2009 January | Casualicious

Chocolatier: Decadence by Design

Posted by Ruff on January 31st, 2009

(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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PlayFirst’s Chocolatier casual game series is definitely one of the industry’s most successful games. After 2 installments and a time management spin-off, Chocolatier: Decadence by Design hits our gaming library as the latest entry to Baumeister Confections’ long story of success, employing gameplay very familiar to fans of the series.

The setting is 1946, after World War II and the global recession that hit the world. Businesses are picking up from the shambles left by the war, and Baumeister Confections is no different. However, disaster strikes as Sean, the husband of Alex from the previous Chocolatier game, did not come home post-war. Alex chooses love over money and sets off to find her husband, leaving the whole of Baumeister Confections under your care as its new CEO.

The gameplay of Chocolatier: Decadence by Design resembles those of the initial games of the series, which is a good thing for all its fans. But in case you haven’t played any Chocolatier games yet, your task in this game is just to earn money and bring Baumeister Confections into its glory once again. And in order for you to do that, you’ll have to manufacture and sell chocolates, travel the world in search for newer and more exotic ingredients to use, and now, offer more products to sell including your own creations as you embark into a new chocolate-filled adventure.

Chocolate bars are a thing of the past. Now, you are able to create coffees, infusions, truffles, coffee blends, exotics and of course, your very own creative line of products made by experimenting with your available ingredients. With a bit of ingenuity, your profits can now rocket-up sky high by selling better offerings than your competition, and will bring Baumeister Confections on the top of the chocolate world in no time flat.

Chocolatier: Decadence by Design looks and feels just the same as Chocolatier 2 so there’s really no significant difference to explain other than the new menu interface. The mechanics is just the same – you get into quests in making products for a variety of customers, use the money to buy more inventory ingredients, and set production to make more products per week to cater to your new demands. It looks like a vicious cycle over and over again, but when backed-up by the story in typical Chocolatier fashion, you really won’t notice it very much.

I liked the additional features fused into the game, but to tell you honestly, you won’t notice the impact very much until the later parts of the game wherein you get to access more ingredients and new products to offer your in-game customers. It’s a great thing too that there’s still much freedom to the game, giving you much choices to explore before getting onto continuing your quests. And if in case you got sidetracked and can’t remember what to do next, take a brief visit to the quest log to get back on the race once again.

Chocolatier: Decadence by Design Download

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Color Cross

Posted by Ruff on January 30th, 2009

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Just when you thought that you’ve already played them all, even classic puzzle games still inspire innovation for their future counterparts. Color Cross is one such innovation, and this time around, it’s a whole new twist to the classic game, Picross. The same addictive gameplay is retained, but with a whole new challenge, it becomes an experience worth checking out.

Color Cross is the first game release of the French casual game developer, Little Worlds Studio. As their first release, I’m actually expecting nothing extravagant like most of the games I usually review. This is because I assume production values to be not that high, and with my experience with new development studios, I notice that they focus more on the overall fun factor of the game, and without much eye candy that doesn’t serve the gameplay very much.

Anyway, let’s take a brief recap of Picross rules because they very much apply also for Color Cross.

The objective of the game is for you to completely color a celled board by using the number clues on its top and left sides. Top number clues indicate colored cells for each column and those numbers on the side indicate colored cells for each row. For example, if there’s a number “15” on the top side, it means that there are 15 cells in a straight line on that particular column you need to shade. More numbers at the row or column indicate separate cells you need to shade, with at least a single cell in between them.

Color Cross adds a bit of twist to this simple gameplay by adding in more colors you need to use against the typical single-colored shade in Picross. There are up to 8 colors you must mix and match within a board considering the clues given to you with respect to a particular color. If you’re imagining this right, this basically means that by the time you finish with a board, you’ll notice a colorful pixel form of an image, which makes it a great accomplishment as you finish each stage.

The game has two modes of play: Classic and Arcade. In classic, you get to unlock and select from 10 themes with 15 puzzles each, increasing in difficulty as you solve along the puzzles. Your objective is to collect pieces of an overall picture depicting the idea of your current theme. The same is true for Arcade mode, but now, you must solve puzzles within a time limit and you don’t have an option to choose which level to play.

