Most of us will probably never have the chance to become rich by running our own business. This is what makes games working our way up from the bottom to the top so appealing. There are a huge number to choose from including a variety of Sims and Tycoon games, Diner Dash, and Loco Mogul. Some say that Loco Mogul is a cross between Oasis and Rail Road Tycoon. How does it rate?

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Graphics.
When it comes to downloadable games, graphics matter. This downloadable game does a good job providing graphics that are fun, entertaining, and that work well with the game play. They aren’t going to win any awards, but for the type of game it is they are definitely good and deserve a 4/5 rating.

Sound.
Loco Mogul supposedly has “catchy tunes” from the 1800′s. Whether the tunes are indeed from the era, I wouldn’t know. As for whether they are catchy or not I would definitely have to say not. The sound isn’t all that exciting. Most music included in such games is either relaxing or exciting, this is neither. On the other hand, the music and the sound effects that go with the game aren’t annoying either, which says something! I would give it a 2/5 for sound.

Game Play.
For me, game play means a lot and is the most important part of the downloadable game. This game is a little confusing at first. It doesn’t have clear instructions to get you started and in the beginning you may fumble around a bit. Once you see what is going on the game moves quickly, is fun, and offers a nice variety of actions. There is also a game manual that I found after I finished with my trial period. It is well written, clear, and will save you a lot of fumbling time.

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With this game you get to survey land, choose where to lay tracks and build stations, and finally run the route to make money. You will need that money to build in the next level, to pay off investors, and to buy bigger and better steam engines.

All in all, the downloadable game is interesting and fun. I find myself at the end of the game feeling good that I did better then the last game, but that I want to do better yet. I was excited to pay off the various investors and wanted to continue to do so. For game play I would give it 4/5. It seems to be over too quickly to get a 5/5.

Creativity and Innovation.
This certainly isn’t a new idea. There is Railroad Tycoon and a number of other games with similar goals. However, the play is fairly creative and fun, even if you are person who spends a fair amount of time playing similar games. Things progress nicely and it offers a lot of fun. I would say that it is creative enough to deserve 3/5 without being innovative enough to get a higher rating.

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Value.
Value of a game is important and needs to be considered before one spends $19.99 on a game they just spent an hour playing (and often getting addicted to). This game does have addictive play and it can feel very exciting. However, I am a little concerned about value and have decided not to purchase it. It seems that the game progresses well, but would end very quickly and doesn’t offer enough rounds or challenges. Because of this I think it would become boring quickly and only deserves a 2/5 for value.

Overall, this downloadable game gets a 3/5. It was a fun hour (the trial period is an hour) and I would love to play some more. However, the sound quality, the quick end, and the value concerns make this game lower then it could score. It was definitely an enjoyable game, but I am not sure that that would last.

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You can try the game at this link:

http://www.nielsbauergames.com/TVManager.html

Summer Session is a social interaction game. Spend the summer attending classes, interacting with others, and looking forward to the weekend. Make the right choices to increase the chance of getting a date.

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Spend a summer at school attending classes and interacting with local students. Meet and greet the new roommate. Run into new classmates on the way to class. Meet the new teacher of biology. Talk to a few more students. Finally, set the schedule for the rest of the week, in anticipation of the weekend.

Summer Session focuses on a story about a guy stuck in summer school. He is searching to increase his popularity and obtaining a girlfriend. Passing biology is a minimal goal even though classes seem to take up the majority of the time.

The Summer Session characters are drawn from standard stock on a two-dimensional background. The displayed backgrounds are minimal. Only used to distinguish where the character actually is. Nothing stands out. There is no action other than the occasional classmate popping up out of nowhere. The action is described in text at the bottom of the screen rather than in the game.

Summer Session choices are limited to a very few. The most these decisions do is change the feeling of the classmate. A right decision increases the character’s popularity. A wrong decision decreases the character’s popularity. The more popularity, the more likely the character is to get a date and survive summer school.

Conversations are carried out between characters in a text box on the bottom of the screen. This leaves the character’s voices to the imagination. Interest is quickly lost in the vast amount of reading done by a very simple conversation.

