Diner Games

PC Game Review: Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!

Love. Quirky family members. Wedding crashers. Beautiful brides. Bridezillas. Groom kongs. Who doesn’t love a wedding even with all of its craziness? Quinn returns in Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! for a third helping as a wedding planner who happily serves her clients in this blissful (most of the time) time management series.

She is planning the biggest wedding of her life — her own to Joe, the photographer. One hitch: he doesn’t know about it! An opening came up in a hot spot and it was either grab it in six weeks or wait years. She asks cupid for help, but he has a backlog of his own. If she helps him through his backlog, he’ll help her with her situation.

Like the previous games, your job is to seat guests and keep them happy or else face Bridezilla and Groom Kong. Of course, Quinn has a few tricks for managing manage guests when the food doesn’t get to them fast enough. She has cocktail tables and bells that bring out the cherubs.

She holds weddings in interesting locales beginning with an aquarium followed by a barn and two others. The game receives a few new features to make it the best one in the series. The cherubs can add one or two hands in helping Flo carry food and gifts, but they’re upgrades.

Before you start the reception, you have to figure out what the couple wants. In the past, you picked the three things that best meets their requests. in Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!, you also have to watch the budget and it’s possible to have several right answers. This is more enjoyable although it turns challenging in the later levels.

Guests may request champagne, the microphone to share a special message to the new couple, a song request or seating change. These give you bonus opportunities as well as chaining (doing the same actions in a row). Of course, Quinn has to deal with disasters ranging from over-celebrating bridesmaids and birds at the table to falling gifts and a missing dog.

The guests have personality traits to vary the pace. Some eat fast, others eat slow, one eats two of every course and one forgets to eat. While all of this sounds overwhelming, the game introduces new guests and features over time rather than all at once. The challenge level also slowly works from easy to tough.

Every venue comes with one cupid mini-game. Cute, but kind of pointless except to earn more coin. Cupid needs to shoot one man and one woman to match the given couple. Not only do you control the location of the arrow, but the strength of the shot.

As expected of Dash games, the game tells a great and fun story without overloading or confusing you. Two modes come in this one: adventure and endless. Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love! has the honor of being my favorite of the Dash series. Diner Dash is simply too hard and the customers are bland compared to Wedding Dash’s.

PlayFirst knows how to put on a great wedding and succeeds again with Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!

Download Wedding Dash: Ready, Aim, Love!.

PC Game Review: Fitness Dash

Before digging in Fitness Dash, beware that playing the game does not substitute for exercise! Maybe it’ll motivate you to exercise when you take a break as you’re Jo, who is friends with Flo of Diner Dash and Quinn of Wedding Dash. So Dash fans will recognize a few characters including Uncle Ernie, brides and Aunt Ethel.

Fitness Dash is exactly what you expect if you’ve played any Dash game. Except replace the theme with the gym. Jo frantically runs around passing out towels, handing out water bottles, putting the lazy folks on machines instead of them walking over themselves and dragging them into the shower (I suppose they’re too pooped to do it alone).

The machines change up from treadmills and bench presses to rowing machines and ellipticals. Machines provide cardio (treadmill), strength training (ab cruncher) or both (skiing machine). Clients let you know what kind of exercise they want and how much. For instance, the body builder wants three rounds of strength training and the career woman usually wants both types.

Jo works with her clients for 10 rounds to help them prepare for a game of tug-o-war, the only original part of the game and a creative one at that. It’s a match three-style game except you must match at least FOUR connecting tiles and you can click the tiles to change the color. The bigger the match, the more your team pulls the rope. Too slow and your opponents will have the stronger pull. The whole war takes place below the matching grid, but who has time to watch it when you’re working to get those matches made?

Story and endless modes are available — no surprise. However, endless mode provides two options: gym and tug-o-war. In gym mode, you simply just keep the customers happy for as long as you can without losing five of them. Tug-o-war is one endless stream of matching where you level up every time you clear the screen. Endless mode comes with easy, medium and hard levels.

Disasters also appear in Fitness Dash where Jo needs to fix the TV, shoo away the ice cream truck guy or fix broken machines. Healthy muffins and water bottles earn you happiness points — these are the kind of things you give to customers without them asking for it. It’s possible to play a few different locations without using the water machine and still reach expert status. But the game does get harder and frantic by the fourth locale.

