Review: PlayDetective - Heartbreakers

Reality TV shows abound on major television programming nowadays; now, I’m not against that stuff, I just don’t watch it. It’s like gambling. It’s in my nature to be hooked, so, I don’t gamble. Once I found myself sitting glued to Blind Date back to back for something like 6 dates, I decided to make better use of my time and boot up Nancy Drew instead.

PlayDetective: Heartbreakers is almost identical in premise to one of the biggest, longest running reality shows - Cheaters. A couple is having relationship problems, they go to the host, the host hires a private detective, the detective inevitably finds the other partner cheating and finds evidence of such, the host asks the client to confront the partner, and it’s all very melodramatic. Makes for great TV. PlayDetective: Heartbreaks casts you in the role of the private detective, and throws in mini-games to boot.

There are 15 cases in the entire game, and each one plays about the same way with different story lines. You are presented with the facts of the case, then you follow your suspect around with a video camera from a perspective that’s only really possible if you were in a helicopter (or a very high building), and you are given a certain number of days to collect a specific number of evidence. Each scene comes in twos: a scripted “cut-scene” and a screen where you can act by either finding and playing the mini-games or collect evidence.

To collect the evidence you rely on three things: a phone call from the partner, a eavesdropping device, and a camera. Using them is simple enough. All you have to do is buy it in the store and click on them in the main interface during a game screen. Each one of these cost $100, and sometimes using them might not collect any evidence (a photograph could end up being completely innocent.) In order to make money we run into the absurd but fun part: mini-games.

The mini-games are mostly conventional: match-3, swap tiles, multiple choice quiz, the Cryptogram, and lastly, the Polygraph. Match-3 is self-explanatory, as it is the usual match-3 to break tiles. Swap tiles is a jigsaw puzzle where you swap the pieces, with a little bit of help. Each edge of the pieces are color-coded to aid you visually, since the images in them are two/three toned. The multiple-choice quiz asks you questions based on the client/suspect profiles as well as the time/date/place of your investigation. The cryptogram lets you decipher a text-message. As for the Polygraph, it works like a normal Polygraph. You get to guess whether your suspect is lying by the wavy lines. I still have no idea how it works. (Just like a real Polygraph, it seems.)

One of the special features in PlayDetective that it doesn’t tell you about is the variable difficulty level. If you fail a question in a quiz, your timer slows down to give you more time for the next question. If you keep letting the timer run out in the P0lygraph it does the same. It’s a smart timer that ensure the game doesn’t get hard enough to be impossible on medium. In the Match-3 or swap tiles games you can also restart the mini-game at any time.

Now, on the surface, this all works together very well. Once you start getting into the game, Heartbreakers is a bit of a non-game. It’s more of a TV show. You follow the characters around (you can fast forward or skip this part) and when the opportunity presents itself (in the form of your buttons lighting up) you can buy and use the tools. Once you do you either find out that the situation was completely innocent or the suspect is guilty of something. If you make a mistake by not collecting an evidence, the game will boot you out of the mission and make you start it over.

In other words, it’s really a very linear adventure game in the guise of a casual game. If you replace the text in cutscenes with real actors, this could be an old FMV game. Unfortunately, the graphics are dated with “pixel” styling and isn’t likely to draw the average casual gamer in. The music, however, is typical of an old black and white private eye movie.

PlayDetective: Heartbreakers is not a bad game, by any means. It takes a complex subject and simplified it enough for anyone to get in there and play, adding enough casual elements to draw in a casual audience. If you enjoyed Cheaters, the show, you might just get drawn into Heartbreakers’ stories of infidelity. It’s a pretty long game, and it saves in the middle of missions. At the time of this review, it’s slightly buggy, but there are no show stoppers.

You can download PlayDetective:Heartbreakers on the Kayogames web site, as well as try an online version that plays right in your browser.

 

Review: Kudos Rock Legend

I’ve always wanted to code games since I was a little girl, and Kudos Rock Legend is an inspiration in simulation games. It is a one man effort; it was designed and coded by Cliff Harris, an indie developer from the UK. The result is a game that is so accessible and addictive I haven’t been able to tear myself away.

