Even if you haven’t played the original, which isn’t too different than this sequel, Farm Frenzy 2 is fairly easy to pick up, but a word of warning – it gets pretty darn tough a few levels in. You’re in control of a farm and your goal is to meet each day’s goals, which might be to make a specific amount of money or raise a certain number of animals.

An example of a typical scenario is as follows: you’ll drop grass down on the ground for your two or three chickens to feed (do chickens eat grass?). If you run out of water you have to pay to use the well and if you don’t replenish the food your chickens will die. Chickens lay eggs, which you click on and goes in your storage area. Depending on your goal, you might spend some money on building, say, a powdered egg shed, which turns your eggs into something you can sell at the market or used to make other items.

In order to keep the cash coming in you’ll send a truck or plane (which both curiously travel at the same speed) to the city to see your goods and you’ll have to wait for them to return before spending the money. As with most economic simulations you can select which items you want to sell at the supermarket and how many items to sell.

Annoying predators like bears that arrive on the farm and whack your chickens away need to be trapped (and if you like, sold for cash); you can trap them by quickly clicking on them before they can do any serious harm.

Oh, did we mention there’s also a clock for each level? Yes, in order to earn bonus points you’ll have to complete all of your tasks by a certain time, such as 2:00 minutes or less. Also adding to the difficulty is your limited storage space, therefore you’ll need to sell items to make room (problem is, vehicles can only carry a few things at once).

Eventually you’ll unlock access to more items to sell (such as meat and deserts), better buildings (each of which have three upgrades to make them faster or process more food at the same time) and friends on the farm, such as dogs, who keep the bears away.

The game offers more items than its predecessor, now totalling five products to buy in the city, four animals, four types of bears, 12 buildings and 16 products to produce. If it’s not incentive enough to access all of this material, players can also earn nearly 20 awards, for completing levels in a certain amount of time or playing 10 consecutive levels without losing an animal or other accomplishments (all of which are accessible from the main screen).

Finish half of the main game to unlock a second Unlimited mode, which challenges you to see how well you can work the farm without the daily objectives.

While the one song is enough to drive you batty after a short while, the graphics are a delight. From the 3-D animals to the animation of the buildings churning out produce to the vehicles that drive to the big city. Farm Frenzy 2 does a bang up job in the visual department.

However, gamers might not like the relatively high difficulty level of this game, when things get quite chaotic on your farm and you’re expected to madly click to pick up eggs, protect chickens and send vehicles to the city – all at the same time. What compounds this problem is the lack of a Hint button, which could’ve in handy when you don’t know what to do next (there is a general Help screen, though).

But when it comes to game-play and presentation, Farm Frenzy 2 is a blast and will certainly give you a newfound appreciation for Old MacDonald.

(Review copied from Marc Saltman - Gamezebo)

Like the original, the goal in each level is to click on groups of three or more like-colored stones to clear them from the board. Doing so digs down a layer of “strata” to eventually reveal the glyph buried underneath. Uncover the entire glyph without your timer running out to beat the level.

Eventually familiar obstacles will appear, like stones that can’t be removed simply by matching, broken stones that aren’t strong enough to dig strata, inferno stones that gradually spread across the board, and shadow stones that engulf any stone you attempt to match it to and can be destroyed by light stones, which appear randomly on the board.

The 14 Artifacts from Glyph have been replaced by seven Gestures, which serve the same purpose of acting as power-ups but are activated a little differently: When you have built up a certain amount of energy by making matches, you can unleash a Gesture by tracing its shape with your mouse. To cast a Row Gesture, for example, you must drag the mouse horizontally across the screen and then click on the row of tiles you wish to destroy.

Other Gestures include Paint that turns all stones on the board a single color, a Sort Gesture that groups stones by color, and a destructive Spike tile that destroys stones and digs a level of strata.

