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 Dinertown Tycoon is 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.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

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.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Samantha Swift, an archaeologist, travels all over the world to find rare artifacts for a museum. Her latest venture calls for finding six roses that belong on the Shield of Athena. Adventurers will find a rosy game in Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena.The game ranks up there with Natalie Brooks and other hidden object games slash adventures slash mini-games.

Samantha, Adam Woodson and her father’s former partner, Dr. Butler, must also deal with two bad guys who also want the roses, but for selfish reasons.

Anyway, I played this game over a month ago while recovering from hand surgery as it only needed one hand. Since typing was not possible, I had to hold off writing the review until my hand healed. What stuck with me was the game had wonderful hand-drawn graphics along with a strong story that neither overwhelmed nor confused.

In replaying the game, I got stuck on a scene and couldn’t get pass it even though I did what I needed to do to move on. I used a hint to confirm I wasn’t forgetting something. So I tried starting over with a new ID and it froze in the same spot one step further than before.

Thank goodness, I got through it the first time. I tried exiting the game and restarting the computer. Nothing worked.

Replaying the game also showed me that objects rarely change location and the list of items to find changed a little. So once you finish the story, you won’t want to replay it. But that’s often the case with this genre.

I also appreciated this wasn’t a timed-game, something I couldn’t manage with one hand. Besides, non-timed games compel us to enjoy the game more because it’s not a race. When it’s a race, we take short cuts and use more hints.

Every hidden object scene contains items highlighted in blue. You can’t find these until you’ve collected the other hidden items. Once done, use the found hidden items to interact with the scene to find the blue items. This feature appears in more of these point and click adventures. That and you may need to find items in other rooms before completing the puzzle in the current room.

Hidden objects often fit the story line and theme rather than have you find things to make the game longer lasting. Found artifacts end up in the museum that you can visit anytime during the game. Click an artifact to get its details and place of origin. Samantha travels to Guatemala, Tibet, Japan, Rome and elsewhere.

Lightning bolts hide in every scene to give you more hints. Experienced gamers might find this one a little easy, but worth experiencing the gorgeous graphics, interactive puzzles, humor and fitting background music.

Just play one hour of Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena and you’ll find you want to keep going.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.

My Tribe came to my rescue during winter break. I can’t play fast action games like diner-style games because of hand surgery. My Tribe and hidden object games kept me entertained as I couldn’t do much else including typing and laundry (staring at a pile of laundry racks up the guilt, so it’s not a good thing though it gave me a valid excuse not to do laundry).

Generally, I try to avoid comparing games in a review. As a Virtual Villager fan, I must compare My Tribe and Virtual Villagers (VV).

Both games call for patience especially the start where you need to build up on science points that can get you places later. But once you have all the science points in the world, you don’t need them anymore.

Innovative in My Tribe is the use of moondust and stardust. These help you with potions, building, increasing villager strength, hair style changes (whoopee di doo) and more. I like the way you mix potions using the potions screen instead of having a tribe member fetch everything and mix it up.

I’d rather hunt for one moondust or stardust at a time than for VV‘s collections, which make me dizzy. You can also build lunar and celestial towers to receive a shower of dust all at once. Although it’s tiring to keep your eyes open for flying dusts, you can build an observatory that lets you know when one lands. Well, I can’t hear the sound it makes over the music and other sound effects. I’ve tried playing with the sound controls, but nothing worked. The game should have an option for visual notification.

Trees and flowers are available for planting. Flowers don’t do anything except add color. Trees provide wood. The tree feature should work like the flower feature — keeping the plant window open until you close it. I often plant more than one tree at a time and have to keep opening the plant window. The flower window stays open and lets you spray flowers.

The potions screen has three types of potions: element, liquid and catalyst. Elements include solid things like mushrooms, rocks, wood. Liquid is seawater, rain water, and fountain water. Catalyst consists of stardust, moondust, and golden relics. Pick one item from each category, mix the potion and pour it on an object, ground or person.