Like Kudos, a simulation of life, Rock Legend is a simulation of rockstard0m. It is not a “real time” sim, but rather a “turn based” sim. This might turn some players off since we’ve gotten used to the action that comes with the Sims and and so on, but it that is no reason to turn Rock Legend down. Like Kudos, Rock Legend belong to a genre of games that are casual in name only. Sure, you could play for a few minutes and put it down, but why do that when you can play for hours and play years of your rock life at a stretch?

Things start out pretty slow. You have $33 to your name and nothing but a dream to be famous some day. So first of all, you start auditioning. Musicians have different personalities - a socialite gets more publicity when s/he’s handing out flyers, a businesslike disposition means a discount when buying things, disruptive personalities get a bit rowdy at gigs and break things. Moreover, an amiable personality isn’t necessarily a good thing - talent and overall ability often comes with antisocial behavior. Thankfully, once you’ve hired one player, he will let you know at the audition which wannabe he prefers. Once you have two additional musicians in your band, you can start writing songs.

Song writing is a mini-game in itself. The notes available to you depends on your inspiration level, the musicians you’ve hired, as well as anything that you’ve managed to snitch from listening to your rivals and stock music. Each song is comprised of 7 bars or sections, and your job is to drag and drop snippets of music from your pile of inspiration stickies onto the sheet. Color matching nets you a bonus, but some ideas are just worth more than others. Once you have enough music to do a set, you can start booking gigs, rehearsing, and passing out flyers.

The number of venues available to you depends on your fame level, but once you have enough fame, the rest depends on one word: money. Some venues will require transportation, so if you don’t have a band van, you’re out of luck. Other places may require a manager. Bigger venues can hold more people, are more expensive, and with more people you may sell more merchandise.

Each day you’ll get a list of suggestions of things to do, which boils down to these few things: rehearsing, songwriting, gigging, publicizing, and show watching. You can only do one thing a day, and some days you are so tired you just want to sit back and do nothing. Pretty much everything that you do is tiring - rehearsing, publicizing, gigging - and wears down the band. If they’re tired all the time they’ll start to complain, and when their tiredness reach a certain level they will be unable to anything. You can also choose to do things that are not on that list.

At any time, if you have enough money and enough songs, you can record a CD. This is as simple as clicking on songs in the recording screen and choosing a quality level. Once that’s done, CDs will sell over time as well as during gigs. You can also buy merchandise from the store to sell, and just like in real life, buying in bulk nets you a bulk discount. There are other things available from the shop screen as well - new instruments, custom guitar picks, effects for your show like smoke machines, new lighting rigs. You can even book transportation and staff via the shop screen.

How successful a gig is depends on many factors. Your lighting and effects play a part, as well as things like how rehearsed your band is and how well you prepared the gig by publicizing it. When a gig is sold-out and it’s an especially good gig, you sell more stuff, make more money, and get more fame. Fame level is your “overall” score for the game; at the end of five years your success is measured in fame and fortune. The more famous you are, the more likely you are to sell out the next show at a bigger venue.

While you’re trying to get famous, you also have to learn to take care of your musicians. Are they motivated? Are they tired? Are they complaining about the lack of food at gigs? Rehearsing in a nice studio and playing at large venues with bigger crowds motivates while striking chords in a damp basement and playing at the local booze pit do the opposite. Once you’ve reached a certain fame level, your musicians expect more - better rigs, better instruments - and you better it to them. The very ambitious and hard-to-please ones may choose to quit and take their gear and experience with them if you don’t treat them well.

You can develop their musicianship via practicing, which is entirely different from rehearsing. It’s a “Simon” mini-game where you have to play notes in sequence with your number keys, and at the highest level it’s a 10-note sequence. It does get pretty difficult, but remains simplistic. As a musician myself, I would’ve preferred an actual note staff with actual notes and actual rhythm. It wouldn’t be too hard to pick up with a tutorial, and the player may actually learn something.

Graphically speaking, Rock Legend is sleek game, but not a flashy game. You won’t see many cut-scenes and animations, but there are plenty of beautiful character portraits and images. Your character’s portrait is customizable with different hair coloring and sunglasses, and this game has the sleekest GUI I’ve ever seen. Even though there are plenty of information presented in the HUD, it has plenty of room. All the information that you care to see is right there at a glance, including all your songs, your band’s vital stats, the calendar of things coming up, as well as access to all your gear, musicians, and staff. Your main interface is also a drag-and-drop interface, so you can arrange things to your liking. In year five, having a bunch of gear and all staff, I still have half the screen left.

