Who in their right mind will send a fool to do a brave knight’s job? Well, in all honesty the king was desperate, and losing a foolish young kid is no big deal. The king’s realm is devastated with a fire-breathing dragon that decided to nest in the beautiful caves of the countryside. The king sends out a cry for help. Anyone who rids the kingdom of this menacing creature, brings his bloody tooth back will get the hand of the beautiful princess and half his land.

Many have tried and failed in the attempt, but soon a young man happens upon a flyer and decides he can do the job. In this interesting hidden object adventure, you search for outfits needed to complete tasks. You play different puzzles and hidden object games to get clothing and other inventory items to use in this play. First off anyone attempting to kill a dragon needs the proper armor for protection so you need to find, get money to buy and make deals with quirky characters like the guy in the dungeon for things you’ll need. After getting a piece of armor, you dress your man so he can venture out into the dark caves. Surprisingly enough this young fool has a plan and you need to find ingredients to make a potion. Long fairy tale short he gets the bloody tooth, marries the princess and lives happily ever after until……the extremely mad dragon wakes up to find his tooth missing. The village people chased the fool out of town.

Here you begin more adventures solving various types of puzzles like arranging bricks to match the other side of the screen, getting inventory pieces to get machinery working, picking locks and more. Many of these puzzles are easy enough to figure but you can skip it if you wait a few seconds in the Easy mode or a little longer in the Expert. In addition, the Easy mode will recharge the hint button quickly and show sparkles for areas that need more investigating or for HOGs. In the HOG scenes the list will be at the bottom of the screen with objects you need to find. In orange letters you will need to interact with things to reveal the object. There are four different cursors that will change for different methods to use like the magnifying glass to zoom in, an arrow to go to another area, the hand to pick up items and the gears for solving things with inventory items.

The beginning of the Easy mode will guide you through the initial stages of the game for anyone new to HOGs. The scenes are not scary so younger children can help you find things and work out the puzzles. They may recognize the fairy tale theme but it does go into more mysterious realm to keep you motivated to continue on in this crazy adventure. It’ll take you through the fairy tale castle, scientist’s lab, a steampunk city and more in this fascinating and hilarious story. Where else will you find a princess telling the fool he has eyes like her hamster?

A few of the negatives in this game are that you need to click on an exact spot to get the items, the game is relatively short (only 5 chapters. Maybe I was having such a good time, I didn’t want it to end?), when you clear an area, it doesn’t let you know clearly at the top like some other games. However the good parts outweigh the bad like the humor, great art scenes (looks like different artists from the beautiful, soothing fairy tale type of locations to mechanical steampunk pictures), cutscenes are narrated tongue and cheek by one of the characters, music and sounds are appropriate and different types of plays like dressing the Fool for certain occasions. The Fool is a funny, innovative game you’ll want to try out. I give it a 3.5 out of 5 for a different and surprisingly fun experience.

Features of The Fool:
-Great Tale of Dragon and Princess
-Different Types of Environments
-Many HOGs and Puzzles to Solve

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

If you can’t make it over the great pond to the British Isles, the next best thing is to play Julia’s Quest: United Kingdom. It will take you to all the great tourist locations like the Tower of London, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, Westminister Abbey, National Gallery and the now iconic London Eye. Not only will this game take you to the many fantastic places but it will also give you fun facts and interesting stories behind each location.

This is mainly a match 3 game with a short story about Julia searching for clues and answers by following her grandfather’s diary and his fascinating travels for the final prize. The match 3 plays will take you to different places in the United Kingdom with fun British tokens to line up either horizontally or vertically. Match 3 or more identical items to clear the board. Make matches below the jigsaw puzzle pieces and bring them down the screen to fill the small board to the lower left side. After you get all the puzzle pieces, you put together jigsaw revealing a beautiful place. There’s a Bonus Shop to buy or sell bonuses, however the cost of each item is very high. Completing the match 3 puzzle within a time period will win you a gold, silver or bronze medal.

This is a straight match 3 game with your standard bonuses, good facts about each location, awards and finally the code to open the bank safe. Even with all these things you don’t get the excitement factor like in other match games like the clashing power ups of Treasures of Montezuma or the adventure in Cave Quest. Julia’s Quest: United Kingdom has good artwork and great sound effects and music, but the buttons in the match 3 game stays basically the same and there’s no frenzy in the play. You can replay any games to get an higher score to get a better medal. I give this game a 3 out 5 for a solid match 3 game.

