Game review: Artist Colony

Since we were snowed in all weekend, I decided to waste some time playing Artist Colony. It looked a lot like Virtual Villagers. Since I really enjoyed that series, this should be fun too, right? Well, it's mostly fun. As with most simulation games, there is a set of goals that the characters need to finish. The story is about a group of artists coming together to rebuild an old artists' colony. (There's a backstory about friendship and love, but it's not really all that necessary to the game play.) You get money to complete tasks by selling the artists' works. Since you begin with only two artists, it's a little difficult to raise money. However, once you start attracting new artists to the colony, things can really get moving. Then it ends up being a little difficult to keep track of everyone. On top of that, I found myself getting bored with the tedious task of training the artist and having them create masterpieces to sell. Perhaps if the selling part went a little faster, the creating part wouldn't be so dull. As it was, I ended up with artists that couldn't create anything because I filled up my gallery yet no one was coming to buy anything.

Overall, it was a decent game. There were little annoyances, but I could easily overlook them. If nothing else, I wanted to see what the end result was.

Games: Ringorang

I've been playing Ringorang for a little while now. Ringorang is a trivia game that you can play via a widget on your desktop. (I believe you can also participate on the website.) They ask a question about..well..anything randomly once every hour. Depending on how quickly you answer and whether or not the answer is correct, you get "Dallions." Dallions are basically points. The contest runs from Monday to Friday. The top 10 winners get a t-shirt and the top 3 get other prizes. I think those prizes vary every week. It's a pretty neat game and it's easy to get addicted to!

Game review: Wild West Quest

Wile West Quest is a western-themed hidden object game. Besides the normal hidden object objectives, there are other mini-games to play as well. Of course, those are western-themed too. Sometimes you'll have a shoot-out in the center of town; sometimes you'll need to wrangle some horses; sometimes you'll need to ID brands on cattle. None of the mini-games are particularly difficult but they do change things up just enough to keep the game from getting boring. Overall, the game isn't all that bad. The hidden object parts are fairly typical but the game shines a bit more in the mini-game areas. Since either the camera or the objects you are dealing with are moving in those games, you need a little more skill to get through them. Not that this makes those pieces of the game difficult, just interesting.