When the darkness spread across Kuros, it also crumbled all of the monuments to each of the five elements: wood, fire, water, metal and aether. In between puzzle-solving levels, you’ll use the energy you’ve earned to rebuild these monuments one at a time as you visit each zone in turn. Each monument grants you some kind of bonus, like the Circle of Stone, which causes inferno stones to spread at a slower rate, or the Wheel of Time, which slows the timer, so there’s strategy involved in deciding which monuments to build and upgrade using your limited supply of energy.

You’ll also play a mini-game every five levels called the Altar of Creation, where symbols scroll down the slot machine-like altar and you have to trace them with your mouse before they scroll out of view. (This replaces the Simon Says mini-game from Glyph.)

Finally, the puzzle-solving levels themselves have optional mini-tasks to complete as a way to earn bonus energy. Examples of mini-tasks include matching 50 blue stones in 1 minute, casting three Level 2 Gestures, and making a match of 30 stones or more.

While second game modes are often throwaway in nature, Glyph 2’s Action mode is pretty sophisticated in its own right, with 125 levels where the goal is to clear lines of tiles as new tiles are constantly being pushed up from the bottom or falling from the top, complete with numerous power-ups and special stones. For both modes, you can record your high score and compare it to other players around the world.

Glyph 2 boasts superb audio and visuals; as players advance they’ll be rewarded with exciting flashes of light, rich and colorful levels and visual effects, and sound effects that give energetic feedback for every match made.

With production polish combined with the new gameplay features, Glyph 2 is an improvement over the original in every way except one: levels still take too long to get truly challenging, except for the final aether zone where difficulty ramps up noticeably. Perhaps there’s good reason for this though, since if you lose all your lives in Quest mode it’s really and truly Game Over.

Like Hidden Expedition: Everest, you’ll compete against others. But instead of two other teams, you compete against two contestants for a chance to win fabulous trips to Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, and Spain. Ok, so you won’t be winning any real trips, but at least you do a little traveling through the beautiful scenes representing the country up for grabs.

Kick off the game with a spin of the wheel to assign a dollar value to the found objects. Play classic mode and hunt for objects in the scenes for several scenes. Make a successful match and an audience applauds. The game awards bonus points for quickly finding multiple objects. The second round dives into the mini-game, followed by a Scavenger Hunt in which you find a category of items such as tools, animals, or toys. The third brings on another mini-game before going back to hunt for objects, and the final three rounds go through two scenes of Classic mode and one of Category Mode.

Two red and green buttons appear next to every object. When each one lights up, this means a competitor has found the object. This makes for a panicky game at first, but you’ll learn to ignore the buttons after a while. At least, until the Champions Tourney where opponents find objects much faster. Or, you can switch to Relaxed Mode to take away the stress factor.

The color-coded wheel also dictates the mini-game that gets played. Red sends you off on the Price Tag Challenge, a memory style game except it has a twist. Price tags come in two sizes: The large tags don’t have a pair until you match the corresponding smaller pair.

Green takes you on a Scene Match Safari. Two identical scenes - except for a handful of objects - appear side-by-side. You drag and drop objects to where they belong to ensure they match in both scenes.

How much trivia do you know? Spin the wheel and land on blue for Trivia Takeoff for five questions. If you miss the question, the game ends and you lose the money. You can keep the money you’ve won rather than answer the remaining questions.

Finally, you can win some dough with Blizzard Bucks whenever you land on gray. You’ll have 15 seconds to click the falling money like crazy to grab the cash. We played the entire game only to land on blue once and on grey exactly zero times. The odds are in favor of the Price Tag Challenge, which we play too many times. You can play minigames anytime once you unlock them. The same goes for the countries. After unlocking a country, you can return there for Gauntlet Run where you can seek every object in that country.

After finishing a game the winner (usually you) goes on to the Jackpot Round, a five-minute U.S. Road Trip through six cities including New York, New Orleans, Hawaii, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Hollywood to find one object in one scene at a time. Find the object or click “Pass” to move on, the game whisks you to another city to find another object.

Supposedly, players can compete against 20 contestants, but this isn’t clear. The same two contestants seemed to play every time. Then the champions tourney has six contestants. At the start of the game, 20 avatars are available for the choosing and six locked avatars wait for an unlocking.