In terms of music, for a game about music, it is sparse in audio. There is one looping track for the interface, but it doesn’t so much loop as fade out and start over. While there isn’t much there, what’s there is good stuff. There is an option to turn it off in the options menu.

Kudos Rock Legend is a great game, and the depth of it all surprised me. While other games focuses on the flash and pretty graphics, Rock Legend spent all its time in gameplay, all through an accessible interface. I would recommend this game to anyone, especially those who’ve spent any time in garage bands. I’ve spent many years amongst musicians, young and old alike, and I see a lot of realism being displayed here, in a convenient turn-based package that saves anytime and loads quickly.

 

Announce: Hotel Giant on the Big Fish!

Another one of those non-casual games on the Big Fish. I can’t exactly take the time to review these ones - they take too long, and with a baby in tow, it’s hard to go through these big long games. I can, however, offer a link to a demo. On the BFG site they do not offer a demo to Hotel Giant, but here’s a link to one on FilePlanet.

Hotel Giant Demo on FilePlanet
Hotel Giant Demo on Gamershell

Remember that this is not exactly the one from BFG - theirs is most likely pre-patched.

A few reviews from across the web:

Hotel Giant is all about building hotels. You get to design hotel attractions (bars, restaurants, health spas, and so forth) as well as guest accommodations, and you have to balance quality with profitability when you do so. …
each scenario goes something like this: spend a couple hours designing the hotel, and then spend about five minutes zipping through time until you win (or not). The only things you have to deal with once the game starts are guest complaints and staff hirings and firings, but the complaints are pretty predictable once you’ve played a little, and the hirings and firings usually aren’t necessary.

…The problem is that room design isn’t really fun even when it’s done well, and the more you have to do it the more boring it gets. Since in Hotel Giant you have to design rooms a lot — even despite a friendly copy and paste feature — and since there isn’t anything else to do in the game, obviously Hotel Giant isn’t very much fun to play.

…Overall, Hotel Giant is a nicely made but very boring game.
56%, Game Over Online Magazine

The first is the incredibly thorough but entirely boring tutorial that seems to last forever. It took me longer to get into HG than any other game I’ve played – including Morrowind….HG is one complex game, at least in its execution.

You can’t have exercise equipment in the lobby or a swimming pool in a boardroom – each object has a specific room they’re restricted to (though there are some common object). … (And it doesn’t help that there’s about three clicks for every action and host of drop-down menus to move through.) To help out you don’t have to design every single room. Each layout can be saved as a template then stamped out all over the floor – much like modern hotels. Then every time you change something in one room, it’s changed in all the rooms that use that template.

…Fulfilling the menial requests of characterless guests didn’t do anything to keep me playing. And the inability to take out some of this frustration on your hapless employees just isn’t possible. Beating up on Manuel-type waiters would have been a welcome addition. I guess what I’m trying to say, HG bored me after about 5 hours.

5.0/10, The Armchair Empire

Sounds pretty bleak, but Gamespy says:

Not a bad game by any means. JoWood has produced a quality title that seems to truly simulate the challenge of hotel management. Unfortunately, a cumbersome interface, and overly complex management scheme detract from an otherwise excellent game. Nevertheless, it’s worth a look.

It’s up to you. Links to the Demo is above.

 

Review: Zoo Empire

Zoo Empire is basically a copy of Microsoft’s Zoo Tycoon. Now, Zoo Tycoon wasn’t a casual game, and neither is Zoo Empire. The reasons are very, very simple: there’s way too much to keep track of, too high of a learning curve, and there is no way you can play this for a few minutes and come back later.

For me, Zoo Empire feels like a trip to memory lane. It’s so much like Zoo Tycoon it’s eerie. The only thing that seems to be different is that my polar bears don’t seem to want to have the penguins for lunch when I leave them in the same pen. I don’t think that’s an improvement. Seeing my visitors running away in terror because I delete a part of the fence containing my lions were all part of the fun in Zoo Tycoon.

Zoo Empire is not a new game - it has actually been out since 2004. There has been a number of reviews written about it. So instead of my ranting about how it is not a casual game, I’d like to list a couple of quotations here.

