Travel and learn the stories of the kingdoms of Arcania consisting of water, Earth, air, and fire. Reading the stories, however, is difficult because of the text formatting. Whether you’re into stories or the text bugs you, just skip the story and head straight to the Magic Realm.

There in the Magic Realm is the match three game for collecting red potion to fix anything the evil wizard does. We also gather mana for using power ups. After collecting enough red potion, return to the scene where evil cast a spell and see the spell in action. The imps reward you with bonuses to help you in your adventures in defeating the darkest evil.

The match three game grid has at least four different elements and your goal is to destroy the minimum for each element. One calls for 60, another for 40, and two for 25. As you progress, you deal with more elements.

Cradle of Persia players will recognize some similarities in Magic Match Adventures especially in how the elements move. If you make a match from left to right, the entire row or column moves from left to right. You also deal with frozen, locked, and double locked pieces in the form of rocks and volcanoes. Coins, potions, and power ups also count as an element.

Tiles appear in green, blue, and beige colors. Destroying all of them doesn’t mean anything in this game. Instead, you want to grab as many as you can of blue and green, which contain mana for increase blue and green potions. Half of the spells use the green mana and the other half use blue. Mana points are for the eight spells, which vary in the number of points needed to use the spell.

Figuring out what each spell / power up does takes experimenting. Plus, only a handful are worth the effort while you want to save points for strategic reasons.

With every kingdom comes a new evil wizard and a Dark-O-Meter counter. The counter shows the number of evil spells needed to stop and duel the evil wizard in a different kind of game.

The duel involves you and the evil wizard taking turns creating matches to get the required elements. The first one to clear all of the elements first wins. Frozen tiles and other barriers don’t appear during the duel, however, evil wizard puts up a few to slow you down.

By the time you figure out the game and its rules, it’s near the end of the adventure. Magic Match Adventures has 33 levels and doesn’t take long to play compared to the average game. Since it doesn’t have other game modes, players won’t likely want to keep replaying the game except to try to earn all the trophies. This one could use an arcade mode since it has the right elements.

I’d also love to see more interaction with the imps. Right now, they interact a little bit — the drummer will beat the drum when you click him, for example. Nonetheless, Magic Match Adventures provides an adventure worth traveling along with a few new tricks for match three games.

In Fashion Craze, players have the ability to customize the store’s colors and change Maria’s clothes. Maria is a fashion reporter by day and a good niece in her spare time. She helps run her aunt’s clothing store while she’s on vacation since it could lead to good material for future articles.

As Maria survives each level, she eventually gets to pick one of three colors for more décor upgrades. Unlike many similar games, the upgrades don’t cost anything. The hard work comes in ordering the customers’ color and style, handing them their clothes and accessories, keeping their hearts full with bribes… err… surprises, and collecting the money after they’ve tried on their new duds.

The surprises vary from level to level. They include a soccer ball, fancy ballpoint pen, flowers, and balloons. Every level comes with a coffee maker and those levels with kids come with a doll and car to keep the kids happy.

It doesn’t take long before things get crazy in the game. At first, I thought the game was a little boring, but it gets better as I progressed. The clothes change based on the seasons from skimpy bikinis to warm and plush sweaters. Colors also change for the four lines of clothing with 21 available colors.

The décor comes in bright colored pastels to brighten up the store. It’s nice not having to pay for upgrades giving you something to forward to as you wonder about the next upgrade. Each day begins with a note indicating the weather or season, so you know what to expect when the customers arrive.

You must take care in seating customers when there are two seats as some customers’ heart meters will drop if you put them next to the wrong person or better yet, fill up when you find a perfect seatmate.

Thank goodness Fashion Craze prevents you from going stir-crazy by only letting you pick the right color material and the right styles. If you accidentally click on the wrong colored material (one that no one has requested), nothing happens. When customers pour in, it’s easy to click all the wrong things.

But I got annoyed with seating the customers. I’d drag a customer to the chair only to see the customer bounces back to standing up and waiting. It’s not as if I dragged the customer above or below the seating area — this shouldn’t be an issue. Sometimes I click an outfit or a customer, but nothing happens. This occurs more often when kids start coming in pairs with their parents. In this case, you must click on the person with the request.

When the customers try on clothes, they don’t look like as you would expect and that’s what makes this the most fun part of the game. Two customers could order the same thing, but they look different when they put them on. One outfit looks like a raincoat, but sometimes it looks like a robe.

