Giveaway of the Day - Samurai Last Exam

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of potential cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain why your reasons for the feedback you post. Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment. Thank you.

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Today’s game, ‘Samurai Last Exam‘, is a Japanese based time management game with a a sushi restaurant theme. It has colourful graphics and (as with all Time Management {TM} games) the need of a fast clicking hand and a relatively fast mind. Unfortunately of all arcade games, TM games are the ones that I play the least because I prefer games that let me unwind; whereas TM games tend to instil a feeling of unrest and manic movement and always leave me mentally exhausted, You can be assured though that I will be giving today’s game giveaway an unbiased review once I’ve caught up with some sleep. The following review uses images and other information taken from the developers site (though I have uploaded over 70 of my own images to my photobucket account and linked it in the Images section). I’ve written the installation section and most of The Game section (apart from a section of the game summary), and the conclusion. The developers contribution has been referenced to Vasilek Casual Games, that is the introduction, the images that you can see in the post and part of the game summary as well as the features list.

Installation:

Today’s game, Samurai Last Exam downloads to a 32.6Mb zip file that unpacks to a read me and a dual activation/set up file. The game installs to C:\Games\Samurai_1.3 by default, but you can change the install path during the installation wizard if you wish to install the game to another path.

For those new to the Game Giveaway project, you have to install the game within a 24 hour period starting on the 30th April 2011, at 12 midnight Pacific time (1am Mountain time, 3am Eastern time, 8am GMT, 2pm Dhaka, 6pm Sidney/Melbourne, 8pm Fiji) and ends at the same time on the 1st May 2011. Simply click on the dual activation and set up file and follow the on screen prompts to receive a free fully activated arcade game.

The installed game is 35.3Mb in size. There is no shortcut installed to either the desktop, or the start menu programs list, and there is no uninstaller; however that doesn’t matter because the game is free standing, which amongst other things means it can be uninstalled simply by deleting the installed folder. There should be no registry entries to bother about either. You can find a short tutorial in the Giveaway game discussion forums that tells you how to create a start menu/programs list shortcut; however that was written for XP users. The game works in Win XP, Vista and Win 7.

Introduction:

What is a dream of every young Samurai, after finishing training in the temple of Sakura? Of course to beat the dragon! And to prove his loyalty to the teacher. Also, to serve people (while scoring off the dragon). And here is the long-awaited moment! The teacher is sending his disciple to the Last Exam. But what is it? There is no dragon, but, there are people, who want to get … sushi! You can’t disobey your teacher, so, there is only one thing to do: to cook sushi. The exam is divided into 4 stages. At the beginning of each next stage a pupil receives a message from his teacher, containing the key to successful passing. The samurai is to develop more and more new qualities to pass the Exam. The number of customers is increasing and your exam is not limited only to cooking sushi, you must be polite and tactful when talking to