Wisegal is actually the second time I’ve contributed to a Lifetime casual game. I also helped to test Lifetime / Large Animal Game’s Fashion Solitaire in 2008, although I didn’t make it into the credits. Maybe I shouldn’t make fun of Lifetime TV anymore…  Maybe.

This game also marks the second time Amanda d’Adesky and I have contributed to a game together. This is hilarious because I discovered Amanda’s blog through her reaction to Brenda Brathwaite’s Train when I was researching my ThumbGods’ piece on Train. Turns out that she lives in NC, and also focus tests at Merscom, and works on about ten thousand indie game projects, and is just all-around awesome.

I would always be proud of my name in a game’s credit’s, but Wisegal happened to come out just in time to save my self-image from becoming tied too closely to my new waitressing gig. I can’t really complain about the endless mango lassis, but sometimes it’s a bit hard to see people seeing me as a not-so-bright bearer of menus. I do try to work that time the BBC called me to comment on Chinese-Western relations into conversation, but usually people just want me to get them drink refills. Whatever.

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Wisegal

Unfortunately, Create-a-Mall took mindless consumerism and crossed it with repetitive, challengeless gameplay. You play as Kelly, a corporate drone tasked with leasing stores to create a mall.

Time and resource management games all have some similarities. No matter what the game theme is, players will need to manage resources and time to complete goals. But Create-a-Mall felt like a clone of the repetitive playstyle and unrewarding rewards of Build-A-Lot 2, reskinned as a mall instead of a neighborhood.

In both games, players need the building plans, resources, and workers to create buildings, but all of those things are purchased, so there’s really only one resource, money, which makes it more of an earn-and-spend cycle and not actually a game.

Both Create-a-Mall and Build-a-Lot give you the option to upgrade your existing houses or shops to make more money from them. Sadly these upgrades don’t add colored awnings or sandwich boards, they just add flying gold stars. Exactly like upgrading in Build-a-Lot!

One of my problems with the last game I bashed, the disastrous Tropical Dream, was that the reward system was an image of an empty room, to which you could add images of reward items. Ok, so Kelly’s office in Create-a-Mall didn’t make me want to cry, the way the bazillion spots for diving trip best shots did, but having a limited selection of bland reward items to decorate my office didn’t exactly motivate me.

If you do well, you receive “store credits” at the end of each level, which can be redeemed for items to put in Kelly’s office or for clothes for Kelly. This part was quite a lot like a real mall. Sometimes I have to make a return with no receipt, and I end up searching for something to use up my store credit.

This could just be my deep dislike of corporate life coming through into this game. Maybe there are hordes of players just dying to decorate their virtual cubicles. Right.

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Create-a-Mall

I’m a bit late posting this because every time I went to get another screenshot or check a fact, I got sucked into playing a few hands of Faerie Solitaire.

Faerie Solitaire from SubSoap is a new casual game, mixing a cute fantasy story with basic solitaire. I’ve said before that the best games have simple rules, with many variations and strategies. In Faerie Solitaire, you are given a foundation card, and you can either play one card higher or one card lower than the foundation card. A played card becomes the new foundation card, and you do it again. You could easily teach a child to look for a number one higher or one lower than the selected card.

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sometimes find it annoying when there’s a lot of game to be unlocked. In some cases, it seems like a tacit acknowledgement from the developers that some parts of the game are good and some parts are lame, and to make the game longer, you’ve got to grind through the lame to get to the good bits. When I reviewed GardenParty World, I talked about not enjoying games with the game mechanic of working at a dull minigame to earn spending points. GardenParty World is hardly the only offender here, I was also frustrated by unlocking the chance to play indentical levels in Fashion Solitaire. But Faerie Solitaire had a system of power-ups and unlockable features that kept me excited about the next add-on without leaving me feeling like the developers had greyed out most of the game.

Read the rest at Thumb Gods » Game Review: Faerie Solitaire

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Faerie Solitaire Review

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Fashion Solitaire On The Shelf

Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses! October ‘08 Read my review (Credited)

Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting to Danger! August ‘09 Read my review (Credited)

For Merscom:

Mystery of Cleopatra October ‘09 Read my review (Credited)

Wisegal November ‘09 (Credited)

Focus testing for other Merscom games including The Tudors, Hostile Makeover and Empire Builder: Ancient Egypt

For Large Animal Games:

Fashion Solitaire February ‘08 Read my review

The Flying Trapeezis January ‘08

SnapShot Adventures January ‘07

Jackpot Match-Up: Penny’s Vegas Adventure November ‘06

For Worldwide Biggies:

Star Vs. Star February ‘08

For Cartoon Network

Fusionfall January ‘09 Read My Review

For Asylum Entertainment

Garden Party World September ‘08  Read my review

For Kingsisle Entertainment:

Wizard 101 July ‘08 Read my review

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Beta Testing

Fashion Solitaire is a casual game along the lines of Spider Solitaire or Freecell, but cuter. The cartoony models and paper-doll clothes rock! I spend a long time dressing my Sims, and I spent more time styling my superheroes than fighting crime in City Of Heroes. The models appear in undies and a towel-turban until you assign them hair.

Each model needs to be decent (a top, a bottom, shoes and hair), and then you can add optional accessories like jackets and jewelry. But models want to wear certain things. One might want to wear a skirt, or something red, or something plaid, and you get bonus points for dressing them in what makes them happy. Your bonus points become money, and you can spend your money making new clothes. This is the part where Stick came over to kibbutz.

The game rewards you for dressing your girls like freaks. You receive bonus points for dressing your models in their chosen color or pattern, so it’s better to put as many colors as possible on one item when you make your clothes. You also receive bonus points for grabbing as many clothes cards at once as possible, so you should throw the first thing you see on your models, resulting in “got dressed in the dark” chic. Sometimes disaster play is more fun than trying for success.

If you like it so far, you’ll continue to like it. Each level is exactly the same, only the clothes cards are different. I got the miniskirts and capris but I lost interest before I unlocked the ball gowns.

Overall, Fashion Solitaire is a cute break from Minesweeper, which means if we’re on the phone, there’s a good chance that I’m dressing cartoony models.

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Fashion Solitaire