The Dream Day Wedding games:
Dream Day Wedding from the Romantic Discoveries
Bundle - 3 in 1
Dream Day Travel Pack - 3 in 1:
Dream Day Honeymoon
Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan
Dream Day Wedding: Viva Las Vegas
Dream Day Wedding: Bella Italia from the Bridal
Party Bundle - 2 in 1
The games are listed in chronological order: it starts with a wedding planner making sure Jenny and Robert have a "dream day wedding"; going off to their honeymoon, they leave her to arrange the weddings of two friends, during the second of which she meets a new prospective client. Ironically, the game that started it, Dream Day Wedding, was the last one I played. A "vintage" (ie. old) game, it was available both as a separate download and part of the Romantic Discoveries bundle. I can recommend the latter, as the former was apparently too old for my system, because the background music crackled annoyingly, a problem that still does exist, but is not as extreme, in the bundle version. It has an option for "software 3D rendering" which may explain why I couldn't make screen captures. Having bought the bundle and played the game out to its end, the best way to describe it is as the less glamorous but still psychedelic sister to Dream Day Honeymoon. I know this game started the series and as such has a status of venerable pioneer, but can say that as the series progressed, it improved - a lot. Apart from the flower shop, the scenes are almost ugly, and the total disproportion of objects - a matchstick can be the biggest object in the screen - a bit jarring. Sometimes, there would be two of the object listed, and where later games would list "2 keys" this one lists "key", and the first key found, goes. (This is echoed in Honeymoon's hotel room, where I have to find five hearts, and there are six.) And the music would start to crackle after a while, so I'd either lower the volume, or quit and restart the game, or endure it. So, to describe them in the order listed:
Dream Day Wedding, while playing chamber music and
showing shop settings rather than tropical resort scenes, is of the same quality
as Dream Day Honeymoon, which sadly means the scenes are slightly blurred
as they were clearly made for lower resolutions. Instead of Birds of Paradise it
has Bluebirds of Happiness, like little oil paintings with red smears on their
chests. The hints are arrows shot from a Cupid statue to where the item may be
found and then rising in a cloud of hearts, which means I still don't know where
exactly the item is!! These problems have been fixed in subsequent games, that
have crisp, clear graphics and clearly highlight the item sought. Lastly,
although Wedding has less items per screen than Honeymoon, the
proportions are even more off, one pen in a shop being "hidden" by having the
size of a tree trunk.
The first of the Dream Day Wedding games that I played, and that
made me want to collect the sequels, was Dream Day Honeymoon, the first
Acer GameZone demo I played on my brand new laptop before chucking the lot. I
hate anything with the words "wedding" or "honeymoon" in it, and so decided to
tackle what looked like the worst game first and save the better ones for later.
It was certainly not what I expected! In a scene that looked like a psychedelic
children's colouring book, I was, to make the game even more childlike, asked to
find a list of objects camouflaged by the background, against a soothing
soundtrack of touristy Hawaiian music. This was my first encounter with hidden
object games. What makes the screen look psychedelic is not just the many hidden
objects, but the fact that they have been resized to fit, so that a giraffe may
be tiny, while a matchstick may be the biggest object in the room. The best part
of the game was the Birds of Paradise, three per screen, which would give me an
extra hint for every five birds collected. They let out a little trill when
clicked on, so collecting them was fun whether I needed the hints or not.
While the first newlyweds are honeymooning, the wedding planner
already has a double new assignment in Dream Day Wedding: Married in
Manhattan. The background music is largely absent here, replaced by ambient
sound, like the traffic and occasional cry of "taxi!" outside the Cloud 9 travel
agency. Apart from nicer and more proportionate graphics (the Honeymoon scenes
made my head ache sometimes, especially Cap'n Dave's boat rental scene) and less
oily Bluebirds of Happiness (they look like painted cels here), this game also
has more minigames alternating with the object searches; where Honeymoon
had only a matchgame, Married in Manhattan has pipe and domino games and
lets the player locate the lists of objects by solving simple puzzles.
Dream Day Wedding: Viva Las Vegas, where the player has
to arrange a marriage in situ while staying in the same hotel as the engaged
couple, replaces the birds with dice and creatively uses the casino for
minigames. A new and clever twist is having the item list in a foreign language
- Italian, for the ice cream bar - until the player finds the dictionary. For
the rest, all games work the same way: there is a total number of objects to
find per game stage which may be one or two less than the total number of items
on the to-find list, so it's possible to skip particularly invisible items,
catching a ringing phone on time may add or subtract items from the list, the
game stages are separated by puzzle games, and every so often, after the player
has become familiar with the locations, there is an "emergency" game in which
the player has to find the list of items in about four minutes in a version of a
location where all the items have been rearranged.