While Fashion Craze doesn’t offer any runaway or original features, it’s a solid game with well-drawn graphics. The story only plays a small role in the game as the focus is the game play. Some casual gamers will find this high stylin’ game fashionable and worth trying on to see how it looks, or rather … plays.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows XP/Vista
• 1 GHz or faster processor
• 256 MB RAM
• 260 MB hard drive space
• 64 MB graphics card
• DirectX 9.0 MB or later

A family feud again takes center stage in the story mode as the Baumeisters return dealing with a mole in the business. Chocolatier 2 takes place 40 years later after the original, and the scenery reflects the styles of the 1920s and 1930s. Even buildings that don’t exist in 1920 like the Empire State Building will crop up in cities in later years.

The game, like its predecessor, beautifully presents every ingredient and finished product based on 72 recipes. Well, one ingredient might not sound pleasing to many, but it’s a delicacy in some places — fire ants. Bars, squares, infusions and truffles all return into the recipe book along with sauces, pralines, and exotics.

This time, we get to create our own recipes using secret ingredients from hidden ports around the world. However, it requires raising enough funds before purchasing a chocolate tasting lab in Buenos Aires. People we meet along the way provide clues and ideas for new recipes, but experimentation is also necessary. Pick a handful of potential ingredients, and the researcher extraordinaire will let you know what works and what doesn’t work — much in the same way Mastermind.

Chocolatier 2 comes with over 200 quests, 20 cities including Bombay, Cayenne, Paris, and Moscow, 6 factories and 4 shops. The secret ingredients hide in the new hidden ports, which take longer to access and cost a pretty cacao.

I’m thankful for the changes in the arcade part of the game where we set up a factory to make a new product. Again, you have to make as many as you can of a product following the set recipe by shooting ingredients into circles.

Instead of spinning circles, which make me dizzy, the circles don’t spin and instead flow differently on the product line. Sometimes another circle blocks the circle you want. The arcade portion now includes bonuses turning this into a fun game — something it wasn’t in the original.

The most disappointing part of the game is logo design. The game contains a limited choice of images and some of the colors are awful. I know the creators were trying to capture the art deco style of the ’20s, but I actually love art deco and this isn’t pretty. Some of the images are of terrible quality — like someone stretched a small image. It’s surprising considering the rest of the game has beautiful designs and images.

The basics of the game includes buying ingredients, manufacturing new ingredients, making new products, selling chocolates, buying factories and stores, and traveling the world. I love how the traveling varies based on location. Players could take a train, ship, hike, or a canoe.

Of course, we continue to use the finest ingredients, so lots of traveling is necessary. But this time we need to watch the seasons since some ingredients cost thousands of dollars off-season, and drop into the more affordable hundreds of dollars when they’re in season.

Some cities don’t have a store for selling chocolates, so it’s important to think ahead to ensure you have enough funds to get you through a trip. Also returning for an encore are gambling hot spots. I don’t play these games, but they’re there for desperate times or those who enjoy dice games.

Another improvement is the message section. This time, it only displays one big task at a time. I don’t mind seeing multiple tasks, but the message screen was too small in the original.

Chocolatier 2 comes with lots to do and no set path you must follow. You don’t have to do one, two, three before four can happen. Although, you do need to attain certain titles and funds before you can access information. You can also make whatever you want as long as a factory or two meets any customer requests.

I’m all for a third edition of the game if it’s done right or expand it by changing the industry or products. Chocolatier 2 is addicting as chocolate that I stayed up late several times unable to pull myself away.

System Requirements

Windows:

• Windows Vista, XP, 2000
• Pentium III 700 MHz minimum
• 128 MB RAM
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound card recommended
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 25 MB hard drive space

Mac:

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 MHz or faster processor
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound card recommended
• 25 MB hard drive space

While the game won’t blow you away with anything special, it’s a completely well-produced game from graphics and story to mini-games and bonuses. The historian’s mission is to find the Lost Tomb by completing 20 missions with each containing multiple levels.

Although the hints are almost always available, the game makes a point of mentioning when players rely on hints when reporting the score. This mention is enough to discourage hint abuse especially when using a hint takes away 4,000 points. When using a hint, the hint meter starts over again and must fill up before it’s ready to give the next hint. It doesn’t take long for the meter to fill up.

A perfect search — which is not using any hints during a level — equals 15,000 points. The game awards bonus points for finding two items quickly, even for those who opt to play relaxed mode. Too much random clicking leads to losing points. Players also have the opportunity to earn title promotions, but it won’t mean any extra pay or perks.

