Kitchen Brigade

Sometimes I wish that I lived in the Land of Casual Games. If I did, there would be a ridiculous number of restaurants, each serving the best quality foods they could muster while I stood there at the counter, hearts ticking away. If I could choose a restaurant to go to, Kitchen Brigade would be high on that list.

In Kitchen Brigade you are a young, aspiring chef (are there any other kinds?) who just won a big cooking competition. Unfortunately, after taxes, tuition from cooking school and buying your own place, you're left with the shirt on your back and big dreams. But, not long after opening your restaurant, you're invited to join the Kitchen Brigade game show.

You begin competing against other chefs (a la Top Chef) to work for ten days, growing the number of dishes you can make and serving different people. On the tenth day, the big cheese himself, Henri Fromage, comes in to inspect your restaurant. If your food and service please him, you are given a new restaurant and continue the competition, trying to conquer six restaurants in 60 days.

At first glace, Kitchen Brigade looks like another standard time-management title. After all, a lot of the traditional trappings are there: variety of customers with special tastes and patience levels, a counter with multiple customers lining up, and kitchen help you have to watch. Progress is made by achieving a minimum amount of money per day. The faster you serve, the higher the tips you receive.

However, soon into the game, there's much more to do. Not only do you have helpers, but you yourself are also part of the kitchen action! If all your cooks are busy, you can step up to your own prep area and, in short minigames (with mechanics similar to Cooking Mamma or previous Fugazo title Cooking Academy), help slice, dice, fry or grill to ensure all the customers are served quickly. These minigames start simple, but get more complex, with more steps. The game's tutorials are great, so you shouldn't get lost.

Adding to the interesting balance is that your staff can only do certain tasks. At first, you have two helpers, which then quickly grows to three. Two of them are only good for hands-on work, like slicing, shredding or folding. The other is only good for stovetop work, like frying or boiling. You, as master chef, are able to do all of those tasks - only much faster than any of your helpers. However, you also have equipment that nobody else has, like a grill. If one step of a customer's order involves grilling, you can't delegate it, and must make time for it.

This extra element of self-management on top of the standard time-management really adds to the frenetic pace of Kitchen Brigade. It's very exciting when the customers are lined up, and you have the responsibility of finishing the dish, getting it out to the customer before their patience runs out.

There are, of course, different kinds of customers, each with their own personalities, likes and dislikes. But rather than just being avatars with meters, some of them can really mess around with your kitchen rhythm. For example, each of the six restaurants is themed, with cuisine like American, Italian, Mexican or Asian Fusion. But some of the characters don't care what the restaurant is, and order anyway. The Geisha - low patience, but big tipper - will order Japanese food, even if you're trying to toss bowls of pasta. And if Henri Fromage shows up, you must serve him right away, or the level is over. It's fun to have this extra challenge.

Kitchen Brigade game offers some help when things get hairy. The Food-O-Matic is a device that, if you drag its icon onto a customer's order, will automatically make it for you instantly. It's very helpful when you're trying to serve someone with low patience and an order that has a lot of steps. Sometimes a customer will come in with a power-up icon flashing over their order. If you complete their order before the icon disappears, you'll earn the power-up.

The presentation of the game is nice, clean and bright. The characters are easy to see at a glace when trying to determine who to take care of first, and the food certainly looks delicious. The sounds of slicing and sizzling are clean and clear. The music loop can get a bit repetitive, but hardly anything major.

If Kitchen Brigade has any faults, it's that we've seen it all before. We've played kitchen management and clicking minigames. However, Kitchen Brigade manages to put them together into something genuinely fresh and fun. If you're into time management, then step into the kitchen and get cooking!

Review by David Stone

Kelly Green Garden Queen

It may be all autumn and orange leaves and ladybug invasions here in North America, but in the magical talking land inside my computer spring has sprung with roses, gophers, greenhouses, and $800 shovels. (During spring the stores jack up the price of shovels and watering cans.)

Let's take a look at Kelly Green Garden Queen, a new gardening game from IWin. In this time management game, you play the role of Kelly Green, a wannabe chef who is forced into taking on the responsibilities of her grandfather's long-suffering flower nursery. As a city girl who escaped most of the green thumb, flower power, hippy ideals of her parents, it looks to be quite a challenge for Kelly. And it is! Luckily her brother Neil is just a phone call away and can step by to lend a helping hand.