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Most of the sound is regulated to a very simplistic strip of musical chords. This occurs only when the main character interacts with another student. The only good thing about this is there is no annoying background music to distract the player or alleviate the excruciating boredom that occurs from Summer Session’s reading text.
Setting the weekly schedule ahead of time speeds Summer Session up drastically. However, there is only one option available for each day. The planning stops on the weekend and sticks with its limited choices. Again the lack of movement in this realm limits this game, severely. While some of the options such as playing video games or partying sound like fun, they, in fact, are regulated to a few words and a background change.

Summer Session is an extremely shallow game. The demo is extremely short and only allows for a seven day play. It’s choices are extremely limited and only affect the character’s social standings. Classes are a useless waste of time. Only allowing one choice for each weekday scheduling is very poor. Even the story line is simple and shallow.
I will not be buying this game.

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If you wish to experience farm life with a twist, Farm Frenzy 2 is a game for you.

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Game play.
When I started this game, I was greeted with a background music that included a cock’s crow, and other sound that gave the impression of a farm. The aim of this game was to collect the correct number of eggs, bread, or whatever as instructed in order to get to the next stage. To produce the eggs, I had to feed the chickens with grass. Before, I could do that, I had to water the ground to grow the grass. Once an egg was laid, I dragged it to the store house. When it was time to transport the eggs to be sold, a truck would come with the sound of its horn. Any proceeds from the sale could be used to purchase more chickens, and equipments to produce the required items.

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Things could get exciting when a bear suddenly appeared to destroy the chickens. I had to quickly click on the bear as many time as possible to construct a cage around it. If successful, I dragged the caged bear into the store room to wait for transportation to be sold. Another excitement was one the chickens ran out grass. Things could get very challenging when there was not enough money to fill the well with water to be used to produce more grass. There were at times when I ran out of chickens, eggs, and other important items. As a result, I had to plan carefully so that there was enough money or equipment to produce the items. There were certain times when I became a bit bored especially during the time when the chicken were moving around searching for, and eating the grass.

Graphics.
The graphics were colorful, and the animation was good especially with the chickens moving around, eating the grass, and laying eggs.

Sound.
The sound effects, and background music gave me the feeling of being in a farm while I was playing this game.

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Creativity.
The creativity I found in this game was in the game play itself where I had to feed grass to the chickens so that they could produce eggs, something one might not find in real life.

Innovation.
The innovation I saw in this game were the challenge of catching a bear on time before it could eliminate any of the chickens required to produce eggs, and using the eggs to produce bread to be sold.
Overall, I gave this game a rating of four out of five.

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Kudos 2 is a superb ‘sim’ game. Many of the niggles found in Kudos 1 have been ironed out but if you haven’t played Kudos 1 and don’t know the basics, then you don’t need to worry – the tutorial for the sequel is extremely clear and helpful.

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The object of Kudos 2 is to progress your career, socialise with your friends and, basically build up your kudos! To begin, you need to choose your character male/female, hair colouring and facial features, clothes and name. A nice touch is the ability to change the colouring of your hair or clothes.

Throughout the game you’re given choices. You begin your quest for a better life as a waiter/waitress. You can choose the mode of transport to get you to/from work perhaps depending on weather conditions which are apparent from the moment your alarm goes off. On returning from work each night you’ll find that you’ve received your pay. You can then choose how you spend your evening enrol in an evening class to boost your social skills or give you a leg up on the career ladder; spend an evening on your own (great if you’re having a cashflow crisis!); or meet up with some friends for an evening out. Fancy a meal out? Choose from a variety of different restaurants and then get to choose what you want to eat and drink from an on screen menu! If you find your character has a few flies hanging around him/her then stay in and take a bath or clean the house.

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The game is fairly simple to operate but despite this, graphically it’s sharp and clear and the game play is excellent. It’s a nice twist being able to choose your method of transport to work according to the weather conditions and also to have a choice from a menu when you’re out with your pals.

The sound effects were very well done footsteps when you’re walking to work or engine sound when you’re taking the bus, and the music is completely ‘in tune’ with the environment Italian in the pizza restaurant, Chinese in the Chinese restaurant, etc etc.

The game is completely and utterly absorbing the minor changes that have been made between Kudos 1 and Kudos 2 have been well worth it; being able to see and hear the change in the weather each morning to enable you to choose how you get to work or what you do socially if it’s a weekend and it’s snowing outside, how about a snowball fight with some of your buddies!? It’s also a great improvement being able to choose want you want to eat and drink from a menu. There’s a superb range of evening courses available to progress your career and, all in all, if you buy the game, you get a high quality package at a budget price! It definitely receives the thumbs up and merits a 4/5 with me.

