The name of the game can mean different things. One, you’re “Miss Manager” of the office formally known as Denise. Two, the office is full of mismanagement — not much of it is Denise’s fault. Miss Management is a hit not a miss as it doesn’t resemble your typical task management / diner style game with its personable characters, different way of handling tasks, humorous dialogue and variety of scenarios.

I love the cartoon-style art that brings out each character’s personality and their body and facial expressions that fit their current mental state. Most task-based games (think Diner Dash, Cake Mania, and Sally’s Salon) involve doing repetitive tasks such as taking orders, submitting orders, delivering orders and cleaning up. Employees all have tasks to do in Miss Management where Denise delivers one of four tasks to an employee and the employee completes it (if he doesn’t have a melt down before finishing it).

That brings me to the one annoyance in the game. Too many times, I’ve tried to have Denise pick up two things out of habit in other games. Besides, she has two hands, so why can’t she pick up two tasks or objects? She can’t.

Each employee has a colorized task chart on his desk that indicates his ability to do the task. An arrow pointing up indicates she’s an expert. A circle means she’s average. An arrow pointing down means she’s bad at that task and completes it slowly plus her stress level goes up. The four tasks include writing (purple), financial (green), technical (blue), and art (orange / brown).

Instead of levels, the game uses episodes that make up a season — much like TV. Every episode and season has a title. Playing Miss Management indeed feels like watching an interactive TV show. I enjoy the mini-movies with complete dialogue that appear after surviving an episode before moving to the next one. The story flows wonderfully and humorously.

Denise not only has to distribute tasks, but also must watch employee stress levels and complete goals in order to move on to the next episode. An episode contains multiple required goals and optional goals. You don’t have to complete the optional goals to move on — so the game can move as fast or slow as you wish. Even if you skip the optional goals, the game play lasts a long time.

11 characters do their best to make Denise’s job harder. One goal could be to run the air conditioner for 60 seconds to keep the hardware cool. Some characters don’t like air conditioning because they’re cold or it’s bad for the environment. So players must find balance in running the air conditioner to complete the goal without losing an employee to stress out and leave the office for the day. Other goals include having two employees talk or flirt at the cooler (one may like it and cause the other’s temperature rise), play video games, kill their lungs with smoking, go to the restroom, nap and draw on the board.

It’s great fun getting to know Luke, the freelance writer; Mahavir, the loafer who lives to nap and flirt; Winston, the geek who enjoys video games and wants no one touching technical tasks; and Pearl, the long-time employee who thinks she should be boss and not Denise. Denise also runs to the office supply store to pick up manuals to improve an employee’s knowledge, food and drinks to cheer up an employee, and markers for Tara, the artist, who loves to draw.

Sometimes I wish an episode would last longer. If you give two financial manuals to an employee who is lousy at financial tasks, the employee becomes an expert for the duration of the all-too-short episode. However, it’s also a good thing because it makes the game challenging. When you complete the season, you’ll want to go back and play again to see if you can complete the goals faster. It may take you five or six days to complete a set of goals in an episode. Next time, try to do it in four days.

If you’re tired of diner-style games, try Miss Management anyway as it has a different style of play. I have renewed interest in these games and hope for more original ones to come out in the future. Miss Management proves it’s possible to produce games that take an innovative approach to a popular genre of games. I hope to see more Miss Management games from Gamelab whether it’s a sequel or better yet, a new theme with the same style of play and graphics.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 2000/XP
• 800 MHz Pentium 4 or faster processor
• 256 MB RAM
• 32 MB available hard disk space

Though Vista isn’t included in the system requirements, the reviewer played the game on Vista without any problems.

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Diner Games, Game Reviews, PC Games