Zoo Empire allowing you to choose from over 40 species and subspecies of animals including both rare and endangered species, over 150 types of visitors and animals objects, over 200 buildings, items and facilities. There are a dozen different terrain types, each with unique dynamic grass effects allows you to experience the subtle landscape changes as you progress in the game. There are also food booths, gift shops, toilets, bins, signs, first aid stations, security and vending machines, etc. As owner of your zoo, you can adopt animals, landscape and build exhibits, hire and manage employees. - GameGuru

The early stages of the game are blessed with a tutorial system to get you acquainted with the interface and controls. This is, of course, frustrating and relatively slow, but is genuinely useful and the game is all the better for it. - BoomTown

The question is, are you willing to play through 2 hours of tutorials? You have to learn how to fence animals in, edit the terrain, hire a myriad of staff, conduct research, build small and large buildings, keep animals in their desired habitats, etc, etc. Despite it being a kids’ game, Zoo Empire has a pretty steep learning curve.

If you’re willing to put in the time, Zoo Empire does turn out to be an addictive Zoo simulation. It is a completely children friendly, non-violent simulation game that contains fun facts on all of the animals that you can have in your zoo. I do recommend picking this one up from the store though - you will want a printed manual on-hand, since the tutorial doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. You can get this off BFG for $6.99, but getting the boxed version shouldn’t cost you anymore - it’s a 3 year old game, and a budget title to begin with.

 

Review: Paradise Pet Salon

Paradise Pet Salon is a very pretty game with pre-rendered 3D sprites, really cute puppies and kittens, lots of backgrounds to choose from, tons of room for creative decorating … and that’s about it. After trying to play it for hours, I realized that it’s a sort of non-game. It’s endless clicking from one thing to another with very little reward, a lot of monotony, and an upgrade system that only sort of works.

The tutorial starts with your character working for a big corporation to “learn the ropes.” After the first mission, you’re on your own with your little pet shop, very little money, two work stations, and a slew of unappreciative customers. They will walk in with their pets, and each one will come with any one to four color coded tags. Your job is to lead each pet to the work stations where they are lathered, rinsed, brushed, vaccinated and so on.

In between missions, you can visit the shop screen, where you can purchase more work stations, redecorate the place, upgrade the current equipment to make it more efficient. You can even hire an assistant to take the pets that are ready back to their owners. It’s a very simple tycoon type system, and it would’ve worked were there more variety to the items and customers. Sadly, this isn’t the case.

This is my first disappointment in time management games lately, and it hits hard. It’s like opening up a box of very beautifully wrapped chocolates only to find that they’re all chalky cherry creams. It’s time for the list-form review.

• You are allowed 9 work stations for each shop, chairs along the sides, and 3 upgrades each. They look and act the same for each location you choose to work at. You need to raise $12,000 to get the next pet store, and the average customer brings in about $40. Add in the fact that you need to also upgrade your equipment, buy new equipment and so on, you can see that you’re in for a lot of days.
• You can upgrade the machines to work faster, but that doesn’t stop the fact that your player character is painfully slow. Your assistant is faster, actually.
• There are no mission objectives; sometimes you get a hint of what to expect (everyone will want their pet vaccinated today) but you’re pretty much on your own with no goals to meet with a deadline.
• There are no “fail” conditions for each day either - all your customer could stomp out for all you care.
• Customers do not interact with one another. At all.
• The music is the same for each location. As are the sound effects.
• The only difference between each location is that you’ll make more money in a new location. Other than that, customes expect the same things, you use the same equipment, and basically play the same scenario over and over again.
• Sounds boring? That’s because it is!
• Paradise Pet Salon doesn’t save mid-day, so you’ll have to finish each day before you turn it off. The ESC key is also a little touchy - I’m used to it going to the game menu, but this one bounces you right off to the main menu and you’ll lose your progress.

If there’s ever a game that feels like all the budget went to the same place - graphics - then this is it. If you enjoy the “endless shift” modes in time management games, and could never get tired of them, you might enjoy this one. There is a survival mode, and it does get very hectic. If you’re looking for a time management game, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for some open-ended non-game, this could be the game for you.

 

Trainer: Plant Tycoon Money Freezer

I could do something that adds money, but that would make it too easy. So instead, here’s a trainer that will freeze the amount of money you have. One button freezes, the other defrosts. 15 bottles of Instagrow, here I come!

