Game Reviews

PC Game Review: Faerie Solitaire

One of the first Windows-based computer games I played was Golf solitaire. I can’t figure out how such a simple game could be so addicting even years later. I bore easily with repetition, but not with Golf. And the game has received some amazing interpretation into adventures including Faerie Solitaire.

The story told in Adventure mode makes little sense even though the game delivers most of it in small bites. So I won’t even go into what it’s about. I’m not sure myself. But the game more than makes up for it.

First, here how the Golf solitaire works: You take cards off the table that are one up or one down from the card in the pile. So if your pile card shows a king. You look for any open aces or queens (they can’t have a card on top of them). Let’s say you find an ace, put that on top of the king.

Now you need either a king or two. Keep taking cards off the foundation until you have no more moves. Then take another card from the stock pile and repeat. Clear the table for a perfect game, a goal you’ll need to reach in order to move on in some levels.

Every level consists of nine rounds of solitaire and has its own goals. You need to reach those goals by the time you finish the nine games. If not, you’ll replay the level. Otherwise, you move on to the next location (it’s that story thing again). Goals can be X number of perfect games, X amount of cash, fill purple meter within X minutes or make X moves in a row (without taking a card from the stock pile). You get cash for every play you make.

Of course, you’ll have power ups and barriers to keep Faerie Solitaire — but not so much that it becomes a confusing mess. Every now and then you’ll get a bonus card between 1 and 10. You can use these cards like you do when you take a new card from the stock pile except these won’t restart your “moves in a row” number so use these cards wisely.

Some columns won’t budge because they’re locked in by a thorn. To unlock the thorn column, you need to clear out the column that has a rose over it. Same goes for frozen cards. You need to clear the cards in front of the fiery one so you can use it to melt the frozen cards, which are always face down.

When you clear a column, you might find a surprise. It could be an egg or one of three elements that you need to evolve your new pet. Eggs appear randomly throughout the game. Finishing Adventure mode won’t ensure you find all the eggs. That’s where the replay value comes in. You’ll want to replay the different modes so you can uncover more eggs.

You can buy special power ups from Faerie Land and visit the Hatchery to hatch your found eggs. Once hatched, the creatures are babies. Each creature has a required amount of elements you need to collect to be able to evolve them. The creatures on the lower end require fewer elements than those on the higher end. It’s not clear what it takes to evolve a creature because I’ve collected the things it needs, but it’s not evolved right away. Nonetheless, it’s still a fun and cool feature.

Special power ups give you another undo (undo the last move), help your pets evolve faster, see the next card in the deck, reveal more cards on the table and so on.

I never once replay a level in Adventure mode. It was a breeze for the most part. The hard part doesn’t come in until near the end and when you unlock and play the five challenge levels. Now those called for a lot of replay until I could beat them. You can also replay any level.

The game had one annoying bug that comes and goes. When you start a new level, it needs to give you the objectives. Sometimes it pops up on the screen before you play and others nothing happen. You can always access the objectives by going to the menu. The game should let you view the objectives without leaving the game.

This is not a lazy game. Golf solitaire requires some planning ahead. Faerie Solitaire with its added barriers and extras calls for more strategy than a basic game of Golf. Although the graphics aren’t impressive and the story pointless, the game had me hooked for the entire weekend and it’s become one of my favorite solitaire games. I still want to play because I want to find the rest of the eggs. But beyond that, I’ll have to move on to another game — but that’s part of a reviewer’s job.

Download Faerie Solitaire.

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: Plants vs. Zombies

If I could only say one thing in this review, it’s this: Go get Plants vs. Zombies now. The only people exempt from this rule are those who don’t like look of the zombies. Plants vs. Zombies oozes innovation in all parts of the game including game play, game modes, humor, length and rockin’ music. The game gives you a big spudow (exploding potato) for your buck and then some. Furthermore, Popcap Games may have blown away the massively popular Bejeweled 2 and Chuzzle
with this one.