Between rounds, Jerry says, “Stay tuned for more Discovery.” Instead of commercials, the game presents a fact about the country up for grabs. Cute, but we could do without it because it slows down the game. At least, the soundtrack keeps up the energy and makes great background noise that you don’t need the TV.

A few nitpicks: Category matches creates a frustrating experience at times. For example, the sporting equipment category approves a flashlight, but not a boomerang or chess board. We clicked on the bike a few times only to see a nasty “X.” We give up, ask for a hint, and see the bike selected. Hence, our frustration with clicking objects not always working. It doesn’t happen most of the time, but more than the standard hidden object game.

“Shell” appears on the list of items to find, so we click a peanut shell. Nope. Grr. The scenes and object placements change very little, if at all. A few rounds of the game and we know where to find things. Play long enough and eventually new objects will appear in the list to keep the game going otherwise it turns repetitious after winning trips to all six countries and the Champions Tourney.

Many scenes contain animation. Whether lights flickering or fireworks flying, these disrupt the players concentration to make it harder to find objects. It would be nice to have the option to turn off animation.

Seasoned hidden object players complaining that games are too easy should find a match in Discovery! A Seek and Find Adventure, but the game is acessible to more players thanks to a Relaxed mode available. Game show lovers will love being able to spin the wheel and shout “Big money!”

Problem is, if you’ve played any of the previous “Dash” games, then you’ve more or less played this one, too. That, and some technical issues, makes this casual game download a difficult one to recommend.

Fashion Dash begins like most of these time management games: a young and talented woman stumbles into a career and with the support and guidance from Flo (of Diner Dash fame) she begins to make a name for herself in the biz by helping unique customers, making money and working her way up from one location to another.

Second verse, same as the first.

The gameplay works as follows: customers stream into a boutique and ask Coco for an available dressing room; bonus points are awarded for matching their shirt color with the same color dressing room and by placing customers near each other to flirt or gossip. Then Coco must hand each of them a booklet that outlines the various clothing designs she has and they’ll ask for a specific piece of clothing and color: a guy may request a blue jacket, while a girl might ask for a pink dress.

Coco then clicks on the customers to take their measurements and brings the info to the seamstress in the back of the store (by clicking the correct color material). When the clothing is ready, Coco must click on the items hanging on a rack and deliver them to the correct customer. At this point they may pay and leave, making room for other customers, or they may request additional items such as jewelry or perfume, before paying. Finally, Coco must pick up the empty hangers and bring them to a rack near the back of the store.

As with other “Dash” games, Coco gets a chaining bonus for performing two of the same tasks together, such as delivering two consecutive pieces of clothing or giving advice to two customers one after another (a question mark appears over their head when they don’t know what to buy). If you make enough money before the end of the day, you can purchase a few upgrades – such as a faster Coco or seamstress, or comfier chairs and a radio to help add patience to waiting customers – before advancing to the next day. If you don’t reach the daily cash minimum, you must play the day over again.

Different kinds of customers with unique traits will visit the five unique stores (beginning in the humble Dinertown and making your way up to Paris, France), including a guitar-playing female who irritates those beside her, an elderly granny who has a lot of patience and a Paris Hilton-esque “heiress” and businessman with no patience. The stores look a bit different, including a different layout, new customer types and items. Along with the main 50-level Story mode is an Endless mode, where players can see how long they can keep a continuous stream of customers happy by dressing them up in a timely manner.

Aside from the fact this game has zero ingenuity, there are technical issues, too, such as mouse clicks that don’t register. For example, you can click around the screen to queue up Coco’s tasks, but inevitably some won’t “stick” – especially when it’s time to give the tailored clothing back to the customers. To make sure I wasn’t wrong about this glaring bug, I had my wife play the game while I studied the screen and indeed when she clicked one or two pieces of clothing on the rack to bring to a customer, a couple of moments later I saw the little checkmarks disappear before my eyes, leaving Coco standing there and customers growing impatient.