Shopping for upgrades is still there even for endless mode. You can stop to shop whenever you want (and have enough cash) in endless. The game doesn’t stop for you.

The game went a little berserk when things were happening fast. Picking up a client to carry to the shower didn’t go as smoothly. Selecting water and towels on their machines didn’t always take.

Though the Fitness Dash sticks to the reliable Dash formula, it has enough going on with its theme that it can addict fans (me, included — even my surgery-healed thumb hurt from playing the fast levels). Playfirst has an unbeatable formula in its Dash games and produces a decent spin-off. Playing the free trial will give you an idea of the game play to see if you like the theme enough to make the buy.

Download the game from your favorite site

• Big Fish Games
• Playfirst
• Reflexive Game Center Solution

PC Game Review: Diaper Dash

I’ve been wondering what the next Dash series would be as PlayFirst enjoys a hit almost every time it releases a Dash. The good news: We have our answer: Diaper Dash. The bad news: This time management game doesn’t measure up to the other and more successful Dashes.

You’re not a baby sitter, nanny or caretaker. Instead, your Wilson, a scientist and inventor. He lost his job (read: fired) with an evil corporation. Wilson meets with Flo who gives him the idea to invent child-safe machines.

He opens a daycare in his sister’s basement and starts working on inventions to make his job easier beginning with Cleanatron, which cleans baby messes.

Like most Dashes, you’ll move around after spending 10 levels in a location. Every building contains a waiting area in the form of a playpen, high chair for feeding, cribs for sleeping, changing station for well… you know, and play area. Instead of customers of all kinds, you have babies with different needs and temperaments. One baby has a voracious appetite and another needs many diaper changes.

Like Diner Dash, you earn bonus points for matching the baby’s gender with the station. The baby’s current need pops up in a pink or blue colored bubble to indicate gender. If a baby needs to eat, you earn extra points by putting the boys in the blue chair and the girls in the pink chair. You can also earn more for swaps. Swap a girl baby in a crib with another girl baby needing a nap.

Not only do you move to new locations, but also get upgrades and new inventions such as a toy dispenser that spouts teddy bears to cheer up a sad baby and a storybook reader who reads stories to babies in the playpen waiting area. For each level, you want to reach the minimum cash goal and try to go for the expert cash goal. Fail to meet the goal and you replay the level.

As expected, the game has two modes: Career and Endless Day. Career tells the story and takes you from building to building in 50 levels. Endless Day comes with three levels (easy, medium and hard) and you play until five babies become unhappy. As you play Endless, you’ll receive upgrades. It gets crazy and makes a gal panicky — that’s why I don’t like Endless mode.

Diaper Dash starts slow and proceeds at a decent pace, but this one — story and game — doesn’t grip me as much as the other games. It feels repetitive and contains no surprises aside from the inventions. Still, the graphics remain top-notch of Dash games and Wilson is a likable guy.

If you want to take care of virtual babies, Daycare Nightmare is a better option since it adds a twist. If you want to check out a good Dash, go for Diner Dash, Cooking Dash or Wedding Dash.

PC Game Review: Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters

Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters puts me in Halloween spirit in an instant — not the candy corn or my son’s carved pumpkin. This time management sequel to Daycare Nightmare surpasses its original, but doesn’t take the game to the next level.

Molly returns as the manager of the monstrous daycare where she cares for mini-monsters of every kind. Monster families know and trust her now after their experience with her in the original game. However, the monster families still don’t trust humans especially with the Bureau of Out of Ordinary Operation (B.O.O.O.) agents on their tails.

Monsters now have the ability to wear human disguises to help them blend better with the human occupied suburbs. Not only does Molly need to deal with the B.O.O.O., but also Tut and an informant known as Deep Change. These three enemies force her to move to several locales while Tut hampers Molly’s efforts to build the daycare center.

She takes care of four new monster babies including witches, werewolves, monkeys and mummies. She also takes on human agent babies whose parents obviously work B.O.O.O. agents.

Molly works as hard like any other daycare worker, but has to deal with a consequence few do. These monsters come with the ability to mess things up big time if she doesn’t keep them happy.

Agent babies drive down the happiness meter, witches move babies to new locations, werewolves scare babies that they change their current needs to confuse Molly, and monkeys turn her into a dizzy person as they shake the room. The mummies are the worst as they put a curse on her to make it impossible for her to pick up any babies.