You have various plants at your disposal with different super powers to help you prevent the zombies from reaching your house and eating your brains. The thought of zombies sounds creepy, but they don’t scare my six-year-old who instead giggles at their funky movements and traits. You might even think they’re cute and funny.

Like people and animals, the zombies have different personalities. One is a football player and harder to attack, another wears a traffic cone on his head (maybe he was a construction worker in a past life) and another loves his newspaper and gobbles things faster. Their characteristics give you an idea of how hard it will be to fight them. Watch out for the singer zombie that brings an entourage with him!

Once you meet a certain zombie for the first time, it goes into your almanac. The suburban almanac describes defines every zombie and plant along with its strengths. If you haven’t encountered a plant or zombie, it won’t give you a heads up. So be prepared for whatever comes your way.

So much happens in this game — all of it a blast (literally, too). For one, it has five games:

• Adventure: Five rounds with 10 each taking place on the front lawn, night time, the backyard with the pool and on the roof. You have a select number of plants to pick and they each come with a price. But you don’t buy them until you plant them.
• Mini-games: 20 unique games where several are a more advanced mode of an earlier mini-game.
• Puzzle: Two games. One contains nothing but cases. Inside the vases are plants or zombies. You put the plants wherever you think it’s best to help defend against the zombies. The other game gives the zombies a chance to practice attacking the lawn with cardboard cutouts of the plants, so no plants are harmed. You want the zombies to make it across to eat the fake brain at the end of the lawn.
• Survival: Playing different scenarios five times and changing up the plants between each level.
• Zen garden: Manage a garden of plants beginning with two plants. Give them water and plant food. This no pressure game only calls for feeding the plants when they need it.

You can shop for special plants and tools at Crazy Dave’s shop. He’s craazzzzyyyy and lets you get away with good deals. In his shop, you can buy another slot so you can add more plants into your arsenal for the next zombie battle.

Daytime battles require different weapons than nighttime battles. The sunflowers don’t produce as much sun, so you can rely on mushrooms. However, they only produce a little sun and produce more as they grow. Mushrooms can work in the daytime, but they’re asleep and need help to wake them. So it’s obvious you have all kinds of strategies to play with in this little treat.

Many games come with multiple modes. I tend to only like the main one. I took pleasure in almost every game as much as the main one — a rarity. The music will have you gettin’ down while you wear down those zombies. When you finish the main game, sit back and enjoy the surprise and hilarious ending.

Plants vs. Zombies is ripe for more brain eating sequels. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been working on this review to get it right, but it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to. Nonetheless, Plants vs. Zombies provides hours of a good time.

Download Plants vs. Zombies for PC or for Mac

PC Game Review: Youda Marina

Playing Youda Marina during Memorial Day weekend (a time when many go to the lake) has me yearning to jump in the car to drive to the nearest lake to rent a motorboat and go water skiing. That yearning didn’t last long as a glance at the window pulled me to reality as the skies are gray. Youda Marina does a better job than Mother Nature in giving me the feeling it’s a sunny day. Before I knew it, several hours flew while playing the time management and strategy game that takes place (where else?) on a marina.

You manage and run a marina complete with building docks, entertainment facilities, emergency services, lighthouses and the radio station. As you work in growing the marina, you need to do what you can to attract visitors and entertain them during their stay. The game reminds me of Build-a-Lot because it involves building structures, changing rates, deciding where to place things, earning enough money to build more structures and meeting goals. They both have similar graphics style.

The game takes time to learn. Its well-done tutorial guides you through the first round and only nudges you when you need to know something new. You need to build various-sized docks to accompany the different boat types and sizes. You can also control how much to charge for the empty docks.

Between managing boat requests to dock, facility updates (repairs, payment and emergencies), the game pace turns frenzied in campaign mode. You have to click on every boat to dock it, every event to kick it off and every emergency to send out emergency services personnel. It grows tiresome to keep clicking these things. However, clicking the boats has merit due to the several docking options available and the chances of boat’s captains accepting the offer vary. Maybe it would ease the pain of frequent clicking by offering “automated” tools as an upgrade.

