Time Management Games | Casualicious

Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios Review

Posted by Ruff on August 17th, 2009

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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The highly anticipated sequel to Cooking Dash is already released by PlayFirst as players are now again reunited with Flo on another time management casual game. Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios pits Flo to cook for celebrities, directors and crew members of DinerTown’s hit TV shows, reminding us why a character such as Flo became synonymous for fast and effective service.

As the owner of DinerTown Studios, Gilda is in so much trouble when all her cast and crew threaten to walk out on her if she won’t be able to provide good catering service. This is when Flo comes in to save the day once more as she volunteered to help her friend. With Grandma at her side and Cookie providing help from time to time, it’s certain to become another fast paced adventure that will keep your fingers clicking.

As a sequel, Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios actually plays very much like the original wherein your objective is to reach your goal earning per level by serving customers and not letting anyone of them get too unhappy. Sit the customers as they arrive, cook and prepare their orders, and serve them fast for fun and profit. Take note of seat colors and combo service for bonus points, and try to replenish hearts by providing extra service when available.

Of course, there’s something new for this installment as well because when there’s a studio set, there are always celebrities and directors just as hungry as the crew. Customers seated next to a celebrity may sometimes as you to take pictures of them for added hearts. Cranky directors, on the other hand, will get all crew to eat faster as a bonus. Serve them well and get a power-up as you clean their plates afterwards.

This new feature in Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios adds a little bit of strategy to the gameplay. Aside from the old color-code planning for customers, you can now plan your service for celebrities and directors to aid you in achieving the set profit for the day. Personally, I loved the speed boost power-up after serving celebrities. Seeing Flo burst in speed is just insane, adding more to her already-blinding speed after upgrades.

Now, you can also have Cookie help you in preparing food. Each successful service you make will fill up the phone meter at the upper left corner of the screen. When complete, click it to summon Cookie as he temporarily prepares dishes instead of the ever-busy Flo. Great help when serving multiple customers at once, but take note though, Flo is still the one to take the food off the grills, which is kind of a little disappointing.

Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios features 5 sets of levels with increasing difficulty as you progress. Aside from upgrades that help you on your adventure, each restaurant also have a set of themed decorations you can purchase for an added style to the background. And as a bonus, you will also experience special menus and service for each restaurant, meaning more challenge to the gameplay than ever before.

With all of the time management games in the market today, it’s quite interesting how the stars of Diner Dash still maintains great interest even with its already too familiar characters. Well, maybe the key to all this is the characters themselves, but in the case of Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios, I say it’s all that plus the blend of new time management elements that are both interesting and fun. Storyline and challenge is not even neglected, clearly showing that the Cooking Dash series is here to stay.

Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios Download

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Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios Preview

Posted by Ruff on August 10th, 2009

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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I just got a preview build of Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios coming from PlayFirst and will, of course, take time off from work once again to get to review this sequel to the highly popular Cooking Dash time management game. This time around, the venue to Flo’s newest adventure takes place in DinerTown Studios, where all of DinerTown’s TV series are born.

Expect the game to have more challenge and involves more strategy than its predecessor as new elements come to play in the world of Cooking Dash. In all of the game’s 5 stages, Flo will be busy keeping all the actors, directors and crew happy with her diner food, and keep us casual gamers having fun too as we help her out.

Anyways, just to keep teasing you more, check out some of the screenshots below. The review will come as soon as the game is released.

Features:

3 new celebrity customers with special power-ups and unique features that help you score extra points
Over 25 new decoration and functional upgrades to purchase
5 new on-set restaurants, each with an original menu that now includes 2 and 3-course meals
10 medals to earn throughout the game
More than 50 television-themed levels of gameplay

Screenshots:

Cooking Dash: DinerTown Studios

Passport to Perfume

Posted by Ruff on August 3rd, 2009

(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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I don’t know how current perfume manufacturers make their blends, but I assure you that perfumers during the early times have it hard trying to find the perfect scent. Passport to Perfume puts you in the shoes of a budding perfumer during those times, continuing the legacy of her long lost father. And what a legacy it is, as you get to travel all around the world in this time management game.

Your character in-game is named Sophia. During her younger years, she’s always beside her father trying to find rare perfume ingredients all around the world. Disaster strikes however, after her father fell during an expedition in Brazil. Ten years later and after retrieving her father’s journal, she starts her own perfume shop and her own adventure with it, while trying to continue her father’s dream – to blend “The Scent of Marie Antoinette”.