This means players need to decide which monster to help first when the babies need something at the same time. Which is worse? The mummy’s curse or the witch’s transporting babies?

Molly can upgrade furniture from Melinda’s store, but it hardly feels worth it. It takes a lot of money to upgrade and I lost my upgrades a couple of times. Not sure why.

Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters doesn’t add much as a sequel. In fact, it would’ve been better if this game came out as the original. It brings new babies and easier control of Molly, although it still has a few control quirks as I find myself holding the same baby or no baby at times when I think I switched them. At least, chaining works better than the original.

The difficulty level works great. It adapts to my play and slowly grows more difficult. By the last daycare center, I’m frenzied. Most time management games reach a frenzied pace too soon, but not Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters — it’s its one perfect feature.

The game’s promotional materials indicate it comes with two modes, but I can’t find the endless mode known as One Hectic Day.

The game is too easy as I never lose a level, but it could make a great game for families with younger kids. If you didn’t play the original, try this one instead. If you have played the original, then don’t expect much — just more of the same. It may not be worth paying full price for another similar game with only new monsters. Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters should’ve been a free upgrade for owners of the original.

PC Game Review: Cooking Dash

While I’ve admired the Diner Dash series, I never could get through them as they’re hard. Plus, I always thought the customers look out of place with Flo’s cool cartoon style. The developers behind Flo take a different approach with Cooking Dash and I enjoy it more than the Diner Dash series.

The customers finally receive an upgrade and match the rest of the game and Flo’s style. The characters also get a face lift with subtle animation. No more taking orders and putting the tickets on the diner order spinner thingy (blanking on name).

Flo helps out at five restaurants while Cookie goes off to be a start in yet another chef slash cooking reality show. Grandma makes two dishes while Flo seats folks, runs around to pick up food, throw food that needs cooking on the grill, serve the food, and pick up the dishes.

Each restaurant has a different theme and food to keep things interesting. The grills, ice cream machines, desserts, and Grandma’s station appear in the same place each time. But it becomes tricky when you have to figure out what the customer wants from the grill as the grilled food doesn’t look the same as the uncooked food.

Grandma makes sandwiches, sushi, salads, and pizza. American (three different types of diners), Italian, and Japanese food are covered. The last restaurant takes place on a TV stage complete with an audience that cheers when Flo makes great moves. I love this — it’s exciting and different. Who doesn’t love an applause?

You get a feel for the customers — those who order slow vs. fast, eat slow vs. fast, lose patience slow vs. fast. Other than that, they don’t have much personality. Some diner-style game customers have great personality while others are bland. This falls in between.

No mini-games in Cooking Dash. Although, the game comes with a Story Mode and Endless Mode. They are as you would expect. Story mode tells what’s going on with Cookie’s show and why Flo moves from restaurant to restaurant. Endless mode just repeats everything for as long as you can. Five stars appear on top of the screen. As long as you have one star, you keep on going. Once the last star disappears, end of game.

Customers sit at the counter instead of tables, another nice change of pace from the Diner series’ tables. Two grills sit on both sides of the kitchen. Often times, customers would order one item from each side. Occasionally, they’ll order just one item. In one restaurant, the left grill contains French fries, onion wings, and wings. The other side contains fish, shrimp, and lobster.

I’m so grateful the game takes care of matching dishes for me. For example, I have one customer requesting rice and kebabs while another wants soy beans and octopus. Sometimes, I mix up the two items, but no matter — Flo gets it right. The only time it goes wrong if you put together something no one orders. That’s when it turns crazy — when you have lots of grill requests.

A customer ordering fish and chips sends Flo off to the left side to throw the fries in the fryer and the right side to toss the fish on the grill. A green indicator lets you know it’s cooking and when it comes full circle and blinks, the dish is ready. Wait too long and the food overcooks, but you can still serve it — just no bonus points for perfectly cooked food. Sometimes you’ll have to add condiments to the dish.

Upgrades appear between levels with them falling into two groups: looks and function. The looks change the counter, floor, windows, and so on. While function speeds Flo and Grandma, adds a coffeemaker and jukebox, and faster stoves. I have no problem buying all of the upgrades at least two levels before reaching the end of the round.

Chaining remains important as in the other Dash games. They can make or break the goal level. Also, customers have different colored clothes. When you match the clothes to the chairs, you gain bonus points. You can even get 3x, 4x, etc. if you keep putting the same colored customer on the like chair.

