Gemini Lost

Gemini Lost is a casual village simulation that works to bridge the gap between titles like Virtual Villagers and Sprouts Adventure. During an eclipse, a group of people stumble onto an ancient relic with twelve zodiac symbols on its face. Upon touching one of the tiles, they were transported to a strange new world. Now, the twelve symbols are scattered throughout the land, and it's your job to manage the small tribe so they can assemble the pieces and return home!

Just like any casual sim title, you'll need to manage each villager and set him or her to work harvesting materials, building structures, researching scientific advancements, and so on. This not only maintains your tribe, it allows them to grow both in number and in intellect, opening up new paths for you to explore and allowing you to develop the tools needed to retrieve the zodiac tiles.

First on the list: food. Everybody's gotta eat, right? Since there doesn't seem to be a McDonald's in sight (if you can call that food), you'll need to work the garden. Drag and drop villagers onto locations and they'll automatically start working. Each character has a favorite activity (building, farming, science, etc.), and they'll be thrilled if you assign them a task they already enjoy. So thrilled, in fact, they'll work faster, which is a huge bonus when your population is low and resources spread thin.

After your food supply is secure, it's time to harvest wood and stone, both useful for building structures. The science hut and chapel, used for researching new technology and marrying couples (first comes love, then marriage, then a population-expanding baby carriage!) respectively, also need to be completed.

Once the basics are taken care of, Gemini Lost opens up its world for you to explore. Look around the map for anything that looks slightly out of place. Then, drop a villager there and see what you need to research in order to solve the mystery. Scientific advancements will eventually allow you to build more things, accomplish bigger tasks, research complex tools, and even mix potions that have a variety of game-altering effects.

Analysis: Gemini Lost is one part village sim, two parts exploration. It takes some of my favorite aspects from Virtual Villagers and Sprouts Adventure and creates a game that's both relaxing and intriguing at the same time. Want to see what the deal with that rock island is? Try building a raft. Those bees looking interesting? Drop someone there, see what's going on. Your only real limitation is time, as you often have to wait for certain technologies to become available before accessing a new area. Otherwise, the land is yours to roam.

Gemini Lost has a number of player-friendly features that take some of the work out of playing. For starters, the game takes place in real-time, meaning your villagers are hard at work even while you're away. Each time you quit the game, a small menu pops up asking what speed you want things to continue while you're gone. If you aren't planning to play for a few days, set things to "slow" so you don't come back to a village of skeletons.

Navigating through your villagers is a bit tedious, as the only method of quick selection involves scrolling through a list of people one by one. Fortunately, these people tend to take care of themselves and stay pretty busy, so you won't have to do too much babysitting to make sure work gets done.

A pleasantly stunning entry into the casual simulation genre, Gemini Lost is the most player-friendly village management game around.

Review by JohnB

CasualGameplay

Women's Murder Club: Twice in a Blue Moon

Women's Murder Club: Twice in a Blue Moon is the 3rd hidden object game based on James Patterson's popular mystery series. It all started with Women's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet, and continued with Women's Murder Club: A Darker Shade of Grey. Many players preferred the first, and will be happy to know that Twice in a Blue Moon goes back to its roots and is better than the second.

Like the books, you play from the perspective of 4 female leads – Lindsay Boxer (a policewoman), Claire Washburn (a medical examiner), Cindy Thomas (a reporter) and Jill Bernhardt (a lawyer).

What's awesome about these games is the degree of realism. You actually get to help solve the cases, using forensic tools and techniques. You examine the corpses, swab for samples, use the black light, and search through police records. The bodies look REAL, and I found that pretty freaky.

The bulk of the game play involves searching through different dark scenes and finding hidden objects. *Shivers* It's creepy and dark. These hidden objects are a little easy to find, but that can be a plus. Everything is clearly drawn and looks like it should.

There are plenty of minigames, like the first two in the series. Yes, the dreaded bottle swapping tasks are still present, along with a lot of logic puzzles that rely on your ability to decipher patterns.

If you get stuck on a puzzle, you can skip it without penalty, and there's no timer. You only get 5 hints per level, but you really shouldn't need more than that, thankfully.

Overall, it's a challenging game, but loads of fun! Women's Murder Club: Twice in a Blue Moon is definitely recommended to mystery fans, especially if you like the macabre.

Review by Neroli

Xomba

Nanny 911

Nanny 911 is a complex time management game that has you disciplining unruly parents and cleaning up messy homes. The interface is awkward, but there's lots to do, and the pace is fast.

The Nanny 911 game is based on the Nanny 911 television show, and you can spot the similarities straight away. Like in the show, your mission as a Nanny is to help troubled families clean up their lives and parenting style. You actually spend most of your time disciplining the parents, not the kids!