Plant Tycoon Money Freezer (Rapidshare - always up)

Plant Tycoon Money Freezer (Bestsharing - sometimes down)
It only really has two lines in it and it effects ONLY the Plant Tycoon process. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I’m really not advanced enough in memory hacking to do too much with DMA, but this works on my computer, with the version of Plant Tycoon from Big Fish Games.

It will also ONLY work when the game is running in a window. Alt-tabbing to it will not work.

 

Hints: Build-a-Lot

This should clear up a bit of the math (as well as a general walkthrough) on the game Build-a-Lot. When all else fails, I’m also attaching a bit of a cheat to open up “casual mode” as well as making all the scenarios accessible at the same time. General rules of thumb:

• It is almost always better to flip your house at 2 stars than 3 stars if you want to just sell it.
• 4 Stars are more profitable on the smaller houses.
• The percentage on the overall value of house that goes into rent increases when you add stars.
• On a Tudor:
  • Base house: 3.16%
  • 1 Star: 3.45%
  • 2 Stars: 4.4%
  • 3 Stars: 6.35%
• On a Colonial and Tudor, flipping the house at 3 stars will gain you LESS net profit than if you did it at 2.
• If you need to HAVE a specific house at the end of a scenario, it’s always cheaper to build your own than buy one.
• The above applies to any house. Including lot fees.
• For example, in the “build 5 Tudors” scenario, at basic (no discount) construction costs, building a Tudor costs $55K. If you bought it, it costs $150K. If you buy a Rambler, demolish it, and then build on top, it still only cost $80K. How does that work? When you buy a house, you’re paying $25K of it on the lot. So it’s only $25K extra to buy a house and demolish.
• Always flip your first house. It’ll give you enough startup funds to pay for materials and whatnot. In later scenarios, keep in mind that the most logical progression is:
  • Build a Sawmill
  • Spend $75k on materials
  • Build a workshop
  • Build a bank, set it to donate
  • Hire a worker if you have to, and build the most expensive house you can afford.
  • upgrade the house to 2 stars if Rambler and mansion, 4 stars everything else if you can afford it. NEVER sell anything at 3 stars.
  • flip it
  • Buy materials at the cheapest bulk rate
  • Hire some workers and build the most expensive houses you can
  • upgrade those to 4 stars if you plan to keep them. Rent is proportional to the money you spend on it by %.
• Upgrade and inspect houses in between rent periods. As soon as that dollar sign goes cha-ching, click on upgrade. That should keep you from missing payments.

Here’s a table detailing the math. The cost of the houses does not take into account the number of builders needed, bulk / sawmill discounts, or the fact that you almost never get the asking price.

Now, onto the big stuff. Really stuck on a level? Well, there is no difficulty level setting, and it can get pretty hard. So here’s how to open up all the scenarios - don’t go around changing the score though - that isn’t what this is about.

1. Search for the file buildalot.ini - don’t forget to check “search system folders” and “search hidden files and folders” as well as “search subfolders”.

2. Double-click on the file and it should open up in a plain text editor like notepad.

3. Find your profile name. That’s the name you gave the game when you boot it up. Mine’s Sally. You only have to change values after [User 0] and before [User 1].

4. Now, look for “LevelStatus” followed by numbers. 0 means you haven’t played it yet, 2 means you’ve passed, 3 means you experted it. Change them all to 3.

5. Now look for “LevelNumPlays” and change all of those to 1’s.

6. Change all the “CityGift”s to 1’s as well.

7. Change all the “CasualLevelStatus”s to 1’s.

8. Save the file.

9. Close everything and open the game. Now, when you click on the main screen, you should be able to access all the missions as well as all the casual levels.

 

Scripted: Plant Tycoon Helper 1.0

Update - 2007.09.13 (2 updates in a day!)
Went through and fixed the coordinates for the seed box script, and “corrected” the soil and water positions. Hopefully, this will mean that it will work for everyone while in FULL-SCREEN mode. In windowed mode, all the verticals could be off by as much as 20 pixels. (the header)

Download Plant Tycoon Helper 1.02
Download Plant Tycoon Helper 1.02 (Bestsharing Mirror)
Download Plant Tycoon Helper 1.02 (Mooload Mirror)
Download Plant Tycoon Helper 1.02 (Upload2.net Mirror)