It doesn’t take me long to get through 50 levels. I have to replay a few several times before I can pass it. Those who can conquer Diner games will find this too easy. Those who are tired of the difficulty level (me) in the Diner games will appreciate this one. Cooking Dash takes a different approach from the Diner Dash series and it works well.

Download Cooking Dash from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• PlayFirst
• Reflexive Windows / Mac

PC Game Review: Cake Mania 3

It feels like the original Cake Mania came out years ago because it’s one of the first casual games I reviewed. Here comes Jill Evans (no relation to me) again in Cake Mania 3 – this time as a bride trying to prepare for her wedding. Nothing can go wrong. Yeah, right. A time bender appears on the scene falling to the ground and shatters. The family picks up the pieces and disappears.

The disappearance mystifies Jill who sees one piece left. As soon as her fiancé, Jack, comes to the door — she grabs the piece and goes >poof<. She arrives in limbo where she faces five doors with a relative lost behind each one. Here’s the exciting part: we get to pick the door for her to enter. Unlike many time management games, this one doesn’t follow a linear pattern.

Not only does she visit five places, but five different times and cultures: Egypt, China, England, France, and the Stone Age. Well, one more place, but I’m not in the business of spoiling things. Anyway, the customers’ dress also reflect the locale and some not (more on that later). She needs to bake cakes to raise money so she can free her relatives from wherever they have landed.

This one will be tough to get help on because with six locations going in any order can create 350 possible level combinations. So unlike other dash games, you can’t ask for help with level such ‘n such because it won’t be the same for all. This isn’t good for me now because I’m stuck in the third locale and have played it until my mouse arm went numb. It takes me longer and longer to conquer each level.

You could be cooking in France and see characters from Egypt appear. What’s up with that? Well, the time bender doesn’t work right. The cut scenes also differ from most games. Most games use comic strips to tell the story. Cake Mania 3 goes further with its animated scenes and talking characters complete with lip movements.

Of course, upgrades figure in the game except this time you can customize the kitchen a little. You can’t move everything at will, but you can make some changes. You can change Jill’s outfits, but I prefer to have her wear the current period’s costume. You can dress her back up as Marie Antoinette while in ye olde England.

Some of you might like mini-games and others tired of it. Cake Mania 3 gives you a choice to play ‘em or skip ‘em. Or play them later. One thing that bugs me is that you can’t replay a previous level in an attempt to reach expert level. You’d have to start over. No thanks.

Every period has a troublemaker. In England, Robin Hood will steal Jill’s hard-earned money if you don’t pick it up fast enough. In France, Napoleon won’t let anyone else be served until he’s served. In Egypt, Anubis turns other customers into mummies AND changes their orders if you make him unhappy. I do that too often.

Also, every period has its own special feature. France has a colorful button on the froster that lets you remove frosting. England has a crystal ball you can use once per level to see what the customer wants to order without having to provide a menu.

New feature Sugar Rush makes everything instant. Push a button to make a cake and it’s there. Put the cake on the froster and it’s done. Make tea or coffee — done. All these features require figuring out strategies and adapting as you go. Sugar Rush can start anytime based on your progress (a progress bar displays on top to give you a heads up).

The mini-games don’t excite. Not spectacular. In one, make a cake that looks exactly like the cake on display. In another, assemble a cake order from cakes that flow down the conveyor belt. Also, several bonuses sit at the bottom of the screen like lightning feet to make Jill move faster. It’s not clear how these bonuses work.

Cake Mania 3 brings a fresh eye to the Cake Mania enterprise that we haven’t seen in many time management games. The game starts slow, but give it time especially until you can upgrade Jill’s shoes. It’s worth the wait. After all, you need to eat your veggies before you get the dessert.

Download Cake Mania 3 from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• Playfirst

PC Game Review: Turbo Fiesta

Rebecca and Robert return in Turbo Fiesta taking their high energy and crazy-paced business out of space selling Mexican food. This time management game never feels too slow, not even at the beginning. In fact, it doesn’t take long before I fail to meet the level’s goals.

I cruised — with lots of bumps along the way — in Turbo Pizza and Turbo Subs. But hit a brick wall (or space station in this case) early on with Turbo Fiesta. This is a good and bad thing. It’s good because those who complain they never feel challenged by time management games should meet their match here.