As I had said earlier, in terms of presentation, Color Cross will definitely fail to impress casual gaming fans used to insane graphics, music and special effects. If there’s a better adjective to describe the game, I say it is “retro”, and one thing I notice about successful retro games is that they focus more on addictiveness and smooth gameplay to compensate on lack of visual appeal.

With that said, Color Cross is amazingly addictive. After I started playing the game, I didn’t even notice that I’m already playing for hours, messing my schedule in the process. I’m guessing it’s more because of the Picross appeal, but the added twist is definitely a plus too.

One thing I absolutely disliked about the game though is the sounds. Most of the sound effects are very annoying, making me wish that they should have settled for some exploding noise rather than theme-specific sounds that are really a pain to hear. Good thing that many times, you’ll be too engaged on the puzzles to notice it much, but still, some improvements will serve the game better.

Color Cross is worth the money you spend to it if you’re looking for a quick game you can go back to time and time again. There are tons of levels that comprise the game and puzzle enthusiasts will definitely find it a great addition to their gaming libraries.

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Natalie Brooks: The Treasure of the Lost Kingdom

Posted by Ruff on January 26th, 2009

(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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Natalie Brooks: The Treasure of the Lost Kingdom is the second game following the adventures of the teen adventurer, Natalie Brooks. Unlike Nancy Drew though, you still get to play with a familiar hidden object interface that definitely looks a lot like the original game. But still, sequels can only improve, and for this game, that statement significantly applies.

Natalie Brooks is not born an amazing adventurer; she obviously got to where she is now because of some outside influence. This time around, the influence is her grandpa, a famous archaeologist in his own right. The story begins after her grandpa got kidnapped by an unknown person hoping to cash in on an ancient treasure. It’s now up to Natalie to find the criminal’s ransom demand and bring her grandpa home within the set time limit.

Natalie Brooks: The Treasure of the Lost Kingdom is a hidden object game, but unlike other games of this type, almost all of the hidden items are needed to develop on the game’s storyline. In some cases that you’ll be given random items you’ll need to find, Natalie will beforehand state that she has to clean the area, thus ending up with a reason for you to find listed items. But most of the time, the game is driven by goals you’ll need to accomplish and puzzles you’ll need to solve relevant to the progress of Natalie’s story.

The scenes are not timed and you’re provided with a replenishing hint button to help you unstuck yourself against hard-to-find items. All you have to do during the whole game is to enjoy the storyline and read closely the character dialogues. Your quest will commence after you’re given tasks on what to do next. Look for highlighted objects and possible inventory items, zoom in on specific parts of the scene, and try to solve the mini-puzzles that pop-up whenever they are required to continue your quest.

One thing you must remember though is that tasks almost always overlap each other. It’s pretty easy to lose focus on what you’re trying to accomplish first on a given scene. Good thing though that the “Goals” button is always there beside Natalie to remind you on your tasks. Besides, the game intentionally deviates you from your initial goal as you encounter road blocks that can only be unlocked by completing other separate goals. I liked it this way though, since the game encourages you to think more, which is not the case on straightforward hidden object games.

Natalie Brooks: The Treasure of the Lost Kingdom is presented beautifully with a very engaging storyline you’ll love to see finished until the end of the game. Through the cinematic, through the comic book-like sequences, and even through the dialogues that occur in-game, it’s fun to follow-through on how Natalie can now get out of her predicament. And with good graphics and nice sounds, the development team really overdid themselves to make such a fine game.

No doubt, the game is really worth the buy. I even began feeling that the game length is not enough. Maybe I’m spot on too, but now, it’s up to you to decide.

Natalie Brooks: The Treasure of the Lost Kingdom Download

Adventure Chronicles

Posted by Ruff on January 25th, 2009

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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For all great casual game sequels, there’s only one way to go after the initial release, and that is to improve. Adventure Chronicles is the second hidden object game following its predecessor, Escape the Museum. And this time around, it definitely improved to take part in the competitive find-and-seek casual gaming space.