The main game screen shows part of Kelly's flower nursery. (You can scroll around by dragging the mouse while holding down the right mouse button.) This slightly muddy patch of ground was wisely purchased by Kelly's grandfather when he noticed the township had installed a payphone on the private lot. Unfortunately that put the nursery in a terrible court battle for years, but now things have been settled and Kelly is free to use the payphone as her business line. Awesome!

The game is divided into levels, each the length of a day in-game, during which many customers will place an order for flowers, milk, butter, and even leftover dirt. Some customers show up in person while others just call the number on the payphone. Your goal is to fulfill all their orders before the day finishes. As this is a time management game, that involves lots and lots of clicking!

Click on empty slots in your garden to place a pot in the depression. Click on the pot to fill it with soil. Click on a seed packet, then click on the pot yet again to plant a seed. When growing, the plant needs water, click on it to bring over the watering can. And finally, click on the fully grown plant to give it to the customer (or store it in your shed for later). Some plants must be grown outside; others must be grown inside your greenhouse. A few must spend time in both!

As is usual in the genre, customers arrive with a string of hearts representing their happiness with your customer service. If you take too long to deliver their order, they'll lose hearts. That means a smaller tip for Kelly Green, and less money to reinvest in her new business. And of course if the customer loses all his or her hearts, they'll cancel the order and leave. You think they'd be more understanding of a naïve city girl who grows plants to order - perhaps the worst way to run a flower nursery! However if you can stock your storage shed in advance and sell a customer flowers from there immediately (like a real business) you do get a nice bonus.

Many customers ask that their flowers be assembled in a bouquet. In this mini-game of sorts, you get to choose which type of vase to put the flowers in and you have the option of adding a decoration. If the customer smiles when you select a vase, that's the one they want. If they frown like you just told an off-color farming joke, they don't like your selection. You also get to arrange the flowers in the vase. If the customer is pleased with your creation, they'll regain a heart or two and your tip will increase. (You can auto-fill the vases when this "minigame" starts to get tedious.)

When customers get impatient, as they always do, you can hand them a bottle of lemonade to calm their nerves. If it was my nursery, I'd be handing out Dr Pepper. Customers who phoned in an order can be reassured by calling them and telling them their order is almost ready... whether it is or not. That's an old gardening trick.

There are other things to keep track of as well. The wind-powered water pump sometimes needs primed, and Daisy the cow is a constant mooing, pawing, cow-bell of an annoyance. Crows, aphids, and gophers sometimes attack your plants. Luckily you don't have to scroll around to find Daisy or the water pump, you can click on its icon in the corner and add it to Kelly's queue.

Between levels you have the option of purchasing outrageously marked up upgrades for your nursery. (Note: I'm reviewing this game in 2009 and it's crazy for a watering can to cost $1300 or a bottle of lemonade to cost $30. Perhaps IWin designed this game for a future, inflated, economy.) You can also rearrange your garden layout. Hint: take advantage of this option to find a layout where Kelly and Neil have to walk as little as possible between locations. You can move not only your purchased upgrades but other things as well.

I found Kelly Green Garden Queen game to be very frustrating a few levels in, but it improved immensely once Neil was on the scene and running around helping Kelly. Then the game became much more satisfying as I was quickly able to fill empty nursery slots with pots and soil in preparation for future orders. If anyone ever writes a walkthrough for this game, the first piece of advice should be to always be preparing pots and soil for new plants. Plants you grow but aren't ordered by customers can be sold wholesale, and your prepared garden carries over to the next level!

Everything on the nursery screen is rendered in colorful 3D graphics that are functional but a bit bland in style. I guess I just like a more cartoony look to my gardening games.

Review by Uesugi
Casual Explosion

Avenue Flo

Poor Flo, she always seems stuck picking up everyone else's slack and single-handedly saving the day, yet she still manages this with a skip in her step and a cheerful smile. The greasy apron-adorned, hard working star of the Diner Dash series is about to embark on a whole new challenge-filled journey in her first adventure game. Gamezebo recently sat down for some hands-on time with Avenue Flo, and we're pleased to report this new twist on the series is going to be a blast.

In Avenue Flo, the daughter of corporate mogul Mr. Big is set to marry Tony the local pizzeria owner when everything goes horribly wrong. Quinn has been hired to put on the wedding, but an uncanny plethora of problems arise at every turn. To save her pal's good name and get to the bottom of all the suspicious mishaps, Flo steps in to get the wedding preparations back on track. She's got her work cut out for her.