Fashion Dash is yet another example of a disappointing – and self-destructive - casual game trend of pumping out similar (or virtually identical) games every other month or so in the hopes customers will continue to cough up the $20 for more of the same. If publishers like PlayFirst spent half as much time dreaming up new ideas as they do shoveling us the same game in a new wrapper, we might just see this industry evolve both creatively and financially.

In The Race, you can choose to play in Challenge Mode (racing against computer players) or in World Explorer Mode (playing against yourself for the best score). The premise of Challenge mode is similar to that of the television program, “The Amazing Race.” Teams of contestants race around the world trying to be number one. The goal is to find all of the objects on your list before your opponent teams. You can see how well the other teams are doing by checking out the race time line at the bottom of your screen.

Instead of hints, you’re given special tools to use in case you get stuck. The “hot and cold cursor” is very cool… erm, hot. It bursts into flame when you’re near an item on your list. The strength of the flame indicates how close you are. You’ll still have to click around a bit, but it gives you a good general direction. There’s also a useful compass cursor which points you towards the first item on your list. When it spins, you know you’re at exactly the right spot.

Challenge mode tools include “the bomb,” which will knock the player who is the biggest threat to you backwards in the race time line! If you’re playing in World Explorer Mode, the bomb tool is replaced with “the revealer,” which shows you the exact location of the first object on your list.

At the start of each round you’ll be given one of each tool, but you’ll be offered more as you play. World Explorers can earn them by finding bonus silhouetted items. Challenge mode players are automatically granted extra tools if they haven’t found anything in a while. This can still happen if you’re in the lead, which is neat, since it prevents lots of frustration if you’re really stuck.

The magnifying glass lets you get a closer look at the scene. Unfortunately, while it makes objects bigger, it also makes them blurrier which kind of defeats the purpose. You can use it whenever you’d like, but don’t expect it to help very much.

You don’t need to come in first in every round in order to advance. Placing high is usually good enough. I was able to advance after winning only third place in Canada.

The quality of the objects vary. Some are clear, but lots are not. A pair of gloves is hard to recognize once folded in quarters, or a jacket if you only see the collar. Then there are the ambiguous objects on your list to contend with. For example, in Toronto, you may be asked to find a hockey trophy. The trouble is, there are other trophies in the room, and no obvious hockey design on the correct one. Or, you may have trouble finding the correct golden pyramid in Cairo amidst several other gold-colored pyramids.

In other rounds, like the Statue of Liberty scene, all of the objects are color blended, making the situation even more difficult. The trumpet, when done in green and stood upright, looked more like a microphone to me. Because of this, there’s a real temptation for random clicking. You can generally click without penalty, but if you do this too rapidly in succession, you’ll lose your cursor for 5 seconds. It’s a small penalty, but can sting if your opponents are right behind you.

Despite a bit of trouble in the artwork, the excellent voice narrating adds a lot of excitement, as does the variety of locations you get to explore. You can expect to visit scenes like Niagara Falls in Canada, the Grand Canyon in the USA, Stonehenge and Buckingham Palace in England, Easter Island in South America, the Sphinx in Egypt, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, the Kremlin Museum in Russia, and the Great Wall of China. Keep in mind, your view of these sites might be looking through someone’s bedroom window. Still, it’s a new twist. Having to monitor your opponents’ progress is also pretty neat, and a nice change from the usual “beat the clock” challenge.

On the whole, the liberal use of tools offsets frustrations, but also makes the game a bit too easy to beat. You can expect around five hours of play time, which is a good length for a casual game, although replay value is limited once you’ve won the game.

If you’re a hidden object fan who wants something slightly different than the usual haunted house theme, The Race is a cool game to check out. It’s on the simple side, so don’t expect to be blown away by the challenge. Rather, easy going (and not easily frustrated) players will just enjoy it for what it is, which is a light hearted and low-pressure hidden object hunt around the globe.