Sometimes the game doesn’t recognize clicks or won’t put down a building or dock even though the area turns green (to indicate it can go where you have it spotted). When it’s time to renew an event, the game doesn’t always recognize the clicks.

The goal of the game is to complete the tasks, much like in Build-a-Lot. Tasks ask you to add a specific structure, earn X amount of money or have X visitors to the marina.

Relaxed mode is available as a calmer alternative to campaign mode. Both modes come with four types of environments: shore, bay, island and lagoon. Each requires a different strategy to succeed. Instead of handing out tasks, relaxed mode lets you do as you will with the money you have on hand. It helps to play campaign mode first to get an idea of what it takes to run a successful marina. Though the pace turns harried, campaign mode feels more purposeful and enjoyable than relaxed mode.

After completing all the tasks and earning every promotion, you’ll want to play again because the tasks aren’t identical in every game and you still need to see if you can conquer a different layout. Youda Marina has excellent replayability value. Next time you’re in a sailing mood, it’s much cheaper to play Youda Marina than to drive out to the lake and rent a boat.

Download the game from your favorite site

• Big Fish Games
• Playfirst

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: Virtual Families

Virtual Villagers have captured the hearts of many players as each one takes on a personality of his or her own. Players also venture around the village to learn new skills and make discoveries. No wonder many have high expectations for Virtual Families thinking it’d be a home-based version of virtual villagers. For the most part, it is, but not quite as addicting as the island counterparts.

The game opens with adopting a new family member. Though you can choose which person to adopt, you can only view one possibility at a time. Either reject or adopt. There’s no going back. This limiting feature could use improvement by allowing players to flip through a few people before deciding.

After adopting, the person checks out his new home. You can have several games going at once, but the home is the same in every single one. The land never changes in Virtual Villagers, but the space is much smaller in Virtual Families. It doesn’t take long to feel like you’ve seen it all.

Ding ding. You’ve got mail. Be ready to see a potential mate through a computer dating service. Either reject or marry the person. The more often you reject a mate, the longer it will take before another one comes through. It pressures the player to pick a mate either on the first or second try or else the little person will become lonely and depressed. Email comes in from time to time. Sometimes it’s spam, a note from the people to you, a letter from a relative or good news such as extra cash. The email notes could be better — they’re cheesy.

The heads of household have careers ranging from domain buyers (nice name for domain squatter) and writers to vitamin maker and fashion designer. They begin at level one in their careers. The more they work, the higher their position and earnings potential. Jobs provide the bulk of the cash used to buy groceries, add ons, clothing, accessories, repair kits and room makeovers.

The families can also earn money by auctioning off collectibles found in their yard — a clever way to incorporate collections. Virtual Villager fans know too well how hard it is to complete collections. The collection part (coins, nuts and twigs, bugs and picture) works better in Virtual Families because it doesn’t take as long, but it’s not a blow off either.

The game works in real time like Virtual Villagers and again it means playing the game in spurts. Virtual Families doesn’t require as much maintenance as Virtual Villagers. In fact, all you need is five or ten minutes once or twice a day. This helps those who have busy schedules with no time to play games. At first, it’s hard because you want to know what can happen. With fewer places to discover and puzzles to solve, it gets easier.

The game, however, turns frustrating when you have to spend the five minutes waiting for the people to throw away trash, pick up a weed or dump loose socks into the laundry room. If you try picking them up to speed the pace, they’ll drop whatever they’re carrying. If one says he’s about to send an email to the player, forget picking him up and dropping him in front of the computer.

The limiting number of puzzles to solve is disappointing. For example, there’s a locked shed. You’ll have to figure out how to unlock it and what to do with the stuff inside. It doesn’t take much time or days to complete the majority of the tasks or puzzles.

