Posts Tagged ‘Sim’

Sprouts Adventure Review

Action, Adventure, Sim | Posted by Meg
Aug 24 2010

Sprouts Adventure

Sprouts Adventure is a sim play where you are the one controlling the lives of young, small creatures called Sprouts. Darkness fell on the land of Sprouts leaving just a few Sprouts to survive on their own after a terrible storm. They are out of food and do not know what to do. You are there to guide the Sprouts back to their original prosperous life in this interesting Mac game.

The play is to meet the needs of the Sprouts, build their homes and buildings to make their lives easier, happier and healthier. The 5 Sprouts in your careSprouts Adventure 2 are called: Tulip, Basil, Rosa, Cypress and Pina. They will let you know what they need with the picture above their heads, and they will verbally let you know with their cute, squeaky voices. In order to feed them, you must click on a Sprout and drag him/her to a patch of dirt to till and work the ground. Afterwards you click on the rain button, drag it to the patch, then click on the sun, drag the sun to the patch, and the plants will grow. Click on any hungry Sprout, drag him/her to the patch to eat. Also dropping any Sprout on a flower will provide food for them.

In addition, you need to click, drag a Sprout to magic stones, butterflies, gems and weeds. This will increase their life attributes. All of which are important for the welfare of your group. In addition earning Karma points will open up various spells for your Sprouts. This can be done by the Sprouts’ offerings, fulfilling wishes from the well and by fishing. There is a day meter to display the time of day. This is important because some spells can only be done during certain times of the day or night. The map when you click on it will show the overview of the entire Sprouts’ world. This will allow you to view when the wild flowers, gems, magic stones and weeds are available. The weeds are important to click and drag a Sprout to remove them.

When a Sprout gets an idea, there will be a light bulb above his head, and by clicking on it you will be able to find out what kind of thought it is. If it is to erect a building since they will need a place to rest, sleep and work in, you drag the supplies to an available site. The first building takes many days to erect but is essential for the Sprouts to sleep in and rest so they will be able to work on all the projects. The more Sprouts you have working will get the job done faster.

The Sprouts will be better when they are happy, curious, nourished, motivated, and rested. In this state the Sprouts will do wonderful things for you. This Mac game is like Virtual Villagers and My Tribe except it is a little easier to play since you can accomplish many things Sprouts Adventure 3without killing your little Sprouts. This game will be appropriate for younger children to learn a sim play of this type. There are achievements and discoveries to collect and find. Since the area is confined to a small area, and with the overview, it is easy to collect all the items for increasing life’s attributes. In addition, spells are locked and open up slowly one at a time for you to incorporate it in the play. Increasing your population comes from the earned eggs. You click on the egg, drag it to an open area and wait.

Sprouts Adventure is an adorable sim play for children and casual gamers to have fun raising a group of Sprouts who will become a useful, lively and responsible citizen of their world. I think the sounds effects and artwork are appropriate assets to this game. The play is enjoyable, if not a little slow, and fun to establish new inhabitants in their own village.

Features of Sprouts Adventure:
-Be a Deity
-Earn Karma to Unlock Spells
-11 Structures
-Dozen Sprouts

Rating: ★★★½☆

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Plan It Green Review

Sim | Posted by musicaltrack
Aug 17 2010

planitgreen

Plan It Green, what a clever and current name, I initially thought. Then my second thought about this game was of some boring environmental game that would no doubt put me to sleep immediately and lecture about how wasteful I am. However, I was completely wrong! Plan It Green, besides the double entendre, is a fun and inventive game that actually makes taking out the recycling fun. Moreover, the game is generally focused on making the town of Greenville more “green” but it feels more like a game of SimCity than in your eye environmental improvement exercise.  Can you see Al Gore on stage lecturing about buying energy units?

The game has two game options: Campaign mode and Free Play mode. Campaign mode is the main story and as you finish saving districts in Greenville as the new mayor, you unlock the districts to play in Free Play. In Free Play you do not have the goals to meet like in Campaign mode. The game begins in a semi-tutorial and helps you along the way as you proceed. There is a task bar for each level and when you perform all the tasks listed, you move on in the latter mode. These tasks vary from upgrading houses to make them Plan It Green 1more eco-friendly to building parks and recreation for citizens. There are different areas in which you can work as well, like the town center (where you focus on businesses) and the industrial sector (where factories and clean energy are the priorities). Some of the ecologically correct upgrades are solar panels, water reclamation system, recycling bins and eco gardens.