“Find the Lost Tomb” would be the story game mode while the “Secret Game” resembles — without giving away too much — unlimited game play. Within the story mode, you can either play timed mode or relaxed mode. Having relaxed mode helps make the game more enjoyable for many players who want to make the most of the experience rather than hurry up and go.

After finding all the needed treasures, the mini-game enters the picture. Mini-games include jigsaw puzzles, comparing two rooms for spotting the differences, tile swapping and four others. One of those is the popular memory match game except this one calls for finding same color, same type, related items such as a glove and baseball, or identical objects.

The difficulty level in the placement of the hidden objects is medium. Some objects are easy while others take a lot of work to locate. Those having played many hidden object games will be pleasantly surprised at the unpredictable locations of the hidden objects. Long, thin items won’t necessarily be where they expect to find them. Both new and experienced players will enjoy this one.

What’s more, the game throws a few curveballs in its word choices in the list of objects to find. That’s nothing new, but it does the job without getting carried away and while keeping things fresh. A “red hexagon” references a STOP sign. You can’t help but laugh with hints like “Flew the coop” or “Ribbit!”

Also hidden in the game are 21 ancient Egypt worshipped scarabs. Find them all to unlock the secret game. Even if you forget to keep an eye out for scarabs, it should be OK as the reviewer found all 21 despite forgetting about this little game within the game.

Hidden object games have quirks. Some make it difficult for clicks on the correct object to register. In the hunt for a spike, the viewer correctly clicked the right item and the game seemed to say, “Nope. Uh-uh, that isn’t it.” Finally, the situation called for a hint and sure enough, it was the right object. But this was a rare incident, fortunately. Another time, the list included “3 hand tools.” Hammer, boomerang, arrow, C-clamp, fork, and knife didn’t count. The name, in this case, was too broad.

While Amazing Adventures The Lost Tomb doesn’t have anything that hasn’t shown up in one game or another, it’s a nice full package with a long-lasting value that is sure to please anyone looking for an adventure of the hidden object kind.

Download and play Amazing Adventures The Lost Tomb.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• 350 MHz or faster processor
• 75 MB RAM
• DirectX 7.0 MB or later

In this one, Madame Fate, the fortune teller, believes someone is going to kill her at midnight and she asks for your help. It’s not that her fortune telling abilities don’t work, but rather she needs you to find hidden items or clues from the 15 carnival employees. These items help Madame Fate use her crystal ball to see each person’s fate at midnight.

As she reveals the fate of each carnival worker, it also helps remove that person as a suspect in her possible death. But before she can do that, you go to work in solving a “crystal ball puzzle” with no direction or clues. I adore these puzzles, which resemble the locked door puzzles in Ravenhearst. They’re the best part of the game. They even attract my eight-year-old son’s attention as he joins me in solving them.

Another neat twist is that every location doesn’t mean you’ll go a-hunting for 10 or so hidden objects. Some scenes have a mini-game that usually has something to do with words. It could be rearranging jumbled letters to create two words that are opposites, creating 10 four-lettered words from the given letters, or playing a hangman-style game to find three words describing the carnival worker plus a couple of others.

After solving the puzzle and gaining access to the suspect’s room, you search for 10 to 15 of two different items. These items range from the letters B and L to magic wands and lipstick. While doing that, you might have to keep an eye out for the morphing object — a new feature in the MCF series. Morphing objects such as a beagle changing into a terrier and back appear in random scenes — you know which scenes have them because of the purple question mark symbol that appears on the map of the carnival.

Madame Fate also introduces a scene within a scene. Some locales have another scene that you can only access through the specific locale. You know there’s a second scene when the number of hidden clues is higher than normal and the sparkles that appear on the scene to indicate the location of the hidden scene.

As picturesque the scenes are and the audio fitting to the theme, the game isn’t without quibbles. You can find the right object, but it takes precise clicking for the game to register the selection for some objects especially the smaller ones. The hint system could be a little better. While it’s nice the game doesn’t straight out and point to the object you’re trying to find, the circle could be smaller.

This one is also a problem in Ravenhearst — sometimes one puzzle hint isn’t enough, but if you click for a second hint — the game provides the same hint as the first and you’ve wasted a hint. You can also call the hotline to pass through a puzzle that annoys you. I also missed a few morphing objects because I forgot about them — there isn’t a way to find them without starting over.

