Game review: Ranch Rush

I found myself falling desperately in love with the Farm Frenzy series so I've been trying other farm games to see how they stack up. Ranch Rush is quite different from Farm Frenzy. Instead of caring for a ton of animals, you are caring for a few animals and a lot of crops. While I enjoyed the beginning levels of the games, the higher levels felt like they needed something more. The problem is that the crops and animals all need to be "harvested" quickly and your character just doesn't move fast enough to do everything. Perhaps this is fixed in an even higher level of the game but I couldn't bring myself to go past the hour demo. It was an entertaining hour at least.

Game review: Magic Seeds

Magic Seeds is a weird sort of time management game. You are given some seeds and it is your job to grow the plants. While this sounds rather boring, the really interesting part comes from trying to cross-pollinate the plants. You start out with some sunflower seeds. Once the plants are mature, you can cross-breed them. Cross-breeding the two sunflowers will give you tomato seeds. (No, I'm not sure how that works either but it does in the game.) Then, after the tomatoes are mature, you can cross-breed the sunflowers with tomatoes and get corn. So even though the actual growing part isn't particularly fun, trying to figure out what pairs will give you different seeds is.

In very basic terms, this is a time management game. You have to water the plants and hoe the plants and pick the plants and sell the plants, if you so desire. There are even upgrades you can buy to help you with these chores. But I still think that this is not the point of the game. In my opinion, the point of the game is to try to obtain as many different types of seeds as you possibly can. That bumps it to more of a puzzle game than a time management one. No matter how you want to categorize it, it's still a lot of fun.