Humor abounds in Virtual Families. Maybe not quite as much as Virtual Villagers. The baby making ritual accompanied with kissing will make you smile every time. The people’s illogical movements may annoy, but they’re also funny. For example, you put a person in the bedroom near the door. She’ll walk toward the bed and turn around to exit the room to do something else. Why doesn’t she just walk straight out the door instead of deeper into the bedroom? When you catch a kid digging a hole, check out the caption.

At first, it’s upsetting that people don’t live pass 60 to 65 (C’mon! That’s young!), it actually helps. By that age, the kids are gone and they’re moving so slow. So have them pick up a weed and then take a break while they do it. If you exit the game and come back in, the weed remains. After they die, you can adopt one of their children to take over. If they don’t have kids, you’re out of luck.

Plenty, maybe too many, trophies are available for the earning. The list is so long that it gets old to keep checking it. The game should post the completed items at the end of the list so players can quickly see what they have yet to earn.

Virtual Families offers a decent experience that won’t take up much of your time. But it won’t live up to the expectations of those who have played Virtual Villagers. The game rates about an average — not the best, but not the worst. The free one-hour trial gives you enough time to decide if it’s yay or nay.

Download the game from your favorite site

• Big Fish Games
• Playfirst
• Reflexive’s Gamecenter Solution

PC Game Review: Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch

Samantha Swift fresh from her Roses of Athena Adventure readies herself for another that follows Midas’ golden touch. In Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch, a client hires Samantha to find Alexander the Great’s scroll, which lists all of the items that King Midas turned to gold. She can keep whatever else she finds on the quest, and of course, she puts everything in a museum to share with the world. Samantha naturally runs into trouble as someone wants to use Midas’ secret to turn everything to gold.

In this long lasting hidden object game, players have plenty to do to prevent boredom in searching the hand-drawn scenes for objects. Mini-games and puzzles are plentiful with no repetition. Many of the items that Samantha must find end up in her inventory for use later on. Instead of finding stop signs and other unrelated objects, Samantha picks up things that will go in the museum or further her quest.

The mini-games add a touch of the game’s theme and style. In its version of mah jongg, it has symbols that fell on top of each other. You match pairs that aren’t blocked and the symbols have a role after you solve the mini-game. A match three mini-game also appears, and again, it matches the story and current mystery. It’s rare for a player to enjoy all of the mini-games, but Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch does a beautiful job of fitting the games with the story without any repetition.

The puzzles have you interacting with objects from your inventory and the scene. While fun, these turn into a guessing game. Often, you can’t tell what you need to do in the scene. All you need to do is move your cursor around the scene until you see two blue gears turning. Once you do, you can figure out the rest. Sometimes it takes time to pinpoint where you need to go.

The visuals remain as sharp and charming with a nice complement from the audio. Story updates come in bite-sizes and short cutscenes to avoid overwhelming players with too much info. The story flows and intrigues from beginning to end.

The very young and those new to hidden object games delight in playing Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch. It provides endless amounts of hints and help. Every scene contains lightning bolts, which gives you hints anytime you need it. It takes little time to pile up on them.

Furthermore, a scanner shows you the outline of any object you need to find AND turn from white to orange to red to let you know how close you are to the item. Experienced players can challenge themselves not to use any hints or help. However, some items don’t look like what you expect. You could let the scanner show you what the item looks like and then click another item to turn off the scanner so you can find the item on your own. If you click too many times without hitting anything, the scanner punishes you by turning itself off for a few minutes.

Though hints are plentiful and guessing games needed, Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch is a game worth touching.

Download the game from your favorite site:

Big Fish Games

PlayFirst

Reflexive Arcade Game Center Solution

PG Game Review: Dinertown Tycoon

Adding “Tycoon” to the Dinertown Tycoon name is a smart move. This way people don’t confuse this game with Diner Dash even though Flo appears in it. Plus, many gamers know what it means to be a tycoon game. A tycoon game involves running a business, making decisions and running the day to see how your decisions make out.