The game’s marketing materials say you can mix loads of potions. Half of them are cosmetic, so no sense in wasting moondust to give a villager a new hairdo or color job.

Both tribe games involve earning points so you can upgrade science, construction, etc. Well, one of the four categories is art. I don’t see much difference between level 2 and 3 art (clothing design and nothing else).

Art lets you build a clothing hut and make clothes. Males and females get three tops and three bottoms plus you can customize the color. After two or three outfits, it loses excitement unless you were big on Barbies and dolls as a kid. Well, in Virtual Villagers, science points help you buy clothes. Not exciting there either.

Both provide skills for each tribe member. My Tribe goes overboard in including rock and wood gathering skills. I’d lump these under construction. I’d also blend farming and fishing so the villager can do both as he or she pleases.

My Tribe does a better job of increasing a villager’s point earning capability. VV would sometimes take ages even when you keep pushing the villager to do something.

Barrels also show up at sea on occasion. They might provide recipes, ingredients or change a person. Or they might destroy buildings or explode.

Both games let you produce babies. My Tribe, gratefully, doesn’t take women out of commission until they’re babies are two-years-old as they do in Virtual Villagers. Instead, the mama goes right back to work.

In Virtual Villagers, only children under age 14 can pick up stuff. In this one, anyone can pick up stuff except babies. It was annoying that adults couldn’t pick up anything in VV. If they could build buildings, they should be able to pick up things.

My Tribe limits the population to 50 (you can get 52 if you manage to have two couples produce twins at the same time as I did). I prefer the limited population so you don’t make yourself crazy trying to give everyone a preferred skill. It forces you to control your population’s age.

I love that you can build a dock and ark so your tribe can sail to one of millions or billions of islands. Don’t be impressed by that number. They look alike after you’ve solved all eight of the mystery items. Each island holds three mystery items. You also work to collect 25 trophies. Once you do all that, you might not be motivated to play the game again unless you simply like to hang out with the tribe.

The game lacks keyboard control. Yes, arrow keys can move you around the island, but not as well as it could. You can use the Map view to see the island from a higher perspective, but it pauses the game. Map view doesn’t open very fast. Virtual Villagers provides plenty of keyboard options for easier management and traveling around the island.

The game has a bug as of this writing — if you have tree saplings that haven’t bloomed into trees and you hop into the ark, the game crashes. It sets you back a little, not much.

My Tribe is neither better nor worst than Virtual Villagers. It provides another addicting experience for those craving a new world of villagers. Once I get pass the slow start, the game captivated me that I checked on my tribe too many times even with fast speed (you can do pause, slow and normal speed as the game keeps going when you exit unless you pause, of course). Speaking of which, I need to check on ‘em as I want to set sail for another island to earn the five island trophy.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.

I raved about Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year. When the Build-a-lot 3: Passport to Europe started showing up, it both thrilled and worried me. It’s a marvelous game, but how could it be better than the previous? HipSoft succeeds to take the game to another level. I can’t wait to see how the company manages to make #4 better — if that in the works.

We get to go to Europe and work in its beautiful countries including England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. While I love the varied locations, I would like to see more of the culture and architecture appear in the locations next time.

It has the distinction of being the most difficult Build-a-lot game of all. I have to replay a few levels especially one many times before I can finally conquer all the goals before time runs out.

The game comes with new features of including services buildings. These being fire department, police department, post office, and hospital. House catch on fire, people get hurt, and robbers break into homes. When you don’t have these services, you have to click the houses as soon as you can to prevent the crisis from getting out of hand.

Landmark buildings also enter the landscape in the form of clock towers, hedge mazes and two others. Landmarks not only add character to your neighborhood, but also up the appeal. With workshops and sawmills, and banks affecting the appeal of houses, the landmarks help make up for that.

When I read all the details of the new features, I freak. The details sound overwhelming, so I fear the game’s interface will finally become cluttered. Miraculously, the information / data screens stay clean despite all the things we need to track. We track workers, materials, goals, rent, and more.