You can unlock three scenes when you find enough of the mysterious changing objects. I unlocked two scenes and can’t seem to access them or do anything. The ending is also a disappointment like Ravenhearst. But the journey of getting there is worth it with the intriguing story, beautiful graphics, and clever puzzles. I couldn’t help but stay up late because I couldn’t exit the Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate’s enchantment. Or did Madame Fate have something to do with it? <creepy evil laughter>

Get the Strategy Guide

Get help at the game’s forums

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• 800 MHz or faster processor
• 512 MB RAM
• DirectX 7.0 MB or later

In Quest mode, you go on a — what else? — quest to find a friend. A level consists of a full solitaire game, but it doesn’t require clearing the board to succeed. The level ends when you find the two matching golden tiles. Power ups, hints, undo, and shuffle help you along the way. The game works like any other mahjongg game in that you make pairs. As you make matches, you earn pearls.

Rather than freely giving players all the hints, undo, and shuffle they want, players must purchase them with pearls, which are the game’s bread, dough, moolah, lolly, loot, dinero, or whatever you call money. Add the power ups to mix and the game keeps players hopping. Instead of spending mucho pearls on shuffle, watch for power ups that swap tiles, move a tile to the top, and shuffle a small section of tiles, among others.

Upon finding the two golden tiles, the game cuts to the comic book style scene with a story update. The well-drawn scenes have an anime look and feel. The story could use a smoother transition from start to end and provide more details. Furthermore, the story is incomplete and ends abruptly. The good news is that it doesn’t take much away from Quest mode thanks to the travels, tiles, and artifacts. Artifacts hide in every level, but the artifacts don’t tie in tightly with the story as they could have.

After spending five levels in a country, players move on to the next. Most countries are in Europe and Asia with one in an unknown place. A new country means experiencing a new theme of tiles and a welcome change of pace. With 25 levels in all, the Quest could go on a little longer. I’d trade Endless mode for a longer quest. Hey, I’ll even trade Classic mode for a longer trek.

Since there are five countries, there are five tile themes. Each one is lovely, but sometimes it’s hard to tell what goes with what. Mahjongg players know that some pairs don’t have to be identical like the flowers and seasons. With themes, it isn’t easy to figure these out. The same goes for the power ups. I think using tooltips would help.

The game awards trophies, which pumps the players’ egos and motivates them to keep on. These rely on tooltips, but sometimes they don’t pop up without some effort. My eyes are thankful for the feature that reveals open tiles so I don’t spend a lot of time trying to find them. OK, so this is a shortcut or cheating perhaps, but more games await my eyes for reviewing. They need a break!

Download and try Mahjongg Artifacts and Mahjongg Artifacts, Chapter 2.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• Pentium 3 800 MHz or faster processor
• 256 MB RAM
• DirectX 8.0 MB or later

If you don’t have the luxury of cooking one, there are a few excellent resources for your use. Many editors reference the AP Style Guide and Chicago Manual of Style. For citing another source, the MLA Handbook or Columbia Guide to Online Style do the job as well as the aforementioned two books. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is an oldie that continues to find new fans after over 85 years in its existence.

For geeky words, you might find a better resource in Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications or Microsoft Computer Dictionary. Here’s what the former says about E- words:

In general, avoid forming new words with ‘e-’ (for electronic) unless you know your audience will understand. Some words that may be appropriate in certain circumstances are ‘e-commerce’ and ‘e-money.’ ‘E-mail’ and ‘e-form’ are acceptable. Use lowercase and always hyphenate for clarity.

You can pull content from a few other guides and add in your own modifications to come up with what best fits your cooking style. Of course, keep readers in mind when creating the guide.

The following lists more guides and resources:

• APA Style Guide is a popular style guide especially with colleges and universities.
• Jargon File, the online version of The New Hacker’s Dictionary.
• Writing for Multimedia’s Terminology.
• BBC News Style Guide for radio.
• GuardianUnlimited Style Guide is for writers and editors.
• Web Style Guide for web sites.
• New York Public Library’s NYPL:Style Guide for web sites.
• AMA Style Guide from University of Washington that lists the most frequently used entries. Medical professionals tend to rely on this one.

The next part to tackle is physical conventions. For instance, when starting a new paragraph, do you indent or use a double hard return? What font size, face, and style will you use for titles? Will the titles be capitalized or in sentence case? This is similar to a cookbook. All the recipes are formatted the same way. Even CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a recipe since it ensures formatting consistency.

Throw all the selected style ingredients into one pan, or in this case, one document. The style guide should be organized to make it easy for your writers can find what they need.

Finally, put it where everyone can access it. It doesn’t have to be a book. It can be a one or two page document. It’s a living document that you can continuously revise. Hey, even a blogging tool or wiki can help manage it.

