Posted Oct 5th 2009 11:00AM by Akela Talamasca
Filed under: Downloads, Demos, Features, Hands-on, Mac, Screenshots
After what feels like forever, we've got a single game to review this week, rather than the two-fers we've been doing. This time around, we're looking at Miriel's Enchanted Mystery, by Game House, the publisher who brought us Miriel the Magical Merchant. This sequel offers the same basic gameplay as the original, but offers a few new twists that make owning MEM worthwhile. Find out more after the jump!
For those who may not remember my review of Miriel the Magical Merchant, the gameplay revolves around the time management genre, in which you must multitask by running around your shop, getting customers what they want before they stalk off in a huff. MMM operated a bit differently than MEM does, in the following ways: in MMM, you order your items by clicking their icons in the lower part of the screen, and they appear atop a table for you to click on to pick them up, and subsequently deliver them to your customers, who await you at the top of the screen behind the counter. In MEM, it's reversed: the customers arrive at the bottom of the screen, and your items are at the top left; when they appear, they move to a shelf, where you pick them up at the top of the screen. And it might just be me, but it feels like the area in which Miriel moves is slightly larger than in MMM; it seems to take a little longer to get from one end to the other. But that might just be a difference in her walking speed.
In MMM, customers would approach the counter and ask for products, then they'd go away once they had them, leaving money behind for you to scoop up. In MEM, this is still true, but now each level also has a goal system to satisfy to finish each level. For example, your goal might be to collect 200 pieces of gold from your customers, or to sell a certain number of a particular item. Another difference from MMM is that sometimes, in lieu of money, customers might drop certain items for you to pick up, so one of the goals might be to collect a given number of items.
Just as in MMM, MEM tasks you with combining single items for customers who request them. For example, you might be asked to make a loaf of bread by choosing flour and water and dropping them on your stove to cook for a few seconds. Once it's ready, you can hand it to the customer. If you give the bread to someone quickly enough after it's been baked, you'll receive a little extra money for freshness. Later levels ask you to combine different items. For example, you're given a couple of tuns of dye, one red and one green. Customers will ask for potions of different colors, so you'll order an empty flask, carry it over to the tun of the proper color, and fill it up, which takes roughly the same duration of time that it takes to cook items.
Tags: featured, hands-on, joystiqfeatures, mac, mac-monday, miriels-enchanted-mystery, time-management
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