It’s bad because Turbo Fiesta goes from 0 to 100 too soon. I can’t be too bad if I finished its predecessors’ games. Novices to time management might want to skip this one unless they’re patient and ready to jump in head first.

When I say “out of space,” that’s what I mean. Location, location, location matters in the restaurant business. I suppose this game fast forwards to the future to a time when there are plenty of customers in the sky. The customers’ attitudes (their moods drop as fast as ever) remain the same despite being way up high in the atmosphere.

Robert does the cookin’ while Rebecca does the runnin’ to pass out menus, pick up orders, nuke food, and collect change. Robert has it easy since he has robot arms that help with the food. Although the game remains similar to the previous two, it adds a turbo meter that rewards combo actions. When making enough combo steps, the turbo meter cooks in and Rebecca becomes Wonder Waitress, moving as fast as a speeding bullet. I love this.

After turning on turbo mode three times in a level, you’ll reach Fiesta mode and have a ball. Unfortunately, the two times I reach Fiesta mode… it’s the end of the level so I hardly enjoy my siesta. The dark space scene brightens up with Mexican decor that comes with a piñata and Mariachi music. Ah, that’s the best part since everyone is happy and you don’t have to rush anymore. Alas, it takes work to get there.

The mini-game offers a fresh perspective of the Pipes game. Turn the pipes and parts until everything connects — except in this case, it’s to restore power. Clever way to blend the mini-game with the story as the restaurant loses power.

Plenty of upgrades await including one that lets Rebecca carry three items at once. Only a couple of games have this feature, so I keep forgetting she can carry a third item. Upgrades up the price of food items, add color to the restaurant, help Rebecca and Robert work faster, and more. The superb graphics still impress and the music lifts.

Turbo Fiesta needs to offer an easier mode even for us experienced time management players. It stinks to get stuck early in the game or else the game is no fiesta. While the latest in the Turbo series introduces only a couple of new features, it remains as hyper and colorful as ever.

Download Turbo Fiesta from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• Playfirst

PC Game Review: Farm Frenzy 2

When Farm Frenzy 2 hit the download stands, I couldn’t wait to install it and start running my farm. Ohh… big mistake. I can’t stop playing the game and I have games lining up by the day waiting for my eyes and hands.

Like Farm Frenzy, the sequel has me taking care of animals, producing goods, storing them, and selling them so I can buy more animals to make more products. The circle of life on a farm. The original contains sheep, ducks, cows, dogs, and cats. This one brings back the cows, dogs and cats. It uses chickens for eggs instead of ducks, and the expensive ostrich for producing feathers.

The first paragraph of my original review applies to this one: Its fun, colorful, and cartoon-style graphics easily catches my youngest child’s attention. For me, the game keeps me up late as I’m keen on earning at least a silver star in every spot as I work my way around town. Of course, I love the graphics style, too.

Instead of cupcakes and wool, this one cooks up cakes, meat dish (at least, the game doesn’t sacrifice the animals), cheese, fans, hats, and an atelier. An atelier is a workshop and I suppose we’re making dolls or doll clothes.

I wish the game would offer hints for the very difficult levels. Getting gold rarely happens. Just reaching silver feels like a huge accomplishment. I’ve played all the levels and still have some levels to replay because I haven’t earned the silver medal. One level gives gold for those who complete it in three minutes and ten seconds. I don’t even come close. Hints, please!

As I work around paths, houses and fences improve with every level completion. I guess not only do we work to accomplish tasks, but also improve the little country side. Not clear, but it’s rewarding to see improvements.

This comes with awards, but some of the trophies don’t come when you think you’ve accomplished them. I replay an easier level and add cats and dogs so they would pick up all the products and cage all of the bears. But I still don’t earn the trophy. Some trophies need more explanation. For example, “For expedient production.” OK, what counts as fast enough to earn the trophy?

One trophy — that I don’t figure out right away — comes when you find all the gags. On occasion, a bear will peak out from the top. Click them and you’ve found a gag. Well, gee, I don’t want to replay all the levels until I find all the gags. The game never says to click these gags, so I miss them early on not knowing I’m supposed to click them.

Players must unlock unlimited mode by playing career mode. The trophy room describes some trophies as getting X things in “Survival.” Not everyone will figure out Survival = Endless mode.

Farm Frenzy 2 has a few kinks. Every now and then, the game freaks out and spews out an error message. It may take a couple of reloads, but the game eventually works again. Its loading speed isn’t as good as it should be. Waiting for the game to load takes longer than expected of today’s games.