I loved Fairy Godmother Tycoon (FGT). If you don’t like FGT or tycoon games, this isn’t for you. Dash fans will recognize many of the 25 customers from the various Diner Dash and Wedding Dash games. This one doesn’t quiet measure up to FGT, but provides enough entertainment for a rainy day afternoon, or in my case, fighting a cold.

In this one, Flo goes up against Grub Burger, which has a secret sauce containing the mysterious Ingredient X (I think it’s the same ingredient that makes a lot of us Sonic drink fans keep coming back. Except Sonic is a good company. Grub ain’t.). Flo manages the menu with 90 dishes available for the buying, stocks up ingredients, set prices and buy new signs to attract the public.

Flo manages various types of restaurants as she makes way through five neighborhoods in an effort to run Grub Burgers out of town. The game leaves room for mistakes as I am guilty of a few. For instance, I accidentally click to buy a new dish, when I meant to close the window. I wish Dinertown Tycoon had an undo feature.

Like most tycoon games, you need to strategize before starting a new day. Where do you spend the money? Ingredients? Advertising? Signs? You also get a newspaper so you can see what’s hot as you prepare for another day. The newspaper has one hot ingredient and a Daily Chef Challenge. Beating the challenge will help you drive down Grub Burger’s takeover. More on that in a moment.

Start the day and watch the people eat at the restaurants. Sometimes you’ll notice a bubble over their heads with their thoughts. They could be unhappy with the prices, a satisfied Grub customer, a happy Flo customer (hearts) or coming to your restaurant because of an ad. You’ll be able to identify what kind of ad influenced them to come so you can figure out if you put it in the best place or not.

Some customers come out of your restaurant with a coin over their heads. Click to receive the tip. It’s a clever idea to encourage interaction with the stimulation, which is usually hands-off. However, clicking the coin products a fountain of coins and blocks your view as others may have coins.

Customers also disappear behind some of the game’s features or the restaurant is near the edge, making it harder to see the customers. On top of it, you’re looking for Flo. If you find and click her, she’ll send people your way. It’s a frenzy trying to watch for coins and Flo especially if you own more than one restaurant.

At the end of the day, you’ll see the totals for each customer. The goal is to sell 50 or 100 dishes (depends on the neighborhood) to each customer to complete the neighborhood and push out Grub Burgers. If Grub sells too much Ingredient X (there’s a test tube with green goo to measure its progress), you’re out of business. If you meet the Daily Chef Challenge, you’ll lower the Ingredient X meter.

You can also conduct market research to get to know a customers’ likes. These consist of three ingredients. When you offer a dish with at least one of those, you’ll improve your chances of meeting your 50 to 100 customer goal for that customer type. Oh, and it costs money to do the research. So it’s a balancing act of buying the right amount of ingredients, new menu items, ads and all that.

One thing I don’t realize for more than half the game is the Daily Chef Challenge telling me to sell 12 sale dishes or 12 premium dishes. Whenever I fiddle with the price, nothing happens until one time I decide to go way low and discover the price name changes from “regular” to “sale.” Go high enough and it turns into “premium.”

Also, I wish the game would let me know how close I come to meeting the Daily Chef Challenge. I sold at least 12 premium-priced dishes, but I didn’t win it. Why? It needs to clarify these things.

It only takes an afternoon to get through all five neighborhoods even with my losing one neighborhood. The ending also disappoints. At least, the game lets you replay the neighborhood in hopes of making every dish to earn the associated trophy. Considering there are many routes you can take in your decision-making, it’s a challenge to play the game twice, thrice or many times as you try different approaches.

Although not tops, Dinertown Tycoon is a fine tycoon game.

PC Game Review: Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child

Gorgeous art nouveau style adventure game, Dream Chronicles, now has a third game in the series. Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child picks up where Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze left off. Only Faye has lost her memory and thinks her name is Brenna. Dreams again take center stage as she keeps dreaming about a man and child. The journey, again, is a pleasurable one that comes to a sudden ending that feels incomplete.