As I said before, this game really reminds me of a SimCity game that has gone green. What is most important is to finish all your goals in the allotted number of days. Personally, I felt like the time limit the game presented was a little too pressing, but it did help the game continue on a good pace. The fact that there were sometimes vague goals (like raise green awareness to 20%). It was a good
game with a definite agenda at forcing children to relate to a green community. Overall I would give Plan It Green four out of five stars.

Features of Plan It Green:
- Improve 8 Neighborhoods over 45 Levels
- Pick the latest eco-upgrades
- Create a Green City

Rating: ★★★★☆

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Hidden Wonders of the Depths 2 Review

Mah Jong, Match, Sim | Posted by Zeke
Jun 22 2010


Hidden Wonders of the Depths 2 is the little improved sequel to the first Mac game. If you played the first version, you know what you are in for in the second game. It’s a little more interesting to play, a little better color with similar artwork and exactly the same music.

This time the mermaid wants the crab to build her a ship. The main game is the match 3 or more similar items to destroy the glass tiles and traverse the crab or crabs (he has a friend) to the treasure chests. The play is to swap positions of objects to make 3 in a row either vertically or horizontally. A few of the match plays involve grouping 3 or more objects and click once on the batch of similar items to destroy. You can choose to play either Relaxed or Standard mode depending on how motivated you are. The match games are not that difficult and would be good for kids to play. The crabs will go into their funny dance or give you a raspberry when you take too long to match.

There are a lot of mini games but it does get a little repetitive when you play the memory game a half a dozen times. The hidden object is not a challenge at all. The only thing I could say about it is that the scene is very pretty. You may skip these games when the skip buttons fills up. Other side games include mahjong and sliding picture puzzles. These mini games helped break up the match 3 plays. Even though I like match games, sometimes it gets boring. Building the ship for the mermaid is another diversion from the main game.

Okay, this is my take on this sequel Hidden Wonders of the Depths 2: this game is so similar to the first that you really don’t need to play it. If you liked it, knock yourself out, but like the first, the play is simple and not very challenging. If you want a relaxing game, this is the one. If you didn’t play the first game, play the second., and lastly, if you are a kid, it’s fun and cute. That’s it. I give it a 3 out of 5.

Features of Hidden Wonders of the Depths 2:
-Underwater Match plays
-Lots of Mini Puzzles
-Build a Ship for the Mermaid

Rating: ★★★☆☆

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Great Adventures-Lost in Mountains

Adventure, Hidden Object/I Spy, Puzzle, RPG, Seek and Find, Sim | Posted by Meg
Jun 07 2010



Great Adventures – Lost in Mountains is an indescribable kind of Mac game. It incorporates a little of each genre of play. It touches a little on sim, rpg, puzzles, hidden objects and more.

The play begins with you selecting 2 characters, one a male and the other female. These 2 are a brother and sister team driving to a deserted hotel in a snowy isolated location high atop a mountain. Due to the snow storm the hotel is evacuated except for their father, the prominent Professor Burns. He calls Nancy to come quickly and rescue him, but before he could give her more information, the line goes dead. Once at the location, Nancy and Paul find the entire place deserted except for a lone dog, Sam. This is where the fun begins. You move your cursor around the grounds to find a key to enter the hotel. You need to look for things to use during your search and items for the health of Paul and Nancy. Food, rest and fun are needed to keep the characters going and searching for their father. For food, you can click on your character and drag them to the refrigerator to replenish, and they will go to the couch to rest when needed. Collecting the fish, lanterns, firewood will increase their fun scale.

There are other objects you find that need to be combined in order to use them. In order to turn on the TV, you need to find the remote control, but when you find the item, it’s out of batteries so you need to find those as well. You can combine them by clicking on both or by using the combine button at the top left. Some of the objects are locked in chests, behind safes or doors. In order to open these things you must find the item you’ll need to open them like keys, gears and other tools.

At the beginning of each level, you will be given objectives, goals or tasks to complete. These will be listed at the upper left corner to remind you of what you need to do. If you should get stuck, you can click on the hint bone at the lower left to get Sam to take you to what needs to be done and what to use from the inventory at the bottom center of the screen. The constant barking is annoying, but if you need the help, it’s there.

