Enchanted Gardens
Score: 88% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Yatec Games Developer: Yatec Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: Beneath the simple soil of Baton Rouge, LA-based Yatec Games' release of Enchanted Gardens lies one of those beautiful but simply addictive puzzle games that gets people fired for playing too long. Enchanted Gardens has a simple but clean lined look to it. The icons are easy to see and leave little to guess if you are or are not making a match. As expected, but not unwelcome, there is a simple, repetitive melody throughout the game. It has a sort of English tea garden feel about it. The sound effects are exactly like the graphics, simple and well done.
Gameplay: Enchanted Gardens is one of those games that takes seconds to learn and is easy enough for everyone. You are presented with your garden that has several different types of flowers. Use your cursor to rotate four flowers into position and clear them off of the board. You will always know which flowers will spring up into place with a handy window to the left of the garden that displays the next arrangement. Each time you clear an arrangement of four matching flowers, it will till the earth one time. You have to till each square twice in order to complete the puzzle. As you progress, you will be met with many additional challenges to face. For instance, there is a Gnome who becomes cranky if you waste too much time turning the arrangements without making a match of four. To punish you, he will make rocks grow that prevent the cursor from turning the arrangement and in effect, locks them into place. You have to make arrangements near the rocks to break them. Other than this, you have many power ups to collect and use at your discretion to complete puzzles faster and gain more points.
Difficulty: Enchanted Gardens has a good increase of difficulty as you progress. It starts out easy and doesn't become utterly, ridiculously hard. There is no traditional easy, medium or hard, which is fine, because they ramp up the difficulty nice and easy for you. There are quite a few challenges that can be self-imposed about their award system, as I mention below. Most of the difficulty comes from your own desire to win the gold every time and decorate your garden. Like any game, this is not necessary to complete the game, but why not? Tease your brain just right, and you may even get smarter playing.
Game Mechanics: Enchanted Gardens has quite a few rewards that you earn along your gardening path. You will be able to see all of the awards as well as the enchanted garden you have completed. For each of the main stops along the way, you're awarded a gold, silver or bronze award allowing for a three, two and one variation of garden decor inside your private garden. To view this, log on under your name and click View Garden. You can always go back until you have earned the gold. This game also has a wide array of machines it can play on, if having an older machine is a concern for you. Again, this is a very simple and addictive little puzzle game. If you have someone who likes a simple-by-appearance, but challenging puzzler, than I would steer them towards this. You can try out the demo from their web site. Enjoy!
-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications AKA Bryon Lloyd
Minimum System Requirements: Win 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista, Pentium III 450Mhz, 128MB RAM, DirectX/OpenGL video card w/ 8MB RAM, 30 MB free hard drive space, DirectX 8.1   Test System: Windows XP Pro, 3.2 GHz P4HT CPU, 2 GB Ram, 512 PCIE 16 ATI X1600XT
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