Though the gameplay is very different, and slower paced, from the frantic time-management waitressing the Diner Dash series is known for, many familiar faces and locations appear in Avenue Flo game, and the series' distinct personality still runs strong. The hand-drawn graphics are crisp and consistent, and this is the first time all of the characters will be fully voiced throughout the game.

A large portion of the game focuses on exploring different locations and shops around DinerTown, interacting with and helping local residents, and searching for items and puzzles to complete. The underlying goal is to save the wedding from falling apart, but there are a lot of different kinds of tasks you must tackle. Some of the first major objectives Flo faces include repairing the destroyed wedding dress, collecting butterflies (which were to be released at the ceremony) that have escaped, and tracking down Miss Big's pet poodle Snookums who was meant to be the ring bearer.

Avenue Flo features a lot of variety in the types of challenges you'll face. There's a fun hidden object element that appears regularly where you'll have to find certain kinds of objects scattered throughout the scenery, like dollar bills, butterflies, and plastic bottles for recycling. You'll often have to fetch items for people or figure out what they want in order to help you out. We also stumbled across some rotating color matching puzzles, a rhythmic aerobics mini-game, fridge organizing activities, and more. There's a lot to do, and players will be pleased to learn completing the game will unlock an activity mode where you can enjoy all of the mini-games any time you choose.

Many of the game's more complex puzzles can only be solved after completing multiple tiers of tasks. For example, repairing the wedding dress requires finding the missing beads, fixing the robotic beading machine by finding and using the right tool, inputting the proper code to restart it, and then using the machine to play a mini-game game where you must lay out beads along patterns in the proper order. They're tricky and fun without being frustrating.

With three large areas of town to explore, countless puzzle challenges to dig into, and a colorful cityscape populated by charming and funny characters from the Diner Dash universe to explore and interact with, Avenue Flo is bound to attract new players to the series while giving current fans something new to enjoy.

By Nathan Meunier

Cake Mania: Main Street

Cake Mania Main Street is a time management game that's like 4 different games wrapped into one. It picks up where the last Cake Mania left off.

For those of you who've never played Cake Mania, it's one of the most popular time management games around. Underneath the quirky plots, the game play in the previous 3 games followed the same pattern, and involved baking cakes, frosting them, and adding cake toppers to serve demanding customers. The first Cake Mania had Jill restoring her Grandparent's bakery. Then, Cake Mania 2 had her traveling to outer space and the deep blue sea to help her friends. Finally, Cake Mania 3 had Jill traveling through time to rescue family members, while also planning her wedding. You can play the earlier versions free on iWin, with ads.

The plot of Cake Mania Main Street has Jill trying to restore her home town to its former glory. After a super mall opened, the shops around town began to close. Jill can't stand to see this happen, so she calls together her friends, and plots to revive the town by opening new shops and building fancy tourist attractions.

As you play, you unlock 4 different types of shops. It's non-linear, so you can switch between shops, or play them in any order you choose.

The Evans Bakery is like all the previous Cake Mania games, and has you selecting the right cake, frosting, and cake toppers to please your customers. As you advance, the cakes become more elaborate, involving more layers and special upgrades.

Risha’s Flowers shop is just like the cake shop. You select the flower type by clicking a button on the machine, wait for it, and then repeat this by selecting the wrapping at the wrapping center.

The Jack’s Burger Barn game reminds me of Burger Island. You have to assemble the burgers one item at a time. For example, to make a basic burger, you need a bottom bun, a meat patty (which you must grill first), ketchup, and a top bun. The controls are a bit finicky, and it took me a while to get used to things. Still, it's something different.

Tiny's Sumo Sushi is much like the above, but with a sushi theme. Being able to switch between these different shops keeps the game play feeling fresh. It has a little bit of everything. On the downside, you have to master each shop separately, which can leave things feeling disconnected.

I found the voice acting a bit grating, but I'm not a fan of most voice acting in games. Whether you like “talkies” is a matter of opinion. Jill has a slight twang which made it hard for me to take her seriously. There's also a lot of dialogue, but you can skip it if you prefer.

As with all games in this series, the graphics are bright and colorful, all cartoon style, and peppered with plenty of humor. It's a family suitable game, with nothing dark or scary.

Cake Mania Main Street is pretty cool for what it is. Personally, I prefer Cake Mania 3 because of the cake making theme. I wasn't as crazy about the burger and sushi shops in this version, mostly because the controls frustrated me. Still, the game play is addictive, and the pace is fast. The quirky customers are fun as always, and there's lots to see and do. If you like time management games, this one is worth checking out.

Review by Neroli