Update - 2007.09.13
Added a key for trashing seeds.
Download Plant Tycoon Helper 1.01

This is not a hack, not a trainer, not a … well, not anything special really. It’s just a mouse script. It takes the “chores” out of Plant Tycoon so you can concentrate on the important things like cross pollination. If you just started the game you probably won’t use this, but it’s good for automating these few things:

• It will set up all the pots by putting soil and water in all the pots, and
• It will water all the pots to almost but not quite full.
• It will also plant the first 15 seeds in your box (first 10 in the first horizontal line and first 5 in the second) into your 15 pots.
• There is a hotkey for selecting each of the plants, and
• A hotkey for harvesting each seed.

I made this because I got sick of clicking and dragging. Trust me - clicking and dragging will get on your nerves after a while because there will be lots of it. This program will do exactly what it says, and no more than that. It does not contain anything aside from mouse instructions because, uh, I wrote it!

Download Plant Tycoon Helper 1.0

You will need to unzip the file. After that you can run it anywhere. Use CTRL-H while it’s running for help.

If you have any suggestions to make the script better, contact me!

 

Review: Plant Tycoon

I waited for the release of Plant Tycoon with baited breath. In 2002, when I had a palm pilot (I’ve since migrated to the PPC), I was obsessed with my virtual plants. I would water them on the subway, check them on the bus, cross-pollinate after rehearsal, and sell my plants while working behind the desk at an uptown cybercafe. When I poured coffee on the entire thing I was in shock and didn’t speak for an entire evening - mostly because I lost my Palm Pilot, but I was secretly grieving for my plants. It was a matter of time before the game would move on to a bigger screen with more detailed graphics, and time it did take. It took 5 years.

The core game of Plant Tycoon hasn’t changed much, to tell the truth. You have 3 rows of 5 pots in your little greenhouse. Into these pots go soil, water, and seed, sometimes fertilizer. As time goes by (and slowly, it does, unless you manipulate your PC’s clock - but that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?), your plants will shoot, and after some more time, they will bud. Here’s where things get interesting: when your plants are fully mature, you can start pollinating. Plants in Plant Tycoon have set of genetics for each seed. When you cross-pollinate, you create new kinds of plants that are “unknown” species until they are fully mature. The goal is to create 6 special “magic” plants. There are over 500 possible varieties. There are no hints as to what these plant varieties could be. Good luck.

Once your plants produced seeds (or not - you don’t HAVE to pollinate) you can save them to your seed box to be planted later. You can place tags on your plants to sell them in the nursery or trash them to make room. If you destroy your original plants by accident, you can always buy stock seeds from the Supplies store. It restocks once a day in case of accidents.

What I’m saying is, you better get a screen grabber and a pen and pencil ready, because in order to make this more than just trial and error, you will be taking a LOT of notes. One of the features on my wish list for the PC version of Plant Tycoon was a full family tree, or genealogy chart, as you go on through generations. What LDW gave us, however, is the same info given in the mobile Plant Tycoon - you will find out about each seed’s parents as you click on them, and that’s about all it’s going to give you. The rest? Write it down. You’ll regret it later if you don’t. One really “missing” feature is the names of plants being displayed when you click on a seed, after it has been planted and should be in a family tree. The images don’t really help much, to tell the truth.

A lot of the old features carried over: more expensive soil and water is a necessity for your fragile cross-pollinated plants, decorations brings in more customers, etc. The soil system works quite well, but I always found the nursery decorations to be little more than vanity buys. Your customers will eventually buy all your plants if you leave them there long enough, regardless of whether there are enough of them.

Since Plant Tycoon is so closely modeled after the original, it’s really the little things they added to the game that really makes it shine. In the old game, you used to have to drag the soil from the bag every time you pot, and drag and drop every tool as well. This is greatly improved by the new system where you only have to click on the soil once to pick it up, and use it multiple times before putting it back. I’m not sure if I like the new watering system that simulates the time factor in watering a plant, but some may enjoy the simulation of, uh…watering. (This is coming from someone who enjoys the simulation of plant growing because she has a black thumb, btw.) I love the Latin naming system - it’s a lot easier to keep track of my plants now!