The hardest part? Getting everyone to follow the new guide.

Now what makes Heroes of Hellas different from the zillions (maybe not quite that many) of match threes? For one, instead of a typical square grid, the grid appears in honeycomb style with hexagon shapes. With the honeycomb-shaped grid, you go in different directions in making a match instead of just up and down, and sideways. Here you can go six directions. The grid’s outside shape changes with each level as you travel through Ancient Greece and Hades to find the scepter.

Along the way, you earn help from the heroes. Their help is what most refer to as a power up. Zeus, of course, is the first and he shuffles the grid when you need more matching objects. The others have special powers that do different things: Achilles can destroy rocks that block your way. Jason opens a path. Once you discover multiple heroes, you get two heroes per level plus Zeus.

Lightning-style and extra time power ups and coins show up on the grid for more support. Anytime you have two matching items nearby with a power up or coin in between, you can make a match. Heck, you can make a match of two power ups and one object. You still need at least three items and in this case, power ups are like jokers or wild cards in that they work with anything.

The objective for each level also changes. It can be that you need to clear the gold tiles behind the objects, release the jewels from the grid by helping them make their way down to the bottom of the grid, or both. With the grid changing shapes, the changing heroes and the change objectives, the game can turn monotonous especially since you’re on the clock through all of this.

While the game only comes in one mode, it offers three difficulty levels: easy, medium, and hard. In playing easy level, I run into trouble by level four. Some reviewers believe the game is too easy — I differ. I may not have needed the heroes’ help in the first few levels, but needed them in later levels. Several levels took at least five tries before I conquered them.

One thing that drives me crazy is slipping up and missing a hexagon or two. People who have a hard time navigating with a mouse won’t like this. Heroes of Hellas requires careful mouse movement and tile selection. You must keep the mouse button pressed while you select the tiles — instead of just click on each one. This is a good and bad thing. It’s harder to keep the mouse down and select, but it’s faster. To keep clicking might get tedious. Maybe the next edition — if there is one — can provide this as an option.

I also like the music and music isn’t one of the more important features in a game for me. Somehow this catchy music grabs me along with its sound effects. You can also earn wallpaper with scenes from Greek myths by playing a mini-game. The mini-game enters when you earn a hero. Here you need to move puzzles pieces where they belong by swapping two pieces at a time. For those who don’t like puzzles — you can skip the game, but it means no wallpaper for you.

Regular players of match three games may recognize features here and there from other games. Heroes of Hellas incorporates the features nicely to create an all-around fine match three package.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/98/2000/XP/Vista
• 400 MHz or faster processor
• 128 MB RAM
• Hard drive space 40 mb
• Video card: 16 MB VRAM
• DirectX 8.0 MB or later

Let’s say you have a new baseball team in town and it’s almost time for the first game of the season. Your sales force is ready to sell a variety of package deals for the season. However, there’s a major stumbling block as they prepare to approach potential buyers. No one knows about the package deals or even the date of the first game.

No one tipped the local sports writer or the local TV news of the upcoming grand opening game. What happened to the marketing department? There’s no marketing research, no publicity, and no idea where to begin targeting sales. Sales will flop and will make the sales department look bad, but it’s marketing’s fault since they didn’t do their job.

The Batters: Marketing

Let’s switch and see things from the marketing team’s view. They do a grand job of posting banners of the first game in town. Marketing has pulled together piles of reports with data on the audience, their baseball attending habits, and game spending habits. Many people arrive for the game opener, buy a ticket for the game, and it’s successful.

Or is it really? The sales team is invisible. There is no one to build a relationship with the fans. No one has sold them packages for attending more than just the opener. Sales could go far beyond than one game. They could even help build relationships that go beyond the season. Marketing did a great job, but with poor sales the team may not make it and everyone loses. Where was sales when marketing promoted the event?

Who gets the credit? Who gets the blame? In the war for profitable bottom line, turf issues should be put aside.

Who’s on First?

Marketing and sales play for the same team in different positions. Marketing leads to sales by creating programs focused on direct marketing principles that are tied to the sales team’s success. Marketing puts together a multi-step game plan to ensure each interaction with prospective fans lead to more and deeper interactions. Using shared business goals as a driver, the two work to meet those goals.

Marketing and sales should constantly communicate with each other to ensure effective timing, clear understanding of the company’s message, and smoother handoffs. Sales can determine the target market by evaluating current and past sales. The results help marketing professionals sharpen their pitch so they can hook the right people.