Game du Jour: Week of 18 October 2009

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the first ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Sun. October 18th: 50% off on RichMan Games – Monopoly of New York

Mon. October 19th: 50% off on Zombie Shooter

Tue. October 20th: 50% off on Zombie Shooter 2

Wed. October 21st: 50% off on Alien Shooter – Revisited

Thu. October 22nd: 50% off on Alien Shooter 2

Fri. October 23rd: 50% off on 4 Elements (I love 4 Elements!)

Sat. October 24th: 50% off on SPACEDROID Attack Episode I

PC Game Review: Avenue Flo

Diner Dash’s Flo steps into her first adventure as she helps Wedding Dash’s Quinn prepare for a wedding or Mr. Big’s daughter to Tony, the pizza maker. Everything goes wrong. Avenue Flo starts with many mishaps. The bride’s white dog runs away looking like a lobster after a run in with red dye. The rings disappear. The cake spoils. The dress falls apart. Quinn calls her friend for help.

Those who have played many games from Playfirst will recognize characters throughout the adventure. No worries if you’ve never played a drop of these. It’s like hearing an inside joke when you come across the characters.

The adventure retains the friendly and eye-catching cartoon styles in the Dash games. Story updates appear in cut scenes that you can speed up. The story splits into four parts based on the locales. Flo will move around each locale to complete the tasks that Quinn has asked her to do as well as the favors she does for folks in order to get something Flo needs.

Avenue Flo doesn’t occur in the past or take place in Greece or some other popular time. Its theme makes it different from the other adventure games out there. Flo talks to the characters in every store and out ‘n about the neighborhood to find out what’s going on and to receive clues. She also needs to collect butterflies for the wedding and bottles for recycling to get subway tokens as three places require the subway.

At first, the game doesn’t look like a long one. Then as you move along, you discover it’ll keep you busy for a good while. Flo keeps notes so she can stay on top of all the things she needs to do or find to complete her tasks. A map also comes in handy for every location; although every location has a T-shape for easy navigation. One street goes from one end to the other, and in the middle there’s another street that takes you in a different direction.

My six-year-old loves this game and keeps pushing me to play the game when I had other work to do. He helps me with some of the mini-games that blend in with the game’s story. For example, the beads from wedding dress fall off and Flo needs to find them all. (See the second image from the mini-game.) She also offers to sew them back on with a fancy stitching gadget. The sewing part becomes a mini-game in which you need to put the beads on in a pattern. Obviously, this makes a great game for the family.

In another mini-game, Flo meets a hen chorale. To get eggs from them for the wedding cake, she plays a Simon-style mini-game. This involves watching the hens sing and repeat their song. While I dislike Simon “do what I do” games, it works well in this situation. When you complete the adventure, you can play any of the mini-games, which extends the game’s replay value.

While I may be deaf, I’ve come across annoying sounding voice acting that compelled me to turn off the sound. Not in this one. It sounds like you expect a cartoon to sound: pleasant and friendly. Avenue Flo contains all the ingredients of a good adventure game: cool graphics, good story, humor and plenty of action.

Download the game from your favorite site

• Big Fish Games



• Playfirst