The HUD hasn’t changed much. The old HUD was very well designed for a handheld device, but a straight transfer to PC made it look pretty cumbersome. A better approach would be having all of the specific plant related activities attached to the plant by pop-up menus. It would certainly make pollination easier. There are a lot of quirks from the old menu that was simply there because of space constraints - for example, the handy seed box only holds 8 seeds, which is a very odd number considering that there are 15 pots. Also, now that we’re on the PC, why are we restricted to 15 pots? You can get extra tanks in Fish Tycoon, so why not extra nurseries in Plant Tycoon?

Plant Tycoon adapted the Virtual Villagers collection game, with a bug net that can catch bugs as you see them going by. This works well in theory, but in reality you’d be watching your plants a lot less than your villagers. The chances of you collecting all of those bugs are pretty low, unless you spend a lot of time watching your plants.

Here we come to the core problem of Plant Tycoon. Plant Tycoon is a real time game, like the much-lauded and popular Virtual Villagers series, as well as Fish Tycoon (which all came out technically AFTER Plant Tycoon, since Plant Tycoon is more of a re-make for PC than it is a sequel of any sort). The only issue with that is, of course, that plants are very much unlike people and fish. Watching fish swim is mildly amusing. Watching people can be very entertaining. Watching plants grow is like, well, how should we put it - as much fun as watching grass grow? It was perfectly acceptable in a mobile game since it was mobile - it was a matter of whipping out the Palm to check on my plants to see if they budded yet and nurse them like my pets, but quite another to load up a program on the computer to do the same.

The only way this could’ve worked is if it was an interactive screensaver. Which it isn’t. Another way would be an active desktop extension; which isn’t there either.

Aside from a major graphical update - my, the plants are absolutely gorgeous! - and the ability to prune your plants of dead leaves, Plant Tycoon doesn’t stray far from the original. In my opinion, that may be just as well - the original was such a great addicting game, so why change near-perfection? It is definitely still one of my favorite games, and one to keep on my computer for posterity. It doesn’t exactly promote organic plant growing aside from one mention of “Bio-organic Plant Food” in the supplies, but it’s a great learning tool for patience. It only takes a few minutes to play at a time, and the problem is that a few minutes is all you’re going to get before you have to wait a few hours again.

So I do recommend Plant Tycoon, but with a warning: If you didn’t like Fish Tycoon, you’re not going to like this either.

Plant Tycoon Hints
Plant Tycoon Helper 1.0

 

Visit the Classics: Tradewinds Legends

This will be the first of a new segment on MinuteGamer - Visit the Classics. To those who only recently started playing casual games, it might help to know what games can be considered original, and others simply really good derivatives of originals. These articles will also involve some of the best and addictive casual games ever made.

I can’t think of a better game to start with than Tradewinds Legends. It sets the stage for one of the most popular titles to hit the market lately, Chocolatier. My first experience with it was with my trusty little Palm T200 (The T’s were quite popular back in 2001 or so, and I was the very lucky owner of one) and playing the game endlessly on the subway to and from rehearsal. There were only something like 4 ports, 4 characters, and no quests - only trading. Still, it was a most additive game - sea battles, trading, travelling - all in a little package I could take on the go!

Tradewinds Legends is the culmination of what worked and what didn’t in the old Tradewinds games: buy low, sell high, get more ships, do over 100 quests. It was addictive. It was hilarious. It didn’t take itself seriously. It was easy enough that the battles didn’t stop the casual gamers from advancing, yet hard enough to keep you buying ships, upgrading the cannons, and trade in contraband. It also has a story - for each character - that rivaled any big name commercial simulation game.

So, where did it all come from? Trading at sea is hardly an original concept. Sid Meier’s Pirates! was published in 1987, which I believe to be the spiritual predecessor of all sea-going simulation games. It had trading, diplomatic relations, fencing, sea battles, siege scenes - all that. But Tradewinds took the concept and made it something that you can play for 10-15 minutes or for hours at a time, without having to track where you’ve been and what tasks you have at hand because it’s all in an in-game log. Tradewinds made a genre that was previously restricted to a testosterone filled genre (cannons, battles, saving maidens) all accessible to the causal female player.

Here’s to an original that is still addictive and very much playable - the Tradewinds series!

For a game that involves more trading, some arcade elements, and no battles, try Chocolatier.

You can find all of these games free (not a trial) and ad-supported on MostFun. Since these are a little older, ads are only at the startup and shutdown, and not during the game.