The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. February 23rd: 60% off on Cy-Clone

Tue. February 24th: 50% off on Cannon Blast!

Wed. February 25th: 50% off on MinuteMatch

Thu. February 26th: 50% off on Fab Fashion

Fri. February 27th: 50% off on Spuds

Sat. February 28th: 40% off on Arctic Rush

Sun. March 1st: 50% off on Spider Wizard

Forgive me for using this word… AWESOME!!!

The Wizard of Oz meets L.A. Confidential. Emerald City Confidential brings the world of film noir detective mysteries into the world of Oz along with a sordid tale of love, scandal, betrayal, and corruption. If you don’t read further, then know this point and click adventure has it all: Characters with unique personalities, strong story line that doesn’t lose you, smashing graphics and animation, humor, and long play time.

Dorothy may have had a happily ever after ending, but things have changed big time in Oz. Lion is a lawyer. Scarecrow is the former ruler of Emerald City and now advisor. Tin Man is the mayor of a town on the outskirts of Oz. Dorothy isn’t the sweet innocent girl we remember. No Auntie Em, but Toto does more than just run around and look cute.

Lots and lots of dialogue occurs that it might tire some gamers, but it tells a gripping and funny story with a few good one-liners. You can listen to the dialogue, read it, or both. Petra, that would be the main character and detective, has flaws. She looks angry all the time, but we learn why as we unwrap her own story.

Dee enters Petra’s detective agency asking for help in finding her love. Of course, the story goes much deeper than that sending Petra on an adventure that affects the future of Emerald City. Don’t expect any predictability in Emerald City Confidential. Like Wicked, the musical, it reveals surprises of its own introducing new perspectives.

Petra travels around Oz on the Gump Transit System. Taxi stands appear in most scenes, so travel never becomes a pain with no waiting. She receives quests as she works her case. Upon solving a quest, Petra gains a jewel on her progress bar. Reaching the end of the progress bar means the story is nearing the end.

Players receive dialogue choices – sort of like Choose Your Own Adventure, except you might eventually use all of the dialogues or you might not. Scenes and characters hold objects that help Petra in her adventures including magic spells.

Emerald City Confidential brings a new world complete with culture, rules and procedures to complete the picture. Scenes contain things that aren’t critical to the story that if you skipped them, it won’t hold you back. However, this makes exploring more fun knowing that not everything has a part in the mystery.

The options allow you to adjust the sound for music, sound, and voice as well as mute. It also comes with a walking speed adjustment to push Petra faster. Speeding her can make some folks dizzy. She moves at a comfortable pace that won’t have you tapping fingers waiting for her to move it.

You win medals whenever you complete a chapter and complete a few milestones. The medals feel like an afterthought. They’re not noticeable and don’t feel special. The game offers plenty without the need to tack on more stuff.

This almost perfect game contains a few pests. For one, typos show up in the dialogue at times. “Discrete” should be “discreet, “than” should be “then,” “greatful” is “grateful,” and “Won’t unlock unless I wish it too” doesn’t use the right “to.” Considering the many lines in the story, I forgive a few typos – but it annoys some folks.

You collect buttons and objects from the scenes. A color sparkle hints a button hides there. While in the middle of a dialogue, I try to pick up the button to ensure I don’t miss it. Instead, I sped up the dialogue and missed part of it. So the interaction between the dialogue and scene has quirks. While Petra takes notes in her journal, it doesn’t hold all of the dialogue including the introduction. It would help to have the complete dialogue in a separate part of the journal.

The journal holds clues, sketches, and pill information. Here you can get hints when stuck. The hints remind you of dialogue or clues. You can request a few hints for the same quest from the journal, but it won’t go on forever. The hints provide enough to help you along without giving anything away. If the hint isn’t enough, click for another one. Emerald City Confidential offers a nice hint system that lets players receive a little assistance without all the details.

Another problem shows up in exiting the game (we need sleep, too!) and returning to it doesn’t quite return to the last scene. It requires replaying a scene before catching up.

Despite the little annoyances, Emerald City Confidential entertains for hours compared to many of today’s games especially point and click adventures, which tend to be short. The game’s wonderfulness will have people clamoring for more especially if the story takes place in a different world with different characters. Emerald City Confidential is a beautiful original with heart, brains and power (couldn’t use fear to represent lion).

P.S. This point and click truly brings back the adventure games like the old ones from the ’80s. Thus, it compels the need for a new category here called “Adventure Games.”