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Ready for more high speed cake decorating? Then hold on to your chef’s hat, because Cake Mania 3 is here!

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The Time Bender has flung Jill’s family back in time, and it’s your job to find and rescue them. Bake cakes to please the people in each era and retrieve your lost loved ones.

Game play for this third installment of Cake Mania is identical to the first two games: take the orders and then bake, frost, and decorate the cakes as quickly as possible. Keep your customers happy and they’ll pay you well, but if you’re too slow they’ll leave and take their money with them.

Although basic game play remains the same, the producers of Cake Mania 3 (Sandlot Games) have added a few innovative elements to set this game apart from the others. Three bonus mini games can be found on each stage. There are also two new items to help you serve your customers better: a phone for taking to go orders and a drink machine so your customers can buy coffee, tea, and hot cocoa.

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The most creative (and maddening) change to the game has to do with how the customers relate to each other. Certain customers can forbid you to serve other customers until you have completed their order first and some will even cause the other customers’ orders to change if you don’t serve them fast enough. This can leave you scrambling to redo orders and trying to figure out what to do with the cakes you’ve already started. These elements ramp up the difficulty of Cake Mania 3, making it quite a bit more challenging than the previous versions of the game.

The sounds in Cake Mania 3 aren’t anything spectacular, but they are very fitting for the game. Most of them are intended to alert you to something (a train whistle sound means a customer is tired of waiting, a “ting” means a cake is ready, etc.), so it’s a good idea to memorize what each sound means.

Each level in the game has different background music. It’s fairly pleasant, but for some reason the initial volume is noticeably louder than most video games I’ve played. It startled me the first time I played the game.

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The graphics in Cake Mania 3 are sharper and clearer than the graphics in the other Cake Mania games. You’re travelling through time, so you’ll come across many new and interesting characters, all of which are drawn very well. The rich colors, attention to detail, and the characters’ fun animations really enhance the game’s visual appeal.

I give Cake Mania 3 a 4/5. I have the full game, and I think it was worth the money. It’s a lot of fun, and much more challenging than the former versions. Honestly, I’ve found myself failing levels more than I’d care to admit. Losing makes me sour sometimes, but I still think Cake Mania 3 is pretty sweet.

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System Requirements

OS: Windows XP Windows Vista
Memory: 512 MB
DirectX: 10.0 or later
CPU: P 1.0GHz

Sandlot Game created The Cake Mania series including this game.

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Honestly, when I downloaded the trial for ‘Battle of Tiles’ I didn’t expect much fun out of a game composed of tiles. I was thoroughly surprised when I started playing, though. Battle of tiles features a simple GUI, quick learning curve, and well composed game play.
If you are a beginner to the world of PC gaming Battle of Tiles offers “easy” and “very easy” difficulty settings, while at the same time offering harder settings for the more experienced player.

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Game Play: 5/5
The game play of Battle of Tiles is definitely the best feature of the game. You start out with a small battalion that you move across the screen with basic directional controls. Tile classes include: Knight, Archer, Elite Archer, Priest, Goblin, and many more. As you encounter enemies your tiles will automatically attack other tiles based on the range of the tile’s class. Example: You encounter an enemy 2 squares away, archers will fire arrows at it, but warriors have to be next to the enemy to attack.

After killing an enemy, experience and money is earned. Money is used to ‘purchase’ an enemy, basically turn them to your side. With a little time and patience, you can easily rack up a battalion big enough to destroy your enemies. The simplicity combined with all of these features make for a wonderfully amusing game that you can jump into and out of quickly.

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Graphics: 3/5
You can’t expect much with 2d games, especially strategic ones such as this. There are tiles and a scrolling background. Although the graphics aren’t as advanced as other games out there, they work together in a ‘puzzle’ manner that makes it almost eye candy to look at. It isn’t hard to follow and is very recognizable. It uses icons to display the classes of the tiles, which makes it very memorizable.

