Francois are doing their best to break into a new cooking show. The way to success is never easy; along the way there are hazards and all kinds of detours. To proceed on this way the pair will need a lot of strategy and inventiveness.
As the game starts you are presented with a flashback of evens which happened a month ago. When Emily and her friend Francois were driving to a new cooking show something dreadful happened – their car broke down. To add more trouble to the existing one they can’t scrape enough money for necessary repairs. But with plucky Emily there is always a way out. She decides to strike a bargain with the owner of a nearest diner. She will cook in the diner until she earns enough money to have the car fixed. Time is running out while the way to Emily’s cooking show is long and full of twists. The producers won’t wait too long! Thus courageous girls must move real fast to succeed.
This time management game is restaurant based. In it you control everything with your mouse. As usual in this genre you must be as quick as possible to have your customers satisfied. There are two daily goals. A standard goal allows you to go further in the game. If you managed to achieve the expert goal you’ve made some extra money for Emily. This money is used to buy upgrades such as , for example, decorations for the diner. Your customers will be happier if you made the restaurant beautiful!
Emily’s Taste of Fame offers five main restaurant areas with ten days for each area. There are 50 levels total. To add the spice developers from GameHouse included a number of Easter eggs for our entertainment.
This particular game looks much better than its predecessors; the game was expanded and improved greatly. Every day we are offered new tasks and challenges – the restaurant running routine has no chances!
The tasks offered vary. For example, you may be picking packages or saving lives. The style of the tasks also vary. There are adventures, hidden object hunts and even elements of strategy beautifully slipped in between time management core of the game.
To my somewhat biased opinion Emily’s Taste of Fame is one of the best games made by GameHouse. An excellent product to entertain you!
Another time management game recently caught my attention. Kitchen Brigade developed by Fugazo might not have a unique story comparing to other titles such as Hell’s Kitchen or Top Chef. Still there are enough twists and turns to make this particular game worthy of gamers’ attention.
You will be playing a chef. Unsurprising, considering the title. You are in a tight financial situation. Oh well, who I am kidding! Plainly speaking – you are broke. After winning one million bucks in the World Culinary Workshop you should have been fine but real life interfered: you needed to pay taxes, tuition fees, and restaurant costs. No wonder you had only 10 dollars left. As a chef there is little you can do besides cooking. Thus the game starts. You will be doing your best to cook so good that you might get famous and maybe, just maybe get into a TV show. Using your earth-shattering skills you must manage your restaurant to the best of your abilities.
Unlike other similar titles Kitchen Brigade values speed. It’s a dash game after all! So the faster you are moving the better. The skills you have are important too, but not as much. An overall pace of the game is rather fast – no time to get bored if you do many tasks at the same time.
In this game you will need to drag necessary ingredients to the corresponding stations which sets your assistants to work. Multitasking is a useful skill to have ! To speed things up you can do some dishes yourself – there are mini-games where you are able to try your culinary talents.
Those mini-games imply simple kitchen tasks which are necessary to preparing the food. For example, if you wish to make some rice you will need to set the heat on high and stir the pot. In contrast to other culinary games (Cooking Academy comes to mind) you will be careful about clicking. Thankfully Kitchen Brigade is less strict. Precision clicks are not compulsory – as long as you click in close vicinity of the item you’re all set. Cooking tasks generally are fulfilled in a number of simple steps.
As in the real life the customer tip if they are happy. The faster you serve them – the happier they are. The customers tend to leave if you take too long thus your speed in essential. You can please them with cookies (one of upgrades available).
The game is flexible enough – fun and easy. The only negative thing I noticed is its shortness which happens with the best of them.