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. February 16th: 40% off on Funny Chewer

Tue. February 17th: 50% off on Freecell Wizard

Wed. February 18th: 50% off on Pet Vet 3D Animal Hospital

Thu. February 19th: 50% off on Crazy Machines 1.5

Fri. February 20th: 50% off on Pet Vet 3D Wild Animal Hospital

Sat. February 21st: 50% off on Engineer 2

Sun. February 22nd: 50% off on Solitaire Wizard

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. February 9th: 50% off on Fruity Logic

Tue. February 10th: 50% off on Bookstories

Wed. February 11th: 50% off on Monkey’s Tower

Thu. February 12th: 50% off on Fashion Story

Fri. February 13th: 60% off on Spirits of Metropolis

Sat. February 14th: 50% off on Lost In Reefs

Sun. February 15th: 50% off on MiniOne Racing

You have to hand it to PlayFirst for the company’s impeccable timing in releasing the third Chocolatier right before Valentine’s Day. Yes, you heard right — third. It doesn’t count as a fourth because The Great Chocolate Chase is a time management game, not a traditional Chocolatier one. The three games fall into the simulation category, and it’s still delicious.

Whether the game brings new things or not, I’m happy to see it back in the fold knowing it’ll have a new story, characters, ingredients, and products. Those will always occur with every new release. Nonetheless, new features shake up a game to give it a fresh look. As expected, Chocolatier Decadence by Design adds all of these, coffee products and a new ingredient mini-game for coffee products.

You work with the Baumeister family as with all the previous editions. This time it’s after WWII and the story includes love, drama, competition. All the factors that go into an engaging story with a variety of characters. Some characters won’t stand out and others will. You travel the world to find the finest ingredients — to manufacture bars, truffles, infusions, exotics and more — as Baumeister expects nothing less. Thank goodness, this one contains no bugs as ingredients.

Still, you discover fruits such as mangoes and strawberries, spices like saffron and peppers, dairy, nuts and much more. I appreciate the game makes it take a long time to discover all the ports and ingredients so something new comes along almost the whole way through the game.

The ingredient mini-game remains the same for the various candy products. The ingredients flow through the machines and you shoot them into moving containers that must match the primary container. For instance, a truffle requires two cacaos, truffle powder, flavor, and spice. Make sure each container has these five ingredients.

To make it harder, containers can be red or blue. You get more servings when you put all red ingredients in red and blue in blue. If you mix red and blue, you’ll only get one serving for putting all the ingredients in the container. The factory adds a recycling bin so you can move ingredients you don’t need in there instead of wasting them. But not all factories have the bin and it’s tough to get it in there when you have a red container getting in the way of a blue ingredient.

The additions of colors and a recycling bin aren’t enough to shake up this mini-game. The coffee mini-game, on the other hand, brings something new. You still shoot ingredients, but this time you need to make matches of three or more to get a serving. Make a match of four or more and your servings increase. I’m glad the game doesn’t use this one in all of the factories, but it would be nice to see something different.

The world map shows locked ports that you won’t open until later in the game when you meet the right people. Not all ports will have shops. Several ports only sell one ingredient and there’s nothing else to do there. These places have exotic items. Of course, you’ll have to get special cacao from specific locales and the same goes for coffee. It’ll involve a lot of traveling. Chocolatier Decadence by Design prepares players for the frequent and longer trips by providing more transportation upgrades.

I appreciate the game tracks all the agreements I make because I get carried away at times. The screen that tracks all the things you need to do is a vast improvement with a larger and clearer screen. A couple of font choices, however, need improvement as they’re barely readable.

Chocolatier Decadence by Design introduces the ability to develop and name your own creations in the test kitchens in Iceland. Another superb idea for enhancing the game. The product creation screen graphics quality remains subpar and clunky. After you make your new product in the kitchen, you move into marketing where you select the looks, colors, design, and name. Well, this screen gives you no reminder of what ingredients you have added to your new product to help you come up with a name. The game won’t let you back up.

The new features and additions enhance to the game, but I would like to see a couple of more new features especially for the ingredient mini-games. Nonetheless, Chocolatier Decadence by Design occupied an entire weekend including a couple of late nights — something I don’t do often. I look forward to the next adventure. Until we meet again, Baumeisters.

Download Chocolatier Decadence by Design.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Amazon has great discounts on four full versions of popular games. No need to do anything special. Just go and click “Get the game free.”

• Build-a-Lot
• Jewel Quest 2
• The Scruffs
• Big Kahuna Reef

These aren’t cheap or poorly made games. They’re good quality. I love Build-a-Lot.

Note: “You must run the game (not just install it) while the Amazon games and software downloader (AGSD) is still running, otherwise these are 30 minute trials. Make sure the AGSD is running in the system tray and launch the game, it should say “Thanks for your purchase” and have a “Play Full Game” button. You only need the AGSD running for the first run of a game, from that point on the AGSD does not need to be running. Also note that the AGSD starts with Windows by default, most of us will likely want to disable this via MSCONFIG.”

Talk about cheering up a gal who couldn’t do much while recovering from hand surgery! I had no idea another Mystery Case Files (MCF) game was coming out. It doesn’t feel so long ago since we had the pleasure of seeing Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate. Then I discover it’s a follow up to Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst. I had mixed feelings because the original’s ending disappointed me. However, the game had a strong story and intriguing puzzles.