Sound: 3/5
There are few sounds to comment on in the game. The nostalgic background music doesn’t exactly ‘fit-in’ with much of the game, excluding the background graphic. The battle sounds, though properly placed, are also replayed a little too often. On a good note, the simplicity of the sounds do match the simplicity of the game.

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Creativity: 4/5
Tile games are almost always limited to puzzle type games. It is quite refreshing to see that change, thanks to Battle of Tiles. Using a ‘level up system’ is an old idea that has been proven to be a great add-on to any game, especially a game with classes.

Innovation: 2/5
Battle of Tiles doesn’t introduce any new features to the gaming community. The only real innovation is how it introduced tiles into a strategic battle system with level and class based systems. Other than that, the game is pretty much standard on the path of innovation.

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Overall, Battle of Tiles has many standard and creative features that makes it a must-have for anyone looking for something quick and satisfying to play. I strongly recommend buying this if it is possible for you to do so.
Overall Rating: 5/5.

System Requirements

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista
1 GHz CPU
256 MB RAM
DirectX 9.0c

Bimboosoft created Battle of Tiles

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Spirited Heart, by Winter Wolves, calls itself a “Fantasy Life Simulation Game”, and at first read seems to be an interesting way to spend your game time.

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The premise is relatively simple – you choose one of three female avatars from the choices of Human, Elf, or Demoness, and her search for a high paying job and a romantic attachment begins.

Being somewhat a sucker for blondes, I chose the elf maiden as my character. Then, I was asked to choose whether she was found as a baby by some farmers, an artist, a general or a noble. Each of these choices affects the statistics of your character, such as strength, wisdom and charisma. My elf, whom I named Sariah, was found by a general who taught her the art of combat, increasing her strength, but reducing other statistics.

Before the game began, a number of “events” had to take place, and the responses chosen influenced those statistics sending some up, and others spiralling. This is important, because it blocks off certain career choices at the beginning of the game.

When my elf was finally released into the world proper, I was greeted with a series of options for her – find a job, relax, or train skills. There were also buttons to check on her relationships and her statistics.

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Sariah found a job as a guard at the local cemetery, and began work. Each button selection to work, train, or relax takes up a week of time – and your character has from ages 18 to 28 to become as affluent as possible and also to get hitched.

Here is where things began to fall down. Work seems entirely random. Sariah, happy and healthy (and believe me, it takes effort to keep her that way!) found on an average of 10 weeks worth of clicking, she had: 5 bad days where she got no pay, 2 days of half pay, 1 day of normal pay, 1 day of bonus pay, and one random event of either a chance meeting with a local romantic interest, or a situation where a moral choice was offered to the character. This makes it difficult to collect enough money to train skills that you need in order to advance.

This game is a romance life sim with the fun taken out of it. Your options are generally limited to two responses, and the main goal of the game is to woo one of the six male love interests that you meet.

Sariah ended the demo with a few skills short of the second tier of job opportunities, two romantic interests, and about 10 coins. Also, it is somewhat disheartening to note that the game’s most high paying job is “Sexy Girl.”

Game Statistics:

Graphics – Flat and static. They are cute, Japanese Manga style characters, and the artist does have talent. There is no real animation to speak of. It’s nice that each job you work has a different costume to wear, and your character’s mood affects her facial expression, but it doesn’t rescue the game. 2/5.

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Sound – Sound is mostly limited to click sounds and alert beeps, and the cartoon-like “ka-ching!” when you get paid. Music is lackluster and forgettable. 1/5.

Gameplay – With the job performance seeming entirely random, and struggling to keep my miserable elf happy, the gameplay itself is slow and unappealing. Limited options and canned responses from the so-called “hundreds of potential responses” is dull. 1/5.

Creativity – Winter Wolves took a genre that had once been popular in Japan, used a fantasy bias, and are trying to sell this as a Fantasy Life Simulator. The dialogue is stale and forced, and the events themselves within the game feel pushed upon you – again, with a random chance of success or failure, no matter which option you pick. 1/5.

Innovation – Really, there is nothing new here, and the heavily recycled genre paired up with the real lack of options and frustrating randomness sink this game. 1/5.

Overall – A forgettable game that offers nothing new, and nothing fun. Worth downloading just to sit aghast, but certainly not worth the $19.95 asking price to activate. 1/5 Stars.

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Winter Wolves created Spirited Heart.