Faye stumbles her way around trying to put everything together. Lilith, the Fairy Queen of Dreams, returns and this time, she has Faye’s daughter. Poor Faye, she keeps having to search and rescue someone she loves. This world has various fairies and several work to stop Faye from progressing in her search. The fairies shake up scenes, remove steps and add other roadblocks.

In this one, the dream pieces and dream jewels have a real purpose. Dream pieces have appeared in all three games — they’re crystal-like gems that you pick up in the scenes to add to your dream journal. Dream jewels aren’t complete until you find their missing pieces. The pieces go into the jewels to complete them. They didn’t have a purpose until this one other than challenging you to find all of them. The dream pieces help you unlock the doors in the Nexus room. The room contains doors and gears so you can move the doors left or right until you find the one you wish to enter. These gateways make it fun to travel to wherever you need to go.

The series continues to impress with its careful attention to detail in its elegant scenes and smooth effects. The music is lovely that you never feel the need to turn it off. The Chosen Child, like its predecessors, holds many puzzles for solving. Only two activities annoy the heck out of me. One is the Simon-style game where you have to play the music exactly like the game plays it. The other is the 3D maze near the end of the game. My eyes and head start feeling lousy as I work my way around the maze — and it requires quite a few visits and long walks to arrive at your destinations.

When I finally finish the maze, the rest of the game doesn’t do much to make up for that long walk as the very abrupt (and I don’t use “very” often) ending comes shortly after. Nonetheless, the trip is worthwhile although too short. It only takes me an afternoon to play the entire game without getting hints from the man in the crystal ball. Well, I understand the game contains so many details and original puzzles, I think it could stand to entertain us a little longer.

I replay the game to see how well the crystal ball helps and it doesn’t. The objects you need do move to new places when you replay the game. I have trouble finding a key and Mr. Crystal Ball keeps telling me I need to sew something. So it might frustrate those who need help finding an object.

After completing the game, my jaw drops as my score doesn’t touch the Global Score list. I thought I did a good job finding the dream pieces and nuggets. Plus, I never used the crystal ball. So competitive players might feel motivated to play again in hopes of scoring better. But me — I have to move on to another game.

The free download only lasts 30 minutes rather than the typical 60, which is understandable consider The Chosen Child is short.

Download and play Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child.

PC Game Review: Sky Kingdoms

Sky Kingdoms is another game in the Luxor and Zuma family — moving marbles that you need to break by making matches of at least three of the same color. I guess you could call these “rolling marble match threes.”

The opening with the story moves very slow. The game doesn’t allow you to control the moving of the story so you can back up or move forward. Instead of taking place in the ruins of Egypt, this one takes on a fantasy twist with the action happening in the air.

Plenty of power ups keep things popping. The first power up you want sends coins flying down. Collect these coins so you can buy more power ups including more lives. The shopping happens between levels. Once you complete all pieces of a puzzle, you’ll get a new wallpaper for your desktop.

As you buy power ups, it’s not clear when you have access to them during the game. They just appear in the bottom ready for use. Boy, I need them all during level 5-2. I do manage to get one, but it’s not enough to help me survive the level and I’ve gotten faster.

During the bonus level, a snake comes out and you pop the marbles as you always do and collect more coins. However, you don’t get to keep the coins if the snake bites you. The game’s directions don’t clearly explain how this happens and it’s not obvious after playing this level plenty of times.

Sky Kingdoms includes 90 levels, multiple bonus upgrades (each bonus starts cheap and you can upgrade again, but it costs more with every upgrade) and 36 animated backgrounds.

Don’t play this game if you don’t like panicky games and can’t stand things happening fast. It’s also not ideal for those who have never played Luxor or Zuma. The Easy level is very hard. I’m forever stuck on level 5-2 — best I’ve done is almost clear two groups of marbles, but then I fail by the third group. Even if I manage to beat it, I’m betting the next levels will only be harder. Remember this is “Easy” mode. If you think the others don’t challenge you enough, try this one. You can’t complain that it’s too easy. Believe me.

Download Sky Kingdoms