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Making Minds Brighter
Product: Brighter Minds 2006 Lineup
Company: Brighter Minds
Date: 05/19/2006
Avaliable On:

Brighter Minds has five kid-friendly titles scheduled to come out between now and the end of the year.

Plantasia is a game that lets you plant your own garden. Only you won't be growing carrots and cabbages here. Instead, a fairy-in-training will use her magic to help you grow tons of really unusual plants never before seen on Earth. You will have to manage your garden's resources, and not only will you have to keep an eye on the amount of magic you have, but you will also have to pull weeds and remove rocks. Plantasia features 50 levels with 35 types of plants and each plant can have a variety of emotional states from sad to joyous.

Pirate Poppers is a puzzle game in the vein of Zuma where you will point your cannons at lines of multi-colored balls in an attempt to get rid of them all before they get to the end of the line.

Brighter Minds also has the Atomic Betty licence from Cartoon Network. Atomic Betty must save her friends Sparky, X-5, Admiral DeGill and Atomic Roger from the clutched of the evil Maximus. The game features 50 different levels of various puzzle games. This edutainment title teaches kids letter, number and color identification, spelling, addition, subtraction, shapes and pattern matching.

Plantasia, Pirate Poppers and Atomic Betty are all scheduled to be released this June. Plantasia and Pirate Poppers will be distributed by Atari while Atomic Betty will come out through ValueSoft.

PlayFirst PlayPack is a collection of puzzle and action games. These games are previous Brighter Minds titles called Egg Vs. Chicken, Subway Scramble, Spellagories, Cubology and Circulate. Egg Vs. Chicken has you defending your multi-colored eggs against a constant barrage of chickens while Subway Scramble is a new twist on the classic "Rush Hour" style of logic game where players must work through a massive gridlock to solve the puzzle. Spellagories is a word scramble game with 5 castles and three levels of difficulty. Cubology has you sort falling blocks on a cube while Circulate is a logic game that has you rotating the puzzles in an attempt to get spheres out of large chambers.

Diner Dash 2 is the sequel to PlayFirst's diner-simulation game. This game features five new restaurants, four new customer types (like families and cell phone addicts), four new power ups and new tasks like retrieving high chairs, cleaning up spills and getting desserts. Diner Dash 2 features 50 challenging levels and allows you to grow four distinct restaurants with two modes of play, Story and Endless Shift. Both Diner Dash and the PlayPack will hit the shelves in September.

J.R. Nip aka Chris Meyer

GameVortex PSIllustrated TeamPS2