Throughout the entire game, you have many mini puzzles to complete. Most of the mini games are simple and should not be much of a challenge for anyone, but if you want to skip it, wait until the skip button fills up and exit the game. The mini games are trivia questions like what does the A on ABC stand for, spin the wheel to reveal a picture and other puzzles.

Each of your people will have their own skills that are needed in the game. Paul is more mechanical and strong while Nancy is a scientist and nimble. There are many entrances too small for Paul to fit through, but nimble Nancy easily fits through the gap. An annoying factor of this game is that once, Nancy squeezes through a crawl space, you have the option like in a rpg to decide whether she should enter or not. That part is okay, but in reverse when you need her at another location, you cannot click and drag her but you must answer another question whether to enter or not again. Since the game is a top-down view, you assume once she is in a spot, you can drag her out easily but that is not the case in this game.

Another irritating thing I found is the game will not let you string tasks together like picking up bones, lanterns, butterflies, etc. together. Once you click on your person and then on the object, you must wait until the task is completed before going on to another object. Other than those small annoyances, this game is fun to do solving puzzles and finding all your clues. The artwork is cute and colorful. It won’t stress you out (except maybe Sam’s barking) and the play is simple to complete for a relaxing time. I think since the game is fairly short, kids will be able to enjoy Great Adventures – Lost in Mountains as well.

Features of Great Adventures – Lost in Mountains:
-Many Objects to Find
-Over 15 Mini Games
-Mysterious Plot

Rating: ★★★½☆

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My Tribe Review

Action, Adventure, Sim | Posted by Meg
May 24 2010

my-tribe1
download My Tribebuy My Tribe

A tribe of people set sail for some adventure but is waylaid by a tremendous storm crashing their boat and washing them onto a deserted island in the sim Mac game My Tribe. This is the premise for starting your own tribe of castaways.

Initially you must choose your island from billions of islands. That’s what the game advertises but after looking at a few, you choose your island right away because you want to get started on your game. Your tribe will consist of mostly adults and a couple of kids. The adults will easily work for you but the children do not (very realistic). To get a person to work, you click on that body and drag him/her to a tree. They will immediately start to chop the tree for wood. They will place their logs on one of the 3 brown blankets on the ground. The other 2 are for food and rocks. You need rocks for building. In order to progress in this game you must build huts for shelter and the research station so studies can be done to build other things such as agriculture and scientific knowledge to advance your tribe.

To move around the island, click on the ground and drag towards your destination. The map on the lower left will give you an aerial view of the island, and clicking on the map will take you to that location.

The Detail screen can set tasks for your tribe members, and even though children do not work, you can set tasks for when they turn 14. The resource display will show how much wood, rocks and food you have. If the resource supply is low, the person building will stop working.

There are moondust and stardust falling randomly from the sky. You need to drag a tribe member on top of these items to collect them. These magical pieces can make tasks easier for some of the people. To use these items you click on either item at the top of the screen and then click on a person. If the tribe learns to build a celestial oberservatory, it will alert you when the stardust or moondust hits the earth.

After the tribe builds huts and the science center, it is important to have someone doing research in order to progress in this game. Research will show where other food sources may be and will teach them to make clothes. With higher technology someone can make potions from ingredient found on the island (bird guano, mushrooms and more).

Every so often crates or barrels will wash up onto the beach and you have the option to open them or not because some items may or may not be helpful to the tribe. Also if you see a tombstone that means someone has died. You have the choice of moving the headstone to another area or hide it completely. In order to keep the tribe going, you drop a person on another and they will eventually have a baby.

My Tribe is very similar to Virtual Villagers and is just as interesting a play. The difference I think is My Tribe the people worked much harder. In fact if you did not stop them from one task, they keep at it until they are completely exhausted and sleeping standing up. My Tribe also has definite goals to work for and one goal leads to another. Of course, the research is important to get access to higher technology and therefore have a better life. I also like how they handle death with tombstones rather than seeing the skeletons sprawled in VV. I like this game a lot for its real time play, ease of learning and the many extras it has to offer.

Features of My Tribe:
-Design Your Own Paradise
-Billions of Islands to Choose From
-More than 10 Potions to Research

Rating: ★★★½☆

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