The story of Adventure Chronicles follows right after Dr. Susan Anderson and her daughter’s escape from the crumbled museum. After all the interviews and getting back to her much-loved work, she received a journal coming from a mystery man named John. The journal contain hints pointing to the location of several long lost treasures coming from the Great Civil War, Blackbeard the pirate, and an Egyptian Pharaoh among others. And being thrilled by the adventure, Susan sets off to travel the whole world trying to add these historic items to the museum.

For each level of the game, there are three tasks that you should fulfill in order to move on to the next step of your journey as complete as possible. First, the journal contains several riddles pointing to a key item you’ll need to find the treasure. A riddle is found on each scene and you must solve all of them to complete the stage and end up with the treasure.

Second, you play a traditional hidden object game by finding listed objects at the right side of the screen. Some objects are locked, but can be easily found by interacting tools or inventory items to the scene. Normal items can become inventory items too, and to use them properly, take note of several clues and hints Susan will tell you as you click on possible hidden item locations.

Your third objective in Adventure Chronicles is an optional task but it can be frustrating if you don’t get to fulfill it. Each scene houses a hidden GeoCache treasure, and you’ll be given a riddle to find them. A scene can be completed without it, and you cannot use hints to locate it, but finding them completes the in-game museum, accessible through the game menu.

Adventure Chronicles is definitely a great improvement from the previous game and it’s backed up by an amazing storyline that envelopes you entirely as you help Susan fulfill her very long journey. The scene designs are great, and the game is seldom plagued by too much backtracking like most hidden object games.

It’s surprising that the whole game is not timed at all and penalty for miss-clicks is just a second of blurred vision reminding you of your bad habit. But besides this lax of penalty, the game is still quite challenging as it bombards you with riddles and puzzles you sometimes can’t discern or solve. I guess the only thing negative about the game are some of the pixel-finding you need to do in order to complete the levels, but that’s common in hidden object games anyway, meaning Adventure Chronicles is still an overall good game to play.

Adventure Chronicles Download

County Fair

Posted by Ruff on January 24th, 2009

(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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Fairs are always fun and it’s always a wonder on how to operate them. County Fair is a casual game built upon the idea of operating your own fair and making it the talk of the town. And as temporary as fairs go, the time management mechanics fit well to the game’s overall idea.

Honestly, the story of County Fair is as cliché as they go. You start off as an ordinary Joe but then after some bizarre twist of fate, you are given the rights to a string of fairs your far-off relative named Russ Pendleton owns. However, all is not with glitz and glamour as you might expect. Because the fairs are all ailing, and you have to get them back on track before they can make you some money for a living.

In each level of the game, you are given specific tasks to fulfill until the day the fair will have to close. Most of the time, you have to earn enough money for your next venture, but requests will come from each county, making you build specific rides to cater to your patrons’ wishes. All you have to do is to build as requested, spread word about your newly opened fair, and keep your fair running and maintained as a stable cash machine.

Fulfilling objectives in County Fair is not as easy as it sounds though, but nothing really complicated after the brief tutorial at the beginning of the game. You have multiple tasks just like in simulation games, like building and upgrading rides and shops, hiring park workers, keeping your park energized and setting up advertisements to spread the buzz about the fair. Furthermore, you can also dictate all the prices, and depending on how the prices go steal or greedy, park popularity will also fluctuate in response to the change.

County Fair also has challenges presented to you while you continue playing in the actual time management game. Sanitation, security and ride inspectors will come randomly to check on the park, and if they caught you neglecting your duties, they will fine you some amount to keep your park running. It’s such a pain though that sometimes they appear at the most inappropriate time possible. Just when almost all rides fail and you have all your mechanics at call, here comes the ride inspector extorting money from you. Quite unfair sometimes, but I guess that’s how the challenge goes.

I must admit though that County Fair is definitely a fun game to play. More rides and shops will be added to your inventory as you go along the levels, and you have total control on what to build in each area as long as you have ample space to build them. I liked the freedom the game brings to the player and the option of having you keep playing even after the goals have been met is one of the game’s plus sides.

County Fair is presented very well, with graphics and animation clearly depicting the fun of the fair. The gameplay is smooth and the game has an overall appeal due to its dynamic nature. I recommend buying it too, but for now, a simple try can still be enough.

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