Also new in this edition is the weather factor. When it’s freezing or wet, we all slow down, right? OK, those of us not born and bred in ice cold weather or wanna be mermaids. When bad weather hits, the workers slow down.

We also see run down homes. You can either upgrade them or smash ‘em to make room for something bigger ‘n better. It also gives us an opportunity to buy homes for less money.

The levels vary greatly to prevent boredom. One level may focus on money while another requires increasing the appeal big time. Rarely, does a level provide just one goal.

Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year could easily fall into the trap of your applying the same strategy to all levels. That won’t work in Build-a-lot 3. You must change your strategies to get through the game.

One thing that amazes me is casual mode. This would be the “endless” mode for the typical game with two modes: story and endless. Campaign mode is the main one. Casual mode has no clock requirements, but it’ll motivate you to better your scores time-wise. I never like endless mode, but find this one actually enjoyable. This extends the game play beyond story mode.

What can I say? I’m impressed with Hipsoft’s ability to retain the things that make Build-a-lot so addicting while adding new features that fit without weighing us down. {Hearty applause}

Download it from Big Fish Games.

Emma’s soul is free. But her ghost has delivered a dire warning: evil still lurks in Ravenhearst Manor. Big Fish Games Studios takes you deep inside the cursed estate in Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst, the thrilling sequel.

Experience Ravenhearst’s spectral halls as never before with new immersive adventure-style gameplay and an epic original soundtrack. Feel the floorboards creak as you move from room to room solving puzzles and seeking out clues in over 150 detailed scenes.

Save 50% on the game using coupon code RAVEN50. This promotion is valid from 11/27-12/27 ONLY. Go try Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst first to see if you like it.

7 Wonders II, the sequel, was the first I’ve played of the 7 Wonders series. While reviewing that one, I checked out 7 Wonders of the World, the original, to see how the sequel measures up. The sequel continues to reign even with the latest 7 Wonders: Treasures of Seven.

Beautiful graphics continue to be the hallmark of the match three series with the latest induction. Players travel to nine countries in 7 Wonders: Treasures of Seven to unlock three rings on an ancient compass. As soon as they unlock all the rings, players take one more journey in search of the Treasures of 7.

Players still work to create matches of three or more. The twist in this one comes in the ability to rotate the entire grid in either direction. First, you must clear the runes to reveal a path. As soon as you clear all the tiles, a “7″ key stone and a key hole show up on the path — one at the start and the other at the end.

The “7″ can’t leave the path as you work to move it toward its destination of the key hole. You can rotate the grid and make matches to guide the “7.” In later levels, a special block appears that can transport the “7.” Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes not. The good comes in that the transporter brings the “7″ closer to the key hole. The bad is that it can interfere with its progress, but that makes the game more challenging.

It feels like the game as a whole doesn’t challenge enough. The path does get more difficult by locking the key hole with a specific color. You must make a match over the lock with the same color to unlock it before the “7″ can do its job.

Don’t expect many bonuses as the rotating grid provides plenty of help. Shuffle shuffles tiles and you can’t use the feature again until the timer fills back up by making matches. It takes little time. Matches of four provides an ice ball and matches of five gives you a fire ball. Ice balls can destroy tiles across while fire balls can go both directions.

A window containing a match shows up from time to time. When making a match that looks like the one in the window, you get to freeze the timer for a little bit. Dice bonuses also return in this one and become available after receiving a handful of fire and ice ball bonuses. Move the dice to destroy random tiles, which usually work in your favor.

7 Wonders: Treasures of Seven has 50 levels, but it doesn’t take as long as you think it would to complete all of them. While the rotating grid certainly stands out from the previous two, the game doesn’t measure up to 7 Wonders II.

With the low pressure game style, 7 Wonders: Treasures of Seven should make a great game for families and kids.

Download 7 Wonders: Treasures of Seven from Big Fish Games.

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.

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.