The story begins with an introduction from the titular monarch, who tells players that if they assist her eight fairy friends in finding items they’ve lost in a dozen different picturesque locations, they will each reveal one letter of the queen’s name, which has never before been read by human eyes nor heard by human ears.

The game’s narrative and aesthetic is obviously geared for girls, but there’s no reason Enchanted Fairy Friends can’t test the item-finding mettle of mothers and grandmothers as well, thanks to three escalating difficulty levels that do a nice job of providing a challenge for players of all ages and skill levels.

The easiest level allows players to hunt for objects without a time limit and provides exact pictures of the items for which players must search. Bumping up a level to medium forces players to hunt for objects based on their silhouettes, and adds a 35-minute time limit in which to complete each series of puzzles.

Playing on the hardest setting leaves players with only text descriptions of the objects they must find, and reduces the time limit to a meagre 25 minutes—more than enough time early on in the game, but a decidedly short span in which to complete the later chapters, which tender a greater number of puzzles.

Unfortunately, these puzzles don’t measure up to the standards set by better games in the genre. The search scenes, which include fields, roads, and ponds, are pretty enough, but the hidden items are completely arbitrary and have little to do with the narrative.

Players will hunt for everything from ocean waves and popcorn machines to lipstick tubes and model airplanes. Why fairies have need for any of these items is anyone’s guess. The game would have benefited from either a different collection of objects with a fairy theme, or a narrative that offered a legitimate reason as to why magical creatures would want us to find items like dice, old shoes, and scuba gear.

What’s worse, objects aren’t to scale and lack color accuracy. In one puzzle an enormous baseball bat appears to be half the length of the sky and is tinted to match the hue of a sunset, while in another a treadmill is made to be roughly the size of a basketball. Some objects are so small that they are essentially unrecognizable — especially if you’re playing on the hardest skill level and going by text description alone.

This is a cheap and unfair method of concealment that smacks of lazy game design. Better game makers would have ensured that the objects for which we search were the proper size and shade and cleverly hidden them within the natural architecture and colors of the scene.

Thankfully, there’s more to Enchanted Fairy Friends than just hidden object puzzles. Once a sufficient number of hidden object tasks have been completed, the game guides players through a short series of discrete puzzles that are more in accord with the fairy theme.

The first is a stained glass picture puzzle. Players click on pieces scattered at the bottom of the screen and plop them down in the corresponding outlined shapes above. The finished pictures—typically of fairies or flowers—are pretty, but the puzzles are a little on the easy side; they shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to finish.

Upon completion of the picture puzzle, players move on to a spot-the-differences-in-twin-images challenge. We’re provided a pair of nearly identical portraits of fairies and ordered to identify incongruities. The variations are generally obvious; one fairy will have a flower in her hair, one will be wearing a bracelet, and so forth. Expect to finish these puzzles in under a minute.

Following the portrait puzzle, players are tasked to organize a series of objects in a particular order. Most of these challenges are simple as well (lining up dew drops in order from largest to smallest, for example, seems like a job for a preschooler), but some—such as one puzzle that makes players arrange groups of flower stems by their number and location—can be pleasingly perplexing.

The game runs players through this succession of puzzle types twice for each of the eight fairies, adding extra hidden object puzzles each chapter to make it more difficult to beat the clock.

If you manage to make it through the game without failing to finish a chapter in the allotted time—which is likely on the easy and medium difficulties—you’ll finish in under four hours. Given that some games in the genre run closer to ten hours, the value proposition is a little shaky.

The short play time combined with the poorly designed hidden object puzzles makes Enchanted Fairy Friends: Secret of the Fairy Queen a difficult game to endorse. A pity, as it puts to waste a pleasant aesthetic.

Baby Blimp is a highly addictive priority management game. Keep track of your achievements on a map that shows you upcoming as well as your overall objectives. During the course of this game you will be able to upgrade your storks. You can strengthen them or increase their speed. Collect all the bonuses: the twin bonus and even the quadruplet bonus. It might even get you into the headlines of tomorrow’s paper.

As we all know babies are delivered by storks, so you must help them in Baby Blimp game!