Features of Julia’s Quest: United Kingdom:
-Match 3 Games
-Jigsaw Puzzles
-Fantastic and Interesting Locations

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The haunting continues and you are there to witness all the wacky and kooky ghosts. Mac hidden object game Mishap 2: An Intentional Haunting continues with the morbid humor of the first Mishap and the crazy adventures of Milton Hobblepop. Although you do not have to play the first game, you do not want to miss this original and entertaining story.

The ghostly adventure will take you to the evil villain and biggest rival of Hobblepop, Avery Nailliv, and his mysterious and foreboding island. Brock and Kelly Burton (from the 1st Mishap) are part of this unlikely combination of characters that will go to this island to recover Hobblepop’s stolen paranormal research. Nailliv has a lot of rooms in his sinister fortress full of odd, sad and strange cartoon ghosts.

In each object filled scene you can expand the room by going to the edge of the screen on both sides. Find entrances to more HOGs by moving your cursor over an area and the cursor will change to a door. Find all the hidden objects and use the hint button if you need it. Some of the items are really hard to spot so you may need it and to reuse the button wait for the green balloon to inflate again. In addition collect all green Ultimo Energy cans. There is 1 in each scene and 4 per chapter.

You must also capture the ghosts roaming around in each room. Watch for the flashing monocle and click on it. Use the Ecto-Detecto meter to zero in on an invisible ghost. Move your cursor over the entire room and you will see the meter registering if you are on the ghost. Click it and the ghost will scatter to another area of the room. Click on it 3 times in order to capture the ghost. Some of the items you collect are used for Hobblepop’s gadgets and the riddle. To get to the next location you must solve the riddle or “rebus” to continue on. The many mini games are well thought out and takes a little thinking to complete.

There are major ghosts and minor ghosts all with bizarre stories. On the most part they are not scary; maybe creepy or freaky. You can read their stories throughout the play. If you want to avoid the ghost scare for misclicks, play the Relaxed mode with faster recharging buttons.

The overall story about the Mishap gang is comically fascinating but there’s more to reveal in this game. The developers are creative storytellers who keep you hanging on to the tales of each spirit. Although the play is similar to the first game, it is still very entertaining and enjoyable. The artwork is amazing just to look at but to find the objects past the animated parts are challenging at times. This game is a good time no matter how you look at it. I give it a 4 out of 5.

Features of Mishap 2: An Intentional Haunting:
-32 Object-filled Scenes
-Awesome Artwork
-Eccentric and Fun Story

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Also there were back to basic type of games like the one we launched a little while ago: Big Deck Solitaire. These games were straight plays with either no story or very little tale to distract your main goal. Don't get us wrong we loved the dramatic (Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials) and the humorous (Bob Came In Pieces) games. Games are using more and more voice acting as part of their stories like Mushroom Age. Artwork also is getting incredibly amazing: Wispa Forest. Keep the creativity flowing and produce more of the same awesome games.

Thank you all for supporting this site. We are looking forward to reviewing more fantastic Mac games. Happy New Year!

The common factors of a really entertaining game were originality, great graphics, interesting story, good sound effects and a fun play. With that in mind, we all agreed that Youda Legend: The Curse of Amsterdam Diamond and Sweetopia met all those items and more. Other nominations were all the Jewel Quest games, Mystery Stories: Island of Hope, Governor of Poker, Universal Boxing, the Big Kahuna games, Star Defenders 3 and 4, Boggle, Westward games, Luxor games, Fishdom games, Atomic Cannon, Pixie, Crystal Cave Classic, MacPinball, Bob the Builder, Bionic Heart, Wandering Willow and, of course, our featured games Zen stones, Simply Solitaire and Smashing Tennis.

On our staff are many different types of gamers with strong, differing opinions so the list has all kinds of plays for everyone. There are much more games we didn't include only because we could go on and on. If your favorite is not listed, it does not mean we didn't like the Mac game, there's only so much we could put on.

Thank you for supporting our blogs, and once again, have a safe and fun (playing Mac games) New Year! We look forward to reviewing new and exciting Mac games in 2010.