Much of the game play is like Nanny Mania and Nanny Mania 2, but with slightly more complicated controls. You need to control both the Mom and the Dad. To toggle between them, you click the pink or blue buttons on the lower panel. As the kids continue to trash the place, you must order the parents around to clean everything up. The parents also need to discipline the kids with your help.

In a new twist, there are positive and a negative feedback buttons, shown as a green thumbs up and red thumbs down. If the parents do anything wrong – like chatting on the phone, eating on the bed, napping, or screaming at the kids – you can scold them with a button click. Likewise, if they do something right, like clean up on their own, or praise the kids, you can give them positive feedback. Giving the parents feedback increases their discipline meter, which is needed to beat many levels in the game.

The time limits are tight, but you can adjust the difficulty level by selecting a Nanny. Each Nanny represents a different difficulty level.

The controls take a bit of getting used to, so expect to play for a few levels until it feels comfortable. You have to continuously select different modes for your mouse clicks on the control panel (ex. positive feedback, negative feedback, Mom's jobs, Dad's jobs), and this is sometimes awkward. It might have been better with fewer clicks needed. I like the game otherwise, but this feature is what turned me off.

In between levels, you get actual parent tips, most of which are sensible (if not condescending). The production values, graphics, and music are all okay, and the pace can get pretty hectic. I'd say Nanny 911 is a good time managment game, but the interface could use a bit of polish.

Review by Neroli

Xomba

Farm Frenzy 3

Alawar's Farm Frenzy 3 is the fourth title in the Farm Frenzy series, a time management game where you have to meet different, and sometimes conflicting, goals like owning five goats or baking 10 cakes. The previous Farm Frenzy Pizza Party may have gotten too complicated for some players, and Farm Frenzy 3 takes a big jump backwards in gameplay, while adding more of a story and some international locations. Sadly, though, the result is also a step backwards in fun. It's still a playable game, but it lacks the charm of earlier titles.

I've liked the Farm Frenzy series from the beginning. The graphics were simple and the animals were goofy, but the gameplay was great. Farm goals were easy to understand, and every level offered a choice of strategies that kept things interesting. The best part about it was the replayability. You had to really push yourself to get a gold on every level, and studying subtle points to shave a few more seconds off was an incentive to play some levels seven or eight times, stretching an already long game into a master course that could take weeks to finish.

After Farm Frenzy and Farm Frenzy 2 came Farm Frenzy Pizza Party. That moved a little away from the "think fast, click fast" fun of the original by adding very complex recipes. Even the most dedicated FF fans had to play with recipe cards stacked by the side of the keyboard, because no one could remember exactly what went into each flavor.

Farm Frenzy 3 has dropped all that. Most products have only two ingredients, and even the most complex is easy to learn. To increase variety, you play on ingredients different continents, so although there's an egg layer on each farm, the animals vary from Geese to Penguins.

Graphics are more sophisticated, dropping the 2-D cartoon style for 3-D character drawings with shadows and highlights. Each type of animal eats differently, and watching a penguin flip a fish into the air to catch it is impressive.

But the game itself falls flat compared to earlier versions. First, the more complex graphics really slow down rendering, particularly when items are falling from the sky. Buy nine penguins or get attacked by four lions and everything just stops while the screen slowly redraws itself.

The add-on story slows things down further, with cut-scenes that seem like a clone of every other "plucky young girl takes on corporate bad guy" plot. And the depictions of people from other countries vary from strange to offensive. A woman from Antarctica says things like "Me vote for you." The African farmer on the map is a bad stereotype from a 1930's children's book, complete with a bone through his nose. I was annoyed every time I came back to the map.

In another strange design decision, the helper dogs blow themselves up kamikaze style when they attack bears, instead of just barking to build cages as they did before. As a dog lover, I found this irritating, and I ended up not buying dogs unless I absolutely had to. Again, something that was quirky fun in an earlier title ended up slowing down the game in an unpleasant way this time around.

I also found most levels were impossible to get gold the first time, because I didn't have all the upgrades I needed. This made the first 30 or 40 levels feel like a tutorial, because I couldn't get to my real strategies until I had the upgrades purchased. In earlier titles if I missed a medal it was because I hadn't figured out the correct strategy, and going back was challenging. Here I felt I was set up to fail the first time through, and I just had to slog my way on until I finally had the stronger cage or the bigger warehouse and could go back and do it right.

If you're serious about getting gold on every level, you can still dig down to the heart of the FF series: lots of strategy choices, and easy ways to test them as you work your way towards perfection. But I only felt compelled to keep playing this time because of my experiences with previous FF games. If this had been the first in the series, I don't think I would have bothered replaying levels multiple times to get the gold.