As expected from a PlayFirst exclusive, Passport to Perfume is a time management game. Your objective in each level is to fill elegant bottles with perfume and serve them to scent-loving customers. Other than your own blends, customers may also ask for fine or rare perfumes. And in some cases, if they are indecisive about what they want, just throw in anything and you’ll still profit in the end.

In this game though, you have to always keep in mind the customers you need to serve first. Not only because of the patience levels we are all used to in many other time management games, but also because of the indecisive customers with the habit of taking perfume intended for those who actually ordered them. Basic strategy is to serve indecisive ones last, but of course, you’ll still eventually make mistakes as the game gets more hectic.

Restocking prior each level starts is also an essential task in Passport to Perfume. In fact, most of the profits you acquired during the previous level goes into restock rather than upgrades like most time management games. While this may pose as a disappointment for some, I feel more like it’s an addition to the game’s planning management. For example, you may buy an upgrade to Sophia’s speed, but you’ll still lose customers if you have no stock of perfume to sell them.

Are there mini-games? Well yes, you get to play a hidden object mini-game whenever Sophia goes into adventure mode and visits other countries around the world in search of exotic perfume ingredients. In the mini-games, you also get to use tools like the brush and the shovel to uncover objects, but unlike conventional hidden object, don’t you fret too much since there’s no time limit in this one.

The best feature of Passport to Perfume is a mode where you can blend your own special perfume collection using ingredients Sophia found during her travels. In this mode, your objective is to blend the most profitable perfume with the least time to prepare during the actual time management game. More quantity and rareness of ingredients mean more time to prepare, so try to experiment before you set serving some customers.

Storyline is very rich in all parts of the game. The quest for the elusive Scent of Mary Antoinette seemed to go on forever in the many levels of the game. While visuals are not that impressive, it’s still enjoyable to watch the in-between cinematic as the story develops. Sophia’s father’s notebook adds a little education too, documenting facts on flowers and other ingredients that make a perfume much more pleasant to smell.

Gameplay is smooth, but I always had problems clicking on wrong items in the game field. For example, my aim is to add spritzer to the perfume, but if you don’t click the switch at the bottom part of the spritzer station, you’ll just place the perfume and not do the appropriate task. This is kind of annoying since the same is true on all the tools you use, wasting precious time when you already thought that the machine is working while you’re busy serving customers and you’ll backtrack just to flip a silly switch.

Passport to Perfume is a long and challenging game though, and very enjoyable too if you manage to get a good control on your clicks. Of course, you can always restart each level if you mess up too much so that isn’t a big problem.

An engaging storyline and a fun new way into fitting the shoes of a perfumer – makes this game as interesting as a time management game worth your try.

Passport to Perfume Download

Jane’s Zoo

Posted by Ruff on July 6th, 2009

(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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Hotels and realty - that’s what the businesswoman Jane is known for in her previous casual games. But never did we know that Jane has a soft side for animals too, evident through the release of Jane’s Zoo, the most recent starring role for Realore Studio’s spunky heroine.

After Jane’s past successes, she already has all the money and time she ever wanted. During one of her African safari trips, she stumbled upon a disturbing revelation – that with the onset of industrialization, most of the wildlife is in danger of being polluted. This gave her the idea to start a relief fund to help zoos all around the world and improve them through hands-on experience taking care of animals and providing them their needs.

The adventure of Jane’s Zoo spans across three countries. During the first minutes of gameplay, you are introduced the tutorial mode of the game, telling you how to serve animals their food and take care of their habitat. This introduces the two tabs in the main menu – one for Jane to serve food and drinks, and one for her Uncle Ben, taking care of all cleaning, repairing and gardening in the zoo.

Each level will reward you silver coins and additional gold coins if you finish within Expert score. These coins will help you purchase facilities for the zoo as well as beautify its current state. Additional facilities mean additional services for the animals. And as you put animals in a service building, you get to play a popup mini-game entailing you to wash, exercise or heal them just to name a few.

These mini-games are aside from the bonus levels you get to play in between time management levels. In Jane’s Zoo, bonus levels have a hidden object gameplay, and your primary task is to find garbage in the scene within a specified time limit. It doesn’t matter if you miss finding them all since your bonus score is just computed from what you achieved during the course of the whole activity.

