Alice Greenfingers introduces a concept many of us forget about when playing casual games: Taking your time to enjoy the game. Alice can’t die or lose anything. That same concept carries over to Alice Greenfingers 2 without seeing much improvements on the complaints regarding the original.

The game opens with a slow and inefficient tutorial. I don’t notice Uncle Berry, sitting in a rocking chair, is talking to Alice. The location of the uncle and the dialog appearing just doesn’t catch your eye when you’re busy with Alice. That’s probably a good thing as the uncle’s character doesn’t grow on me.

Having played the original, I go for the shovel and the game tells me not to do that. I accidentally pick up dandelions and discover that’s what I am supposed to do. Then Uncle Berry comes to life and gives me instructions to clean the dandelions.

When I finish, I see an apple fall from the tree and pick it up. Once again, the uncle gives me instructions after the fact. I get way ahead of him as I shovel four plant plots. Sounds like I need to boss the guy instead of the other way around.

In fact, I’d like to turn him off and send him inside the house where he won’t bug me instead of wait around for him to leave. Regardless how I feel about Uncle Berry (my real uncles are great folks, thank you), the tutorial needs help.

Usually, you can click the screen or dialog to get more dialog. In this case, an “X” appears in the dialog. My first instinct is that it will close the box and skip the tutorial. It turns out the “X” works like clicking the dialog box to get more dialog. Little things like this add stress to the game as players have to work harder than necessary in areas where they don’t want to do the work.

Alice Greenfingers 2 has no stress-inducing factors unlike the original. A round doesn’t end until you meet the goal whereas before, it ended when the day ended and you keep going until you meet the goal. You also don’t set the prices or worry about watering in the beginning.

The best new feature is the upgrades that appear between levels. These upgrades include more plants, more land, more market space, more popularity with customers and more supplies. Of course, we get new plants like sunflower seeds. Also available for the buying are bees, sheep, and other non-plant related items.

The dandelions and apples are new features to the game as they don’t involve digging and planting. The apples also add $2 in the bank for every picked one. No need to sell them in the market. Occasionally, you’ll do special assignments for Unc.

This game may be too stress-free – not counting the usability problems — is there even such a thing? This game may not qualify as a game, but rather as an electronic dollhouse where you can do whatever you want.

Who wants to garden aimlessly? Garden lovers have goals for their gardens. They don’t plant everything they find and then leave it. They also have to deal with upkeep. Perhaps, having two modes would work well here with a Free Farm mode and Goal mode.

The graphics in Alice Greenfingers didn’t stand out and this one shows no improvement. I know I’m not the only reviewer to complain about the graphics in the original. I do like the graphics on the game’s title page and between levels. Had the game itself had similar graphics, it coulda been sumthin’.

I believe players won’t want to own both games. You might consider playing the demo of both games to see which you prefer. People looking to simply have fun without an ounce of stress or speed will prefer Alice Greenfingers 2’s slow and untimed pace.

Download Alice Greenfingers 2 from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• Reflexive GameCenterSolutions

Grow watermelons, cabbage, pumpkins, lemons, corn, sausage, bread. What?! Yes, I said sausage and bread. After all, the game is called Magic Seeds. At least, you don’t have to worry about consuming any fully loaded carb food — the food doesn’t pop out of the computer screen for tasting.

Magic Seeds does not copy Alice Greenfingers or Plant Tycoon. Rather it crosses the two games. Players plant, grow and sell seeds as in Alice Greenfingers and they cross seeds to grow more expensive plants like in Plant Tycoon.

Fortunately, the game doesn’t involve dealing with equipment or digging. Simply click the flower so Jane puts her gardening skills to work in planting and cultivating. While Jane may not mess with equipment and actual digging, the tasks turn into a dance of digging and weeding with a break for selling plants to get needed funds for buying bigger ‘n better gardening supplies, or adding on to Jane’s growing home.

Plant Tycoon has a massive list of plants to cross and create. Not so in Magic Seeds that only uses eight plants to grow ten for a simpler breeding experience. Players aim to build Jane’s house, but it takes a long time to do it as the price of the house climbs faster than gas prices.

Adding on to the house costs almost $10K by the time you reach the halfway point in the game (three days of playing the game) and you’ve discovered everything else. Ten grand comes fast some games, but not in this one. I never finished building the house as it got old to work on raising money and shooing away mice and scaring off the crows.

Chaining — or rather clicking ahead to complete tasks — works… sometimes. Jane doesn’t always do what you want her to do or doesn’t do it. When she makes a wrong move in picking up plants, there’s no way to know what they are unless you put them down on an unused flowerbed.

Not only does the game move slow even with speedy shoes and fast growing fertilizer, the dialog has grammar errors including in the explanation of Normal and Arcade modes. Arcade mode involves fulfilling the store’s orders.

Two plants appear as the plant of the day making them pricier due to unavailability of their seeds. The price for some plants goes up by ten times. This feature offers the thinking players with a chance to put some strategies to work. However, how long a day lasts is unknown. A report pops up at the end of the day showing your gardening accomplishments and trophies earned.

Magic Seeds could stand some more cultivating to flesh it out. Nonetheless, it entertains for a few hours especially in completing the crossing chart so you know what seeds make what.