The issues with the game will be obvious in the first 10 levels, so you should be able to tell from the demo whether you'll enjoy it or not. I'm pleased to see them drop the overly complex recipes, but the other "improvements" felt more like a step away from what made the series great.

Review by David Tovey

Gamezebo Inc.

Supple

Supple is a premier magazine for single, urban, professional women. Arin works there as an Associate editor, but she has bigger aspirations. In this life simulation game, your goal is to get Arin the coveted position of Style Editor, which has recently come up for grabs. Hugh, Arin's co-worker, also has his eye on the job, so expect a bit of competition. You have to achieve your goal by Friday, and beat out Hugh by passing your daily performance reviews.

The game opens with Arin in her office on Monday morning. Arin and Hugh's game performance meters (GPM) each have a red, yellow, and green area. If Arin's performance is in the red when the boss, Margot, comes by, she is in danger of getting fired! Yellow is okay, but you must get it into the green to pass your daily review.

The GPM moves in response to the six smaller meters above it, which relate directly to her relationships with Margot and Hugh; specifically, her confidence, how much Margot likes and respects Arin, and how much Hugh likes, respects, and desires Arin. Every performance review counts, and Arin will not be able to continue if she fails her daily review. The higher the meter, the more cash she will receive as a bonus.

Arin works more efficiently if she has a high energy level, so you might want to get her some coffee and a snack from the vending machine. If Arin drinks the same coffee or eats the same snack too often, the effectiveness becomes reduced, so it's worth it to vary her food choices.

That brings you to your first crisis - Arin is wearing jeans. Her boss, Margot, loathes jeans, so you need to help Arin to change her clothes before Margot arrives. Clothing has attributes and affects both Margot and Hugh, and should be changed frequently for the best effects. In the shop, you can examine some of the outfits and find a suitable one within your budget to buy. In the closet, you can select an outfit to change into.

In order to shop, you need cash. To help Arin earn money, you click the monitor on her desk and select "work." To earn money, Arin must beat Hugh at obtaining stars. The stars represent researched information that Margot might require later in the day. Each successive star is worth more money than the last. You must keep track of the answers Arin has researched. When Margot asks Arin a question, you can answer if she knows the information, or evade the question if she does not. If Arin is overworked, her efficiency will start to decrease. Arin's life needs to be kept in balance. Taking courses will also boast Arin's efficiency.

Three vertical measures indicate Arin's energy level, how many drinks she's had, and how angry she is. As you play, you'll see word capsules floating down across the screen. These tell you how a game event has influenced one of Arin's meters. If Arin is angry, her other meters will start to fall. You can alleviate this by being nasty to Margot or Hugh. Of course, being too nasty will backfire, so balance is called for. Energy is assuaged by snacking.

As Arin interacts with people and her environment, the experiences she has may have different effects on her, but you control how she ultimately reacts. For example, you want to keep Hugh happy, but not TOO happy or he will win out. Flirting with Hugh will increase his desire for Arin, but doing this in front of Margot makes her jealous. Likewise, if Arin catches Hugh and Margot flirting, her GPM will suffer. Arin can buy lingerie to impress Hugh, which is needed to get intimate with him. Intimacy occurs in the "boom boom" room, or bedroom. It's not overly graphic, but given the sexual situations, as well as adult banter, dirty jokes and occasional harsh language, Supple game is not something you might choose to play with the kids.

Gifts can also be bought for Margot and Hugh, and given at the right time can really boost GPM. Arin can get fired for dressing inappropriately, slacking off (red GPM) for too long, or for not working enough. Drinking at the bar can result in intoxification, another big office no-no. Before Arin gets the axe, she will generally get a warning from Margot. Being fired ends your game.

Although the graphics and animations appear much like The Sims series, the dynamics are different. Both games include emphasis on relationships, and allow the user to manage different aspects of the character's life. However, while The Sims has many goals to choose from, Supple focuses in on one goal - getting Arin the promotion she wants, which requires passing her daily reviews. And, communication between characters is much more pivotal then in the Sims and other life simulation games (like Ciao Bella for example).

Supple is very complex, and the learning curve means you should expect to play the game a few times before you've mastered it. It's not a casual game that was designed to be played, well, casually. Sometimes, especially in the beginning, it is a bit overwhelming to meet the demands of Arin's job.

