In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Dream Day First Home

Whenever I think of someone buying a new home and the process of remodeling it, I always imagine the movie The Money Pit and all the problems they went through to turn a messed up house into one anyone would love to own. In Day Dream First Home you’ll go through some of the same problems as you play the role of the remodeler, helping your clients – and friends – move into their first home while they are away shopping for the home. Will you give them their dream home or a shack they’d rather destroy with a wrecking ball?

You start the game picking one of two different housing styles, though once one home is complete you’ll be able to go through the other house and play through it as well. Beyond all other things Day Dream First Home (DDFH from here on) is a hide and seek game where you have to scour the environment scene, searching for a checklist of items. It is this hide and seek mechanic that is both the game’s greatest strength and yet greatest flaw as well…it just depends on what type of player is looking at the game.

The puzzle scenes are absolutely littered with tons and tons of junk, as this is a house that was just bought, so it’s only natural that it’s full of things you need to get rid of and find – hence the nature of the game. You’ll have scenes ranging from kitchens to garages to backyards and junk drawers and more. For the most part scenes contain a lot of objects you’d expect – a kitchen has a sink and cups and a fridge – but they’ll also have a lot of things that are way out of place and seemingly have no reason being there. Why is there a Viking in the garage?

If you remember doctor room visits and playing with Highlights magazines and doing the hide and seek puzzles in those issues, you’ll be right at home with DDFH, as everything isn’t cut and dry and out in the open, because sometimes when the game asks you for a butterfly, it isn’t all bright and the color of a Monarch, but rather blends into the grain of a blue cabinet, and the outline of a butterfly is the only thing you have to go by to realize, “Oh, that’s what I’m to click.” The game also cleverly hides other objects by placing them along the outline of other objects, such as putting a straight pin along the hinge of a door, making it seem as if they were one single object and not another one cleverly stacked on another; it is these checklist items that are always the hardest to find. There are also blue checklist items that are even harder to figure out, as they require at least two steps for you to check the item off. For example, the game might need you to get carrot juice, and the only way to do that is to first click on the carrot in the juicer, and then click on the glass of carrot juice that just came out – these puzzles are often the hardest, but also the most rewarding.

The greatest problem with the puzzle scenes is that sometimes your perception of what an object is might not be the same perception as the game’s, or either you don’t even have a clue what you are looking for because what is listed makes no sense. I was stuck one time on the checklist item “hot pad” only because I wasn’t quite sure what they exactly meant by that. The game will also ask you to look for things like jars, and when you’re looking at the picture, there are several things that you could classify as jars, but there is only one the game will recognize. The game will also really screw with your head by giving you some absurd checklist item like “books” and yet there are no books anywhere in the scene; it turns out that what they consider books is really a stack of items a boy is sitting on in a picture, which to me looked more like blocks.

Generally you are given at least two scenes to work with at once, trying to grab as many of the checklist items as you can under the time limit set for those items – 20 minutes for a group of twenty or so seems like the average time; trying to find enough items within the time limit is the challenge of whether you pass and move on or fail. If you get stuck, however, you can use golden eggs you find in the puzzles for hints, which will make a hummingbird fly around and highlight one of the objects you haven’t found yet – it’s a nice system to reward you and doesn’t penalize you terribly if you can’t find one specific tiny item. The game will also take time away if you click around too much without clicking on an item, which makes you really have to search and just not luckily click on an object, making the game more about actual challenge instead of luck.

Once a set is finished you’ll then go up to the attic and play one of three games, which vary in task required to complete them. One game has you trying to make matches based on association, such as associating an umbrella and a picture of rain or a dog with a dog bone. Another game plays like a typical memory game where you pick two face-down cards at a time and try to remove them all by picking two of the same cards. The third game has you spinning a slot machine to create an object, allowing you three spins to randomly make an item, though you can lock pieces into place should you find a look you really like; there is no real win or lose to this game, though you’re supposed to want to get the “Classic” rating.

You’ll also run across home owner emergency puzzles, which has things like the ice machine breaking, shooting ice everywhere, and within the new scene you have to find even harder to find items like a bunch of white things amidst all the ice piled on the floor; if you win though you get to personally design something and have it put into the game for the home owners. You’ll also do some choose your own adventure style power-up item puzzles from time to time, such as picking a knock on a door leading to the police coming and then having the police really be a stripper looking for a bachelorette party.

The menus are easy to use and the scenes are really bright and cheerful, though the clutter makes them a bit ugly, and sometimes it’s a bit hard to see what an object is and whether it could be what you’ve been looking for. The game also has some tranquil audio that plays from beginning to end, and though the songs repeat way too often, the music isn’t bad at all.

Dream Day First Home isn’t a game for everyone, as it will definitely split the camp between those who absolutely love the challenge and those who will be cussing at the screen because they can’t find a screwdriver. If you like the hide and seek genre of games, however, you’ll be right at home with Dream Day First Home.

Rating:
Our Scoring System

Download The Demo Or Buy The Game At Playfirst

or at BigFish Games