Wow! MCF: Return to Ravenhearst surpassed all expectations and blew away all previous Mystery Case File games. I believe that this one truly takes the Mystery Case Files franchise and hidden object to a full-fledged adventure where hidden objects take a back seat rather than rule the game.

Most hidden object games give you two or three scenes you can roam, one at a time, from a map. This one reminds me of the first adventure games from Sierra that I played on my Apple ][+ as a kid. Of course, the overall production transcends those old adventures.

Navigate around MCF: Return to Ravenhearst by clicking the sides of the screen when you see an arrow pointing indicating you can go in that direction. As you move your mouse around the screen, the cursor turns into a magnifying glass or a white sparkle showing there’s more to that item.

The casebook plays a big role as who can remember everything s/he reads (aside from those with photographic memory). You could write it down, but you may not remember or realize the significance of a note that appears in the casebook.

Other games with a similar casebook just rehash the story. This one provides useful details. Review the casebook as it contains clues and information that will come to play later.

Good news — if you haven’t played any of the Mystery Case Files, it won’t affect playing this one. There’s little reference to the previous games.

The game picks up from the previous after the release of Emma Ravenhearst’s soul. But Charles Dalimar — the villain of both stories — continues to torture other souls. He was also responsible for the strange goings-on at the carnival in MCF: Madame Fate. We must help free the tortured souls so they may rest in peace.

We’re seeing an influx of adventure games (yeah!), but some come too easy. Not MCF: Return to Ravenhearst. I got stuck in a few places and had to walk all over the house a few times before I figured them out. Gamers who feel games are too easy shouldn’t find that a problem here. The nice thing about getting stuck is that you don’t have to figure it out right then to move forward.

Big Fish Games, publisher of the series, has also released a separate sound track. Why? The music was annoying that I turned off the sound early on.

Some objects are nearly impossible to find. One was hidden behind a toy in a glass case. Even with the hint, I couldn’t see it. There’s no limit on the hints, but you do have to wait for the meter to refill after use.

Another negative was the game’s snarky comments when you make a useless move. I’d think, “Gee, thanks for the insult.”

Nonetheless, these little peeves hardly interfere with the experience of playing the almost perfect game.

I thought the hype surrounding MCF: Madame Fate was overdone, but not for MCF: Return to Ravenhearst. It never let me down. The game also relies on some video and they fit beautifully with the story and scenes. I generally don’t like videos because they lack captions, but that’s not an issue here as they come with subtitles. Yeah!

What will MCF bring next? When? I hope it continues to build upon the superb MCF: Return to Ravenhearst.

Mike and Isabel of The Nightshift Code return in Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye, an adventure that mixes hidden objects with a variety of puzzles.

Game developers have a challenge in telling a good story, providing the right amount of story updates between scenes and puzzles, and tying the story with the game. Not an easy balance to achieve.

While Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye comes with a heavy-duty story, the story gets lost and confusing along the way. I love a good story in a game, but this one had too much going on and didn’t flow well between scenes and puzzles. It may make more sense if I took the time to read the stories.

I like most of the mini-games, which aren’t standard fare. The anagram game requires moving letters around to form words. Great game, but tedious to play because it involves more mouse work than necessary to move the letters.

The time line mini-game is a great idea that needs better execution. Boxes appear above pictures. Each picture provides a clue so you can move it into the right box. The earliest event goes into the first box while the last event goes into the last box. The clues are too hard.

One of the beautiful things about the casual games industry is that most games come with a way to play at your own pace. Forget about that here. Time plays a big nasty role. You have to start the WHOLE level over if you run out of time during mini-games. That means finding the hidden objects again before returning to the almost impossible mini-game.

Logic is my favorite mini-game. As a kid, I enjoyed doing logical puzzles where you read a story and solve the puzzle using logic. Maybe we’ll see logic show up in more games. So much can be done with logic puzzles without ever feeling repetitive.

The mini-games steal the show in Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye. The hidden objects portion involves finding objects that work together in multiple scenes. Speaking of multiple scenes, the game never makes it clear I need to look elsewhere for more objects. In some scenes, the list of objects is everything you need to find in the scene.

However, in others, the list of objects cover multiple scenes rather than just one. I had to figure this out the hard way. So if time stops, that means you found all the objects in the current scene and need to go to another scene for the rest.

It penalizes you for incorrect clicks and some of my clicks were correct. I admit I had to replay a few levels because I ran out of time.

The do overs go fast because the object locations don’t change, so you won’t likely want to replay the game unless you want to figure out the puzzles that had you relying on the hints to solve it. It’s OK if you need to use lots of hints, you’re not the only one.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. January 5th: 60% off on Master of Defense

Tue. January 6th: 50% off on Hacker Evolution: Untold

Wed. January 7th: 50% off on Sudoku Arena

Thu. January 8th: 67% off on NOMBZ: Night of a Million Billion Zombies

Fri. January 9th: 60% off on Rotoadventures Momos Quest

Sat. January 10th: 60% off on Restaurant Rush

Sun. January 11th: 50% off on Indyo Sokoban

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.