The birds are back (and oily again) in the latest and best game
so far, Dream Day Wedding: Bella Italia, starring in the intro. It opens
with a flight scene and blue birds opening a book, turning the pages. This book
forms the storyline, each turned page meaning a new chapter, with one or more
search scenes and/or minigames, starting with a cellphone giving a spoken
message as introduction. And yes, being a modern game, this one has voiceovers,
though not to a tiresome degree. Another modern feature is hidden objects that
are not in a static scene, but hidden under other objects which have to be
dragged out of the way - easier for the gamemakers, as more stuff can be hidden
in a smaller space, but annoying for the player. A nice new technique, though,
is the zoom: a click on a swirly bit of a search screen expands that area into a
new search screen. Some puzzle games require a heretofore unheard-of amount of
dexterity: getting the rings etched before the battery runs out took several
tries. There are three playing modes, Carefree (no timer), Classic and
Experienced (longer lists of objects to find, puzzles non-skippable), of which
the last has to be unlocked by finishing in Classic mode at least once. In the
timed games, finding items in rapid succession buys more time on the clock, and
increasingly praising comments. Sadly, the hints are nice and vague again: an
arrow exploding into a fuzzy circle, at the centre of which, if I look closely,
I may find what I'm looking for.
The story: in response to a call from a client she met in Las Vegas, our
intrepid wedding planner flies to Italy, almost losing baggage at the cluttered
airport, stays at a sumptuous hotel with operatic background music while helping
him propose to his Italian sweetheart, then goes to her parents' mediterranean
mansion to prepare the wedding, including the picking and sugaring of almonds,
while they vacation in Florence. Everything goes wrong, of course, and is set
right at the last moment. The family love her efforts so much that they offer
her a holiday in Capri, which translates to a beach scene search screen with
three zooms. A perfect game for those who crave a holiday in Italy, but don't
have the money to go there. Unlike the demo, the bought game let me make
screenshots:
For the avid collectors, there is now a six-pack combining all the Dream Day
games. The sixth game being, I assume, Dream Day Wedding: First Home.
Since that game must have come out shortly after the disappointing starter of
the series, I no longer regret not having waited long enough for the 6-in-1
bundle to come out. That game is available both on its own and in other bundles,
anyway.
Nora Roberts: Vision in White from the Bridal Party
Bundle - 2 in 1
The first time I started the game, I was treated to a badly lip-synched intro
by the book's author, thanking the game company for having made her novel into a
game. Eep. Fortunately, the game has very pretty graphics. The main character is
"Mac", a bridal photographer working for a company called (what a witty acronym)
"VOWS", discovering the love of her own life on the job, and giving comments on
each scene in a laid-back drawling voice. I've heard worse voice-overs, although
I still click through them as fast as possible. The background music is also
very laid-back and peaceful. After a sugary childhood scene of her snapping pics
of a pretend wedding, the player sees Mac's cluttery office and house, the
decorated hall where the wedding will be held, and the snow-covered grounds,
since the story plays around January, in daytime and, magically, at night. The
hints are plentiful (collect the craftily hidden doily-like letters of "VOWS"
for an extra one) and instead of getting a hint for whatever item in the list is
still unfound, I can choose which item I want the hint to show me. After finding
all the items, a "snapshot" is madeof the screen. It is possible to switch to a
custom mouse cursor, although that slows the game a bit.
Having bought the game, I found out that it has nothing to do with the Dream Day games and is more like a slightly cheesy romantic
paperback. Mac has issues with her parasitic bitch of a mother which prevent her
from emotionally committing to the "sexy academic" that just stepped into her
life. Not wanting her to drawl the word "sexy" again (she does it more than
once) I turned off sound and, for some scenes, the embarrassing "ooh aah" music.
The BGM is not always peaceful; it blares when the employers of VOWS, all pretty
women of marrying age themselves, rent a limousine to paint the town red and
are, apparently, the hottest chicks in the club. After this overload of stiletto
heels and champagne corks, it's back to the mansion where they work and live,
and Mac, agreeing to come to the academic's house on a date, finds the list
drawn up for him by a more dating-savvy friend, that starts with "Shower .. wash
ALL body parts!" Inquiring minds do not even want to know. This game is saved by
its pretty graphics, because otherwise, urgl. It ends on the announcement of a
sequel: Bed of Roses, which I might just want to avoid.
Fabulous Finds
This was one of the games bought at a discount in the supermarket, and which
referred me to the now defunct site "www.breakforgames.com". The story goes:
someone's "aunt" (very friendly neighbour) has willed her a fabulous house in
California. The problem: the house is a bit run down, and there are taxes to be
paid. In a letter, the aunt advises her to collect the junk that's been
gathering in the house, and hold junk yard sales. The aunt also tells her to use
a "lucky ring" when she needs help: clicking on this ring gives hints. After the
introduction of reading the will, deed and letter, the player is shown a map of
the house with its various rooms, and told which room is open for searching. A
look at the local newsrag tells the player what the yard sale theme will be, and
then the search begins. The objects are not disguised, as in the
Dream Day games, and relatively easy to find. When they have
all been found, they are scooped up in a cardboard box, and the yard sale can
begin. This is the harder part of the game; animated stereotypes walk into the
yard, and a list of cue cards to the right tells the player, in riddle form,
what buyer to drag to which item before the buyer loses patience and stamps out.
I could guess most stereotypes, but for some I just dragged all guests to the
item until the right one bought it. The money made in the sale is then used to
redecorate the now uncluttered room according to instructions, which, if done
correctly, gets the player an extra hint. When the game has been played out, the
rooms can be redecorated at will.
