The staff of Jay is Games plays dozens upon dozens of games each week. Our goal is to bring you only the games that are worth playing, meaning most of these titles are left in the forgotten realm of Didn't Quite Make It land. This is especially true with downloadable games, as it's a bit more of a commitment to buy a game than just click on a link and play. Some games look good, play well, and are entertaining enough to be featured, but for one reason or another they just didn't make the cut. Here are a few games that are, by all rights, excellent titles to play, but for one reason or another didn't quite get their own review.
DinerTown Tycoon (Mac/Windows, 30MB, demo) - Why run a restaurant when you can run a restaurant out of business?! Flo from Diner Dash moves into the big time when the evil Grub Burger threatens to steal customers with cheap prices, cheap marketing tactics, and a mysterious Ingredient X. Sounds appetizing, doesn't it? Mmm... grubs. DinerTown Tycoon combines time management gaming with a little Lemonade Stand-style tycoon flair to create a nice casual sim that's both easy to learn but tough to master. It's a great game on all fronts, to be sure, but it's over far, far too quickly, which is why it hasn't graced the pages of JIG in the form of a full download review.
Kitten Sanctuary (Windows, 33MB, demo) - Wow. Those little fuzzies are cute, aren't they? Curious eyes, big smile, cute little—oh! That one even has a bow on its tail! This tile-swapping puzzle game fuses a little "village" management sim into the gameplay and covers the whole thing in an irresistibly adorable kitten exterior. On the surface you do little more than make matches with bottles of milk, fish, and a handful of other cat-related items. The items you match help you rescue new kittens and manage your sanctuary, a village of sorts where you can actually play with the cats! It's tough to resist something as AWWW-inducing as this, but in the end, we felt the game provided little more than Bejeweled with cute animals.
Pahelika: Secret Legends (Windows, 73MB, demo) - An adventure/puzzle game that follows the now-familiar hidden object hybrid path. Pahelika sends you on a quest for the great artifact, a journey that will take you through six extinct civilizations, picking through their ruins like some some sort of raider. Of tombs. And ruins. A tomb/ruin raider. The set-up is a lot like Azada, which is definitely a good thing, and Pahelika features some superb scenes with artwork you'll be happy to look at. In the end, though, Pahelika didn't quite make it because the puzzles were too unpredictable and used everything from childlike logic to something we like to call "not logic".
Nice games! I'll download the last one.
I'm beginning to see the issue of "not logic" in Pahelika. At least in Fairy Gardens, there is quite a bit of that.
Specifically I'm stuck trying to get a yellow gem into the slot, with an invisible forcefield preventing me from doing so, and trying to find a blue gem. I have 2 pieces of paper, a fishing rod, and a yellow gem, and one last item that I can't seem to remember.
It's really weird. Over 2 weeks ago my brother posted a game here, and it hasn't even been in a Weekend Download yet! (and yes, it's a lot better than SOME of the games you've had in WDs)
Anyway, nice update.
It couldn't possibly be better than any of these hidden object games though. =P
On a more serious note, I think that games submitted need to be selected by a reviewer, who needs to write a review, before they can appear on JiG. For example, I submitted Galcon quite a while back, but it still hasn't appeared except in iPhone form.
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