Mahjong: Magic Chips

Mahjong: Magic Chips

Laziest mobile port possible.

Real player with 0.6 hrs in game


Read More: Best Classic Casual Games.


Mahjong: Magic Chips is a port of a mobile mahjong game to PC, complete with in-app purchases and artificial game limiting through timers and lives. 3/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-cnzwLgo3w

Real player with 0.1 hrs in game

Mahjong: Magic Chips on Steam

Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine™

Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine™

A wonderful classic. It’s Puyo Puyo, but Robotnik themed! The graphics are nice, opponents are fun to look at as you face them and the music is calm and cool. Even the game over theme is great! Which is good, because you will lose A LOT unless you’re already skilled at Puyo Puyo gameplay. However, I’m pretty sure most people can beat it if they keep trying. And it will be worth it, it’s so satisfying to finally beat Robotnik in the end. YEE-HAW!

Real player with 1.0 hrs in game


Read More: Best Classic Casual Games.


Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine is a competitive-focused falling blocks type of a puzzle game for up to 2 players. It got released right at the end of 1993. It was developed by Compile and by Sega CS division. Had 8 Megabit ROM. Uses passwords.

Now, let me tell you a freaking amazing story:

Puyo Puyo was a falling block puzzle game originaly released to MSX and then to NES, made by Compile in 1991 as a spinoff to Madou Monogatari RPG games, featuring characters from it, I heard. That original had Endless, Puzzle and Competitive mode, but competitive was 2 human players only.

Real player with 0.3 hrs in game

Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine™ on Steam

Nancy Drew®: The Haunting of Castle Malloy

Nancy Drew®: The Haunting of Castle Malloy

7/10. I’ve been a Nancy Drew fan for a long time, and I enjoyed this one, with a few caveats. Many of the puzzles have very opaque directions that make it difficult to figure out how you are even supposed to approach solving them. The hint system of the “fortune teller” robot is not particularly helpful - you can only get one hint about puzzles/tasks, and many of them do not make sense either. It’s not even that the puzzles themselves are super hard, it’s just that it’s not clear how to solve them (the rocks, the pillars, the final puzzle sequence involving moving particular items in order). The fact that the game is all at night also made it more difficult to see things I was supposed to be noticing. If you can use a site like Universal Hint System that helps. But even with outside instructions, the final set of puzzles felt very tedious and frustrating. It made finishing less enjoyable and more “oh thank god I don’t have to do any more of these.”

Real player with 14.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best Classic Story Rich Games.


Pros:

-Beautiful soundtrack, scenery, and smooth gameplay.

-Interesting storyline, for the most part.

-The puzzles aren’t too challenging.

-A lot of places to go, though not necessarily to explore.

Cons:

-VERY dark gameplay throughout (minus the pub); it was very difficult to see what was going on when playing on my glassy-screen laptop during the day.

-Only 3 interactive characters.

-Not much direction from characters.

I think this is a pretty good ND game. After replaying it, though, I didn’t seem to enjoy it as much as I did the first time. Though it’s common in ND games, I found the dual storyline slightly confusing and strange. It did, however, make for a satisfying and complete ending. It’s pretty easy to understand what needs to be done, though there is barely any direction given from characters, except for some tasks that need to be completed. Additionally, it was slightly disappointing that the castle had very minimal opportunity for exploring (only three rooms with little-to-no mystery involved, and most of the castle was closed off). The storyline was shocking, frightening, and exciting in moderation, creating a nicely balanced pace. I think this game is a good experience, and it made me feel accomplished upon solving the case. I think the price is fair, but would recommend waiting for a sale.

Real player with 12.8 hrs in game

Nancy Drew®: The Haunting of Castle Malloy on Steam

Chocolate makes you happy: Valentine’s Day

Chocolate makes you happy: Valentine’s Day

is not recommended to buy.

Real player with 28.4 hrs in game

Levels design well made

Real player with 0.9 hrs in game

Chocolate makes you happy: Valentine's Day on Steam

Data mining 6

Data mining 6

is not recommended to buy.

Real player with 28.4 hrs in game

controls sucks

Real player with 0.4 hrs in game

Data mining 6 on Steam

Data mining 7

Data mining 7

I tell you when i found Half Life 3 in the Steam Files

Real player with 917.5 hrs in game

is not recommended to buy.