The Dream Day hidden objects game franchise returns with Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan, its fourth game in the series. Once again, the series introduces features that enhance the game. Sometimes a game in a series would receive new features that look like an ugly attempt to claim the game isn’t a rehash of the previous with a new storyline thrown in.

Oh, I’m not saying sequels can’t recapture their predecessor’s success with a new story, new sets, and new characters. Fans love getting more of the same. With casual games coming out with a new game on a daily basis, it takes no time for a game to look dated. In fact, I’m judging handheld games — the same category I did last year — and these categories have no new games. The games look and feel dated.

Back to New York. Dream Day First Home introduces the two story route. Dream Day Wedding applies this feature by giving us two couples from which to choose. Play one first and then play the other couple next time around. I run into a technical problem (fixed) with the first couple after almost finishing the game play, so rather replaying them — I switch to the other couple for a change of pace.

Dream Day games come with a Choose a Story, which lets players decide where the story takes them next by picking one of three options. At the end of a Choose a Story, players earn a Time Booster item. Remember the item as it won’t appear on the list of things to find and gain one minute when you find it.

Bluebirds also appear in every scene save for Wedding Crises scenes. For every five bluebirds found, you win an extra hint. The scenes — prior to a mini-game or Choose a Story — come with three hints plus whatever you earn in finding bluebirds.

Mini-games fit the game’s wedding planning theme perfectly. After finding all the objects for a level, you’ll get the wedding registry scene where you pick a gift to open that leads to either the Choc-O-Matic Fountain or Party Puzzle (seating chart) mini-game. Players need to turn metal tubes in Choc-O-Matic Fountain to ensure the chocolate can flow from start to end in every pipe or else guests won’t get their chocolate in the wedding. Not a good thing!

Party Puzzle brings something I haven’t seen appear as a mini-game. Each placecard contains a guest with one or two colors on the sides. The colors on the sides of the placecards must line up with like colors. One joker is available to help you out of a rough spot.

After completing one of the two mini-games, you play the apartment puzzle. The bride gives you, the wedding planner, a key to her apartment where you hunt down the list of things she needs. That list takes you through the next few scenes.

The apartment puzzle has no time limits, so explore the scene and figure out what to do. While you can press “Solve” if you get stuck, these don’t take a lot of work to figure out. Just look for clickable items or watch for the sparkles giving you a hint of where to look. Some items will go into your inventory so you can use them with other objects to make something happen.

Now that you have the list, move on to the next scenes to find them. Sometimes the bride will ring you up and announce she doesn’t need an item on her list anymore — saving you one item to find… IF you find your cell phone before it stops ringing. Clever! A surprise waits in some scenes. You find an item only to discover you’re stuck in a room and you must quickly find your way out in the Escape Puzzle.

The Wedding Crisis has appeared in the previous Dream Day games. In these scenes, players have less time and must dig through the messier and busier scenes to overcome a crisis whether the roses the bride wanted sell out or the bakery can’t do the wedding cake. Once the crisis passes, you design an item that will appear in the wedding and its album.

The scenes repeat often and the objects rarely change locations. The only things that change are the Apartment Puzzles and Wedding Crisis. However, if you play the game again to try taking a different route in the Choose a Story, you’ll have to work through the same scenes again. Considering I play one couple twice due the technical problem, it’s a pain as I feel like I’m repeating everything I had done the first time.

One more disappointing element — other than in the name and the logo, you wouldn’t know you’re in New York. It’s a wonderful city with beautiful architecture and great scenes — why bother adding “Manhattan,” if you’re not going to showcase the Big Apple?

Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan takes a few pages out of its previous games and adds a few original ideas (Escape Puzzle, bride calling you, and Party Puzzle) while also copying similar features found in other games first (Apartment Puzzle) and finding a bunch of one item in scenes (eggs, arrows, etc.). Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan still provides a pleasurable adventure for fans of the series. It’s also a good one for those new to hidden object games and may not challenge the seasoned players.

Download Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan from your favorite game site:

• Big Fish Games
• Amazon