As far as sims go, Supple offers a great deal of depth and relationship focus. The AI, music, and dialogue are all very good, and respond reasonably to events as they unfold. The production value is impressive for a casual game. While you have a set goal of becoming the Editor, you can also compete for higher scores, leading to greater replay value. If you've gotten very good at the game, you should be able to beat it in a couple of hours. However, getting good enough to do this will take you quite a few hours to start, so it's a good value for money. Kudos to the developers for focusing on the emotions of the characters and their relationships instead of just the usual external factors.

Review from Gamezebo

First Class Flurry

Airport Mania fans may wonder if First Class Flurry attempts to clone Airport Mania's success, but that would be comparing apples to oranges. Or should that be comparing supersonic jets to gliders? Anyway, Airport Mania involves directing and taking care of planes while First Class Flurry, like most traditional time management games, has players controlling a young girl - in this case, a flight attendant.

The story starts with Starlink Airlines doing what an airline does every decade or so: going bankrupt. The new owner wants to revamp and revive the airline and brings in her friend and top flight attendant, Claire, as CHO - chief happiness officer. Simple goal: Keep all the travelers happy including the sleepwalkers, ill and germ-infested passengers, parents with difficult babies, honeymooners, and snotty kids.

Claire begins her Starlink career on an economy class airplane. She also chooses one of four international locations (North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa) for all of her economy flights. Conquering a level requires meeting or surpassing the minimum score. You can also work to reach the expert level to show you have the right stuff.

Claire doesn't simply pick up and take items to passengers. Some require two steps, three steps, four. Most food items take two steps to make while sandwiches take three steps. By the time she works her way up to first class, she has to broil salmon and pour sauce on it. She deals with fewer passengers in first class, but oh those first classers are demanding!

Passengers also request pillows, masks, magazines, headphones, teddy bears. Oh, but wait, turbulence is coming. Drop everything and run to warn passengers, buckle a few needy ones, and sit down or else enjoy a whopper of a headache. This unexpected scenario changes the pace and challenges Claire to pick up where she left from before the impending turbulence.

The captain may also make an appearance. Drop everything again and get the captain a drink! After all, when he's happy, passengers' hearts fill, too. If the captain stays in his little cabin, you can use air freshener to raise everyone's happiness levels. But think strategy here - the perfume is only good for one spritz per flight.

As if that's not enough to manage, busy executives frequently lose their PDAs (handheld devices not public display of affection, mind you) and nervous women keep dropping their diamond rings. While Claire tracks orders and collects the trash, she has to keep an eye out for wandering jewelry and electronics to return them to their owners as well as wandering kids who want to annoy the passengers or cry because they're lost.

You know how most time management games let characters carry one or two items at a time? Claire starts with two, but she can upgrade to hold three and even four items - thank you, push cart! It's about time players have the opportunity to carry more things and make fewer trips.

Chaining comes with bonuses and you can easily click many actions ahead or cancel an item or an action. This feature works effortlessly except the couple of times you may not realize that a passenger gave up on waiting for you to deliver something. You're busy trying to think ahead that you don't realize your tray is full. All time management games should function like First Class Flurry does.

Casual games keep coming out with a diversity of characters in terms of gender and race. First Class Flurry takes it further and includes people from different countries, which is obvious from their clothing. What isn't as obvious at times is the food people order. The spaghetti, curry, and noodles dishes look similar. It takes time to get the hang of their slight differences (the tray, for one).

Upgrades. Those can be tough to do and First Class Flurry nails it. Upgrades help Claire move faster, increase passenger patience and waiting times, boost passenger happiness, and let Claire carry more items. On top of that, some upgrades come with options of their own. Floors and walls include three color choices. You may or may not be able to buy all the upgrades by the end of the levels for the specific plane class (economy, business, first, and royal first class).

Experienced players may find economy class and business class a breeze, but some early levels wreak havoc, so that should please the pros. When the airplanes fill up, it'll be harder to click the right spots with smaller spaces. Besides, there's much commotion with making food, delivering, finding lost objects, dealing with turbulence, and serving the captain, and with all the choices and action, you'll discover new things throughout the game. Many games stop surprising by the halfway point. Not here.

Sound and music blend well with the action to the point that the game has "positional audio." If a passenger sits on the left side of the plane, the sound comes from the left. Needless to say, this audio works best with two speakers or headphones.

Flight attending may not sound as exciting as controlling air traffic, but First Class Flurry engrosses from the first plane trip and doesn't stop. Try as you might, the game won't let you grow bored. The developers thought of everything, and First Class Flurry has it all - originality, variety, and a good upgrades system. So go have a grand time flying your way to Royal First Class... and beyond! Like we're going to tell you what that means.

