Giveaway of the Day - Ideabox

Idea Box

The downloaded file is 24.7Mb in size and unwraps to 102Mb when unzipped. It unzips to a dual activation and setup file plus a read me file. The game instals to C:\Games by default. AS usual there is no shortcut created during the installation process so you have to create your own. If you want to have a shortcut in the start menu as well as the desktop there is a short tutorial in the games discussion forums.

Introduction:

Brilliant and silly, original and trivial – all these ideas are born here with Your help. During the journey You’ll meet many talented persons such as Shakespeare, Mozart and others. Help them to gain worldwide fame and reputation!

• Original, but simple and intuitive game rules.
• Each level has several final screens depending on the player’s skill.
• Funny bonus game.
• Bright, colorful visual style and amusing main hero.

Reference http://us.boonty.com/download/ideabox.html accessed July 3rd

The game:

The game is a variant of match three and bubble popping. It’s a well constructed game with mini games included. The graphics look ideal for children, though the game play is suitable for adults as well. There are several awards you can win by creating long chains of bubbles with at least seven bubbles included in the chain or for creating combos. I won that award virtually on my first move and created 40 combination moves. You’ll require decent special awareness to play this game. To create matches of three or more you turn a groups of six bubbles around an axis of one bubble which remains stationary. Matches don’t occur until you’ve completed a move. At the end of each level you have to click on bubbles that float across the palying area; the more you collect the sooner you get to play one of the mini games, the first of which was an extremely simple puzzle that a child of three or four could easily complete.

If you get stuck on the main match three or more section there is a hint button that can be used to get you moving again.

Unfortunately I was working on the wrong game until 3am this morning so haven’t had enough time to write up a decent review. The above images and the link to the video below should give you an idea as to what to expect.

Video:

You can see a short video of game play via the developers site http://us.boonty.com/download/ideabox.html

System Requirements:

Microsoft windows XP or Vista
1GHz cpu
256Mb RAM
3D ready 128Mb RAM Graphics card
DX8.0

Conclusion:

Personally I found it became a little tedious after several minutes of play, but that said it’s a great little time filler that’s worth a good 6 out of 10. If you like Match Three games then this is for you. If you miss today’s giveaway see below for details of where to get this game for free 24/7.

If you want to change the in game music you can do so by exchanging the files found in the Data\Music folder. They are ogg files you you’ll need to convert whatever music you decide to use to ogg. There are some free audio conversion programs to be found in the freeware section of the giveaway project.

——————————————————————————————————————————–

Additional information (extra’s not related to the giveaway project):

You can get ideabox for free from MyPlayCity by following this link:

http://www.myplaycity.com/ideabox/

MyPlaycity was notorious for adding toolbars and hijacking browsers a few years ago, but now they have cleaned up their act.

You can also download the full version game for free from http://us.boonty.com/download/ideabox.html however, the file is the same one distributed by MyPlayCity. You can also download the game for free fromhttp://www.downloadplex.com/Windows/Games-Entertainment/Puzzle-Word-Games/ideabox_245007.html

I’ve posted some excellent freeware programs over the last week including several point and click adventure games (Shadow Man, Nightmare Creature, Lands of Lore), a really cool snowboarding game called Virtual Resort, a good space shooter called Decoblis and some rag doll physics games called Stair Dismount, Truck Dismount, plus several more. You can find all of those in the game discussion forums under weeks 95 to 97 of the free games project via this link:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/forum/17

Also for those with children, check out my post regarding a brilliant indie arcade game called Max and the Magic Marker. It’s in today’s 24hr Steam sale at 75% off the usual price. Also it’s the last 2 days of the massive Steam summer sale with hundreds of amazing bargiains, with up to 95% off (eg Puzzle Kingdoms for £0.90 or Bat Rats: The Revenge £0.60)You can find details via this link:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7717

or go to the Steams summer sale page via this link:

http://store.steampowered.com/” rel=”nofollow

Click on the specials tab near the bottom of the page to see all the best bargains or check out the ‘Today Only’ panel for the latest 24hr sale. Today’s best bargains includes includes Beat Hazard a fantastic music orientated space shooter for £1.75, Saints Row 2 (GTA IV clone) for only £2.49, Star Wars Empire at War Gold pack (a rts game) for £3.74, Borderlands for £6.79 as well as all three add-ons for 75% off, Half Life 2 for £2.37 plus a few more. Today’s 24hr sale ends in six hours from now at 10am PST

=============================================================================

Downloaded easily, without incident on my win7 64bit. Plays well, and looks to be a good game for the grandkids. I would recommend that the sound and music be given a volume control rather than a simple on or off option. Otherwise, a cute game. Thank you GOTD for bringing one around again.