Real player with 28.4 hrs in game

Data mining 7 on Steam

Hyperplex 3D

Hyperplex 3D

Cool retro game. Used to play it when I was a kid and loved it.

It is pretty chill puzzle/arcade-like game. Some of the levels require planing, but that is part of the fun.

Real player with 21.6 hrs in game

The Supaplex remake in full 3D. Looks and feels quite different, but it’s still Supaplex, with its 111 levels.

There are quite a lot of remakes of this classic arcade/logic game, but adding an additional dimension to the graphics after so many years make it totally worth to replay at least some of the levels.

Real player with 6.1 hrs in game

Hyperplex 3D on Steam

Keep the Balance

Keep the Balance

This a sad non recommendation for me. When I was growing up I used to use my dads computer everyday to play this,

I absolutely loved it growing up, but not anymore.

It doesn’t run well on a new computer but I guess it makes sense with the age of the game.

Do not spend your money on this.

Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

Keep the Balance on Steam

Nancy Drew®: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake

Nancy Drew®: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake

2nd or 3rd time playing this one. It’s one of my favorites for the storyline. As Nancy Drew, you stay in a cabin on a lake in Pennsylvania that was once owned by a Prohibition-era gangster. Local legend has it that his four dogs still haunt the property. A state park operates in the vicinity, and you can go to its visitor center. While there is a real Moon Lake State Forest, it doesn’t seem to be related to the game as the game places itself in a fictional county.

Playing it again in my current playthrough of all the games in order, I liked it a little less. I think that’s because it was so memorable, the pleasant surprises weren’t so surprising (though I still didn’t remember who the culprit was–as usual, everyone is damn suspicious). I have to admit, though, that the puzzles weren’t as satisfying. The best was probably the one where who have to put files in order by year, except those years are written in Roman numerals. Most other major puzzles revolved around finding nature-related items in a forest maze. Finding the birds to photograph would have been fine, but it became overused the moment we had to trudge around there looking under specific rocks to find several bugs. On the other hand, the well/water pump puzzle was too simple and I feel like an interesting educational opportunity may have been missed there.

Real player with 12.3 hrs in game

I do not recomment this game for anyone who enjoys puzzles, solving mysteries, or a good challenge. The game goes out of its way to leave the hints as vague as possible and just give you the solutions through the in-game task list. The entire things felt like playing along to a walkthrough. I play on Senior Detective and usually the tasklist is there to remind you of information you’ve picked up, but in this game it just outright tells you what information you need for which puzzle and what to do to solve it. And if that isn’t enough Nancy will outright tell you! There were so many interesting puzzles here that were spoiled before I’d even gathered all the hints I would have needed to solve them the legitimate way. The only thing the game seemed to let me do was fiddle with wheel puzzles once it had given me the solution I needed to get to. Gee, thanks.

Real player with 12.0 hrs in game

Nancy Drew®: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake on Steam

Nancy Drew®: Message in a Haunted Mansion

Nancy Drew®: Message in a Haunted Mansion

I remember why I don’t like these early games. Between the weird characters, old graphics, and dull plot it does little to excite. Worst of all, I found myself having to call for help every other second because the gameplay is so arbitrary. It is mostly a guessing game, and I still have no idea if I did everything I was supposed to. I know I missed the seance, which caused me to worry that I was going to have to restart the whole game, but I managed to finish it. My interactions with Abby were just non-existent. Also, the dumbest second chance in the series has to be Louis realizing you snooped through his stuff simply by you saying you saw a phrase in a book. It could be any book Mr. Guilty. Overall, I wish I had just saved the $3 and ignored this game.

Real player with 16.4 hrs in game

The second Nancy Drew game I’m (re)playing and the third in the series, although I don’t think I ever played this one before.

It takes place in San Francisco, but you spend the whole time in a Victorian mansion that a friend of a the Drew family’s housekeeper is trying to renovate to turn into a B&B. Something I like about the Nancy Drew games is how they try to incorporate the history and culture of a place. This one features a bit of Wild West/Gold Rush history (with made-up characters for the game) along with the influence of Chinese immigrants. In fact, get a notebook out if you play this, because a game-long puzzle has you collecting Chinese characters (which the game told me are called hanzi) that you will need to be able to distinguish. My Chinese handwriting is way better than my handwriting with the latin alphabet, but I also spent like 10x the time and effort.

Real player with 9.9 hrs in game

Nancy Drew®: Message in a Haunted Mansion on Steam