With all the pop-up mini-games and bonus levels, you’ll be sure that this game will not show a boring side to it from start to finish. As a matter of fact, other additional tasks present themselves during the actual action game too. Shooing annoying crows, serving prideful lions first, and pampering baby animals are just some of the examples of how this game can be both challenging and fun at the same time.

To help you with the challenges, power-ups randomly appear in the zoo. Let Jane or Uncle Ben pick them up as they appear, giving you score or patience bonuses at a limited time once activated. Jane’s Zoo also lets you upgrade Jane and Uncle Ben’s service to the animals. This is aside from the upgrades you get prior each level starts, and can only be granted to you after you finish playing the bonus hidden object level.

Really, with so many gameplay elements presented for this game, it’s hard not to get addicted and play until you drop (but please don’t take your health for granted). Each animal is unique and has qualities that really put management into play. Of course, it also gets challenging in later levels when animals get crankier for Jane and Uncle Ben to handle.

With all the positive things I mentioned about Jane’s Zoo, I want to make it clear that the game also has its downsides too. Mostly on the story parts, there are inconsistencies that don’t really add up with what the game presents. For example, in the second level, Jane mentioned that she’s off to Africa for the next zoo to start up, however, the graphics indicate pyramids, and I don’t see pyramids in Africa, do you?

Well anyway, all in all the game is an enjoyable ride. I don’t really mind much the inconsistencies since for me, as long as I have fun playing, then the conclusion points to a good game to recommend.

Jane’s Zoo Download

Jessica’s Cupcake Café

Posted by Ruff on June 14th, 2009

(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)

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When there are already too many cafés being made into casual time management games, it’s now time to go into specifics on what kind of a café is to be depicted next. Jessica’s Cupcake Café is just what the name suggests. It’s a time management game with a cupcake café in mind, and since I don’t know whether actual real life cupcake cafés are in boom or anything but let’s just see if this one lives up to being a great casual game.

Since her name is on the game, our heroine would be girl named Jessica after she just got back home for a relaxing break from the hustles of city life. Chance came too when she met her Aunt who shares her story of closing down their boring bakeries for something more hip and fun. Jessica suggested selling cupcakes, and with little more convincing the Cupcake Café is now born.

As far as time management game mechanics go, Jessica’s Cupcake Café still introduced a new twist during the first few seconds of gameplay. Instead of the usual immediate grind after pressing the start button, each level will give you a few seconds to prepare initial cupcakes for all your starving customers. Try to make as more as possible so that when the customers come rolling in, you’ll have enough cupcakes to keep their patience at bay.

Preparing cupcakes is simple since you’re provided with such smart push-button machines to help you do an easy job. Prepare batter, frosting and decorations simultaneously then bake the batter once available. Put the right ingredients together and put the cupcakes on the appropriate display case. Each run makes you 12 cupcakes and each display case holds 48. Try not to go over these numbers or make recipe mistakes; else it’s in the recycling bin where waste cupcakes go.

To earn more money and hopefully reach Expert Score in Jessica’s Cupcake Café, you also have a variety of options and tactics you can implement. Of course, there’s the combo service bonus wherein you earn more money for each service you make in succession. You can also design your own cupcakes before each level starts, earning you more tips for the effort. And lastly, you can also earn and use power-ups when available after serving customers that hold them.

Aside from Expert Score achievements, you also have a chance to earn medals by reaching milestones set by the game. We’ve seen features like these on other casual games but it still adds a little bit of challenge and replay factor for this game too. A chance to play a mini-game after finishing each stage adds a bit of fun while you sell excess cupcakes at the fair and earn a little bit more money.

The greatest bonuses that I know Jessica’s Cupcake Café is very much proud of are the free recipes you can get whenever you take part in playing another level. Recipes are unlocked as you go along the game complete with exact ingredient measurements and procedures on how to prepare each cupcake. As a matter of fact, you can even save each recipe on a text file and print for your own convenience and use to delight your own family and friends.

The downside to the game though is its lack of visual flare in design. Not that the game is bad to look at or anything, but I guess with all the time management games I’ve played in the past, it’s just that I’ve seen better designed games. I guess that’s a matter of personal preference, but in the case of upgrades you get to buy before each level starts, the game could use more options other than the usual tools and trinkets available during the upgrade mode.

Overall though, Jessica’s Cupcake Café is a must buy game. Why? Well, even with just the bonus recipes included, you already get your money’s worth of fun and enjoyment. Treat yourself with the game and treat your family and friends with a perfectly made cupcake. Sounds a ton of fun, right?

Jessica’s Cupcake Café Download