Review by Meryl K. Evans

Dairy Dash

Dairy Dash is a resource management game along the lines of Cake Mania and Ice Cream Dee Lites. You are in charge of a family of farmers who must feed, water, and care for a number of animals (and patches of garden) in order to harvest milk, eggs and other products. Dairy Dash eschews a number of more complex game mechanics and focuses on efficient ordering of tasks, not how many convoluted upgrades you can buy. Because of its simplicity, Dairy Dash provides one of the most rewarding resource management experiences in the genre that's familiar but with a few strokes of originality.

Each work day is comprised of basic farm tasks such as feeding hungry animals, bringing them water, preparing their food, and gathering products such as eggs and milk. Stringing tasks together is easy with the point and click queueing system, and in later levels other members of the Smith family join in to give you three workers at your beck and call. Complete enough chores to meet the goal for the day, and if you're fast enough you can score bonus points by reaching the expert goal.

Dairy Dash is very much about being efficient, and intrepid players will be rewarded for chaining like actions together to form combos. With a number of farm animals and related tasks waiting to be done, you won't have much time to plan your moves, so learn to recognize aural cues to quickly identify urgent tasks and let your mouse and the Smiths take care of the rest.

You'll farm your way across 52 levels and four farms in Dairy Dash, enough to keep you busy for quite some time. Each farm is bigger than the last and has a new layout you'll need to learn. One of several surprisingly entertaining minigames appear every few levels to break the strain of farming.

Analysis: Dairy Dash won't stand out as one of the flashiest or innovative resource management games around, but you'll love it for its simple, sweet and rewarding gameplay. Everything about this game is basic, from the simple soundtrack to the gameplay and no-frills visuals, but it all works together surprisingly well.

Simplicity is the game's strong point, but after a few long stretches of gameplay (which you will be inclined to do, as this game pulls you in with a vengeance), monotany begins to set in. Dairy Dash is all about clicking things as quickly as possible, so in theory you could breeze through the game just by clicking farm animals as they announce their needs. More arcade action, less strategy, which is a departure from the genre's norm.

Farming is tough work, but Dairy Dash is simple and straightforward. Once you get a few levels under your belt and are managing a dozen needy animals and piloting the whole Smith family, you'll realize you're completely hooked on this bare-bones resource management game.

Review by JohnB

CasualGameplay

Sally’s Spa

I think I’ve found an answer to all of our economy woes… It’s Time Management. If you just get all of your customers to the right spot before they get unhappy they’ll keep coming and they’ll tip you a lot of money. Every business just needs to mange their time better.

At least that’s what I’ve learned from Sally.

A few months ago I picked up Sally’s Salon and helped her take her hair salon business to the top – all without in money coming my way I might add. And now Sally has decided that her salons have done so well that when the opportunity to buy a run down spa on the beach in California she can’t resist. And now we move from Sally’s Salon to Sally’s Spa – well, at least the marketing should be easy.

Yes… it’s a time management game. You’re job is to move customers from station to station and keep them happy until you have their money and they’re out the door. Sally will be on her toes as she moves from reception to saunas to facials to massage tables to… well you get the picture.

Your customers loose patience the more they wait so you have to get them from area to area before they get so upset that they leave. Keeping a good eye for depleting hearts (showing how happy they are) and making sure that you don’t get to overloaded in bottleneck areas is the key to keeping Sally in the money.

Along the way you’ll be able to buy new products and upgrade older ones that will help speed things up, and keep everyone happy. You can also hire additional help and even upgrade their clothing that somehow helps them move faster.

Another way to make money is by selling product. This is a nice RPG element to the game because you have to keep an eye on what is selling before you buy products from your rep. Making the right choices will go along way towards lining your coffers in gold… or at least bronze, as in tanning lotion.

The game has added a few mini-games to break things up and this really helps. They’re not particularly tough games, but they do add a nice little bump in the road and makes you break out up your routine and that’s what keep you on your toes.

If you’ve played Sally’s Salon you already know that Sally likes her games to look good and with the opening of a Spa things stay the course. There is a lot on the screen in Sally’s Spa, but everything is recognizable and you can actually get the feeling of a business going through its day-to-day operations.

Sounds are also crisp in the game as everything from background music to the customers have sounds that add to the game. And, as Sally gets more successful, you open up new locations all around the world. This comes with new sounds and a floor plan for your spas.

There are a lot of levels in the game and with them come new customers with different demands. This game is very challenging… probably more challenging than owning an actual spa. But it’s also a lot of fun.

Sally’s Spa is a great addition to the series. From the looks to the game play, Sally sure knows how to do Time Management right. Sure it may not be as relaxing as a day at the spa, but if you’re up for a good challenge with your gaming… put your hand in Sally’s and get ready fro a wild ride.

Review by Bob

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