Gotta run. Farm Frenzy 2 teases me with the few remaining blue spots (where I didn’t earn a silver). Obviously, it’s addiction and a joy to play.

Download it from your favorite site:

• BigFishGames
• Reflexive
• Playfirst

Diner Dash Flo Returns in Cooking Dash

And she cooks, too! When Cookie the Chef leaves Flo’s Diner to pursue a career on a popular cooking reality TV show, he creates a shortage of chefs in DinerTown by inviting them all to appear as guest stars. It’s up to Flo to pick up the slack with a whole new set of food service skills! Help Flo and Grandma Florence keep five DinerTown restaurants up and running…if you can stand the heat!

• Over 50 levels of game play
• Master the art of perfectly prepared meals in five different restaurants
• 3D rendered characters add dimension to the animation

Play Cooking Dash.

PC Game Review: Ranch Rush

Forget everything you’ve seen and heard about farm-style time management games. Sure, the time management genre has seen enough of this theme, but Ranch Rush will change your mind. You just feel like yippee-yi-oing while you work feeding the cows and sheep, making cheese and ketchup, collecting honey, and gathering up corn, tomaters ‘n other crops.

I may be a native Texan, but I’m far from wearing 10-gallon hats and cowboy boots. Once in a while I’ll see horses, cows, and longhorns while driving around my lovely city. I don’t even like country music and don’t envy my daughter’s recent month-long trip stop to the Country Music Hall of Fame (she couldn’t care less about it either). So if anyone shouldn’t like a ranchin’ game — it’s me.

Ranch Rush and its star prove me wrong. Sara loves working in a nursery where she experiments with new flowers. Boss Jim reports that he’ll have to sell the store to the developers in eight weeks unless things change for the better.

Rather than giving up on her home away from home, she remembers they have three acres of land and decides to open a farmer’s market to raise money for the nursery. With shovel in hand and a bag of seeds, she has eight weeks to succeed in fulfilling customer orders. Each week consists of multiple customer orders and she takes care of one customer at a time.

Instead of seeing a path of your progress, we see a chart showing eight weeks with an update at the end of each week. A skill meter that looks like a grain silo tower also appears on the progress report page. This identifies your rank.

The game’s built-in tutorial guides you in your first steps. Every time you create a new player, the tutorial appears again. It would be helpful to have a skip option as well as a back option while reading the story in case you want to re-read it again. At first glance, the game looks like an ornery farm time management game. But wait. It has surprises waiting.

You start with clovers, corn, and tomatoes. Then add a cow for milk (hey, animal rights folks — it’s all pixels — no animals get hurt in the game). Feed clovers to the cow to produce milk. Next come the bees that hang out at their hives and digging in the clovers. Make your move while they hover the clover or else get stung and no honey. Eventually, you’ll get a machine like the cheese maker. It takes two jugs of milk to make cheese.

The week begins on Monday with a customer’s order. Once you finish that, you move through the week until Saturday, Farmer’s Market Day. Here you race to turn in as many products as you can for a chunk of cash. Sunday is a day of rest as you’ve earned it. New crops, animals, machines, gear, and other useful tools pop up at a nice pace throughout the game.

After playing the whole game, you may want to play it again with a new ranch. It doesn’t matter if you have $100K and all the upgrades available, you only have so much space to store it all. That’s the beauty of the game — there’s no way to have two of everything (not counting crops) so you have to decide what you need and how many. Arrange your crops and objects in any way you desire and take a snapshot. Playing it again with a new ranch gives you an opportunity to play with different layouts and discover most efficient way to run your ranch.

I have a couple of bones to pick. Clicking ahead works great, but canceling actions doesn’t. Ranch Rush isn’t consistent here. You can click the crates three times and pick up three crops, but you can’t click water three times and click three crops in need of water. Also, the story doesn’t give you a way to pause or go back to a missed part. The last level (Friday in week eight) takes the game from challenging to impossible in casual mode (expert mode is available, but requires unlocking first). I try different tricks and can’t conquer the level.

Nontheless, Ranch Rush has roped me in with its charm, unpredictability, constant introduction of new features, and super whoopin’ production values. Yee haw! Ya gotta try Ranch Rush.

Get it from your favorite site:

Big Fish Games

Reflexive