A magical fantasy for action puzzlers, Fairy Jewels 2 serves up a solid dose of gem-matching goodness that spans 120 levels of jewel-clearing, fairy-freeing entertainment. Included in the mix are an original storyline and characters, over 20 unique items to employ and bonus mini-game levels. Also provided are a spell component and two game modes.

As play begins, you have the choice of indulging via Story Mode or Time Mode. The former, as expecyed, guides you through the game unfolding the fairy-tale as you go. The latter, conversely, allows you to simply play against the clock. Since both modes offer different gem-matching levels to play, it’s really like getting two games in one. As for Story Mode, where most of your time will undoubtedly be spent, you play the role of a sorceress named Kalina who, with the help of several other characters, rescue the fairies and restore their kingdom.

Gameplay is simple enough. You control a magic wand that “casts” jewels, aiming left and right with the mouse. The left mouse button fires a gem; the right swaps colors between the jewel currently selected and the next one in the queue. Your goal is to clear all the gems on a given level in order to free the fairies trapped behind them. Release all the fairies and you advance to the next level. Time is limited, so you can’t dawdle. But, you shouldn’t run short unless you get distracted for a while. You also need to collect as many coins on each level as possible. They’re required to repair various buildings along the way, those that were destroyed earlier by the evil witch.

Gems aren’t the only “weapons” in your fairy rescue arsenal, however. Remember those 20 plus unique items mentioned above? As you progress, these special objects are introduced one at a time to assist in your quest. On hand are goodies such as bombs that you can capture and deploy as needed to destroy gems; rockets and morphers that repaint whole rows or groups of jewels, bricks and steel blocks with the color of the gem launched; and quite a few more.

A completely new addition to Fairy Jewels 2 is spells. They perform actions like turning jewels and bricks into ice, burning them up, eliminating entire jewel groups, and temporarily giving your wand a crosshair and guideline to improve accuracy. As you clear gems from the screen, mana is released that serves to “charge up” the spells in your belt. Three are on hand during play, but you can select from a total of 12 once you learn them all, and alternate your selection between fairy-rescue missions.

You’ll also come across a special bonus mini-game every few levels. Designed as a means of providing extra game points, you’re tasked with shooting as many magic flares as possible before time runs out. But, you need to avoid the evil red flares. Hitting those significantly reduces the time available.

Visually, Fairy Jewels 2 is a step up from its precursor. In fact, production values have increased making it quite a splendid game with lots of eye and ear candy to enjoy. More important, however, is its ease of play and immensely addictive nature. As with the original Fairy Jewels, it’s decidedly difficult to call it quits after playing “just one more level.”

The only real complaint with the first game, a single mode of play, has been answered in the sequel by offering a second timed mode for those who want the gem-play sans the story. The only negative to levy against it concerns the bonus levels. Other than generating extra points, they really serve no purpose within the game and quickly become boring. Otherwise, it’s a winner.

Fairy Jewels 2, like its forerunner, is a gem of a game. It’s a magical, charming, addictive, eminently entertaining treat for the whole family. Wand and fairy dust not included.

The game is divided into 10 stages with a maximum of 10 rounds per stage. I say “maximum” because you don’t necessarily have to play all 10 rounds in order to complete a stage. Instead, each stage has a goal that you must complete to win, such as earning $6,000 or more, obtain a Perfect (clear all cards off the board in a round), or achieve a streak of 8 cards or more, which involves making matches without having to draw a new card from the pile.

Once you get the hang of the game, which requires you to click on cards that are one number higher or lower than the card on the pile, regardless of suit, to clear them from the board, it’s possible to achieve the stage’s goal in the second or third round of play in some cases. Sure, you’re free to continue playing out the rest of the rounds, but there’s no longer any motivation to do so. You can also skip ahead to the next stage automatically, which has the effect of drastically shortening the game’s play length.

As if that didn’t make the game too easy, you’ll also find that cards are randomly turned face up in the columns instead of the usual face down, and later on you can buy a power-up from the General Store that turns even more of them face up at the beginning of each stage.

The General Store also sells, among other things, special bullet cards that you can lay down at any time if you’re stuck to substitute for a face card of a certain value to allow you to continue your streak. With a supply of bullet cards in your arsenal, each round becomes a cinch.

Add to that the fact that you’ll find yourself earning ridiculous amounts of money – much more than you’ll ever need – and the verdict is in: Gunslinger Solitaire is simply not challenging enough.

Each deck is peppered with special cards that unleash a short mini-game. There are a few variations, but each one involves shooting something, whether it’s falling bags of money, wooden ducks or tin cans. The mini-games are nothing special, and a few of them are downright annoying. In Find the Bandit, for example, you have three tries to turn up the Bandit card from six possibilities. The outcome is left totally to chance, and if you fail you’ll be treated to an unpleasant chorus of “boos.”

The Tin Can Range game deserves special mention because it’s virtually impossible to play. The goal is to keep tin cans in the air by shooting them with a rifle, but not only do the cans fall way too quickly, but they will sometimes move right out of the window so that there’s no way of clicking on them at all.

On the upside, I did enjoy the Trigger Happy Bonus, a score multiplyer that you can run up by taking as many consecutive turns as you can without having to draw a new card from the deck – it’s fun to try to beat your highest run the next time around. The game also keeps track of gameplay stats for people who like to obsess over numbers.

If it’s just a simple solitaire fix that you’re after, Gunslinger Solitaire will do the trick. But with so-so production values, a virtually non-existent story, and some substantial gameplay flaws, it doesn’t hold a candle to more polished examples of the genre, like Big Fish Games’ golf-themed Fairway Solitaire.

The bulk of the game is spent at the poker table displayed in overhead pov, but those ten-gallon hats have a bunch of personality. Hand and body movements mimic real play, which is a nice touch. The most fascinating thing to me was that the characters had verbal and visual “tells.” When he twirled his chips, was he strong or weak? Did the crack in her voice just tell me she raised with pocket Aces? Did the guy staring straight ahead when he made a quiet all-in bet mean he had made his flush? Usually. I called a bunch of hands just to see if I could figure out the code. If you show some bluffs, you might make someone start to steam or go on tilt! You can see the steam coming out of their ears, and they start to play badly.

Once you build your wealth and own houses, you’ll have keys with you at the table in cash games, and you can bet the worth of those houses. But be careful, because other players have keys too, and when the short stack throws in his key, suddenly you’ll be calling a much bigger bet than you expected. If at any point you don’t have enough money to join a game, you can sell a house, or click on the “next day” button a ton of times and earn rent on your properties until you have enough to play. You can also win a series of 24 medals for various hands and situations, like “Busted A Player,” “Won All-In Against Two Players,” “Won 1st Place,” etc. You can eventually own the town and are offered to play heads-up against the best player to win a horse. Once you win the horse you can mosey on to the next town and take more players to the cleaners all over again. You’ll have thirteen towns and cities to conquer with your poker prowess, buying up all the houses and saloons as you go until you run all of Texas!

Analysis: Simple with few frills, Governor of Poker focuses on gameplay and creates a superb experience as a result. The AI is really pretty satisfying, even at just this first town. There are three skill levels to choose from, and a couple of the opponents are quite challenging. It’s up to you to figure out who’s the bluffer, who’s betting true value, and who’s betting their house on the nuts.

If you’re new to Texas Hold ‘Em, you won’t find the instructions very helpful. But you can see a hand ranking chart on what beats what. There are lots of onscreen tips which you can turn on or off, and all the people in the town seem to want to give you poker advice every time you talk to them. You’ll also get used to how the “blinds” (forced bets) go around the table and learn plenty of poker lingo as you play.

Governor of Poker has a nice feel for a computer poker game, a bit more like playing against people than other casual AI poker games I’ve played. The graphics and animation are very appealing, and the added goal of buying up property is a strong incentive for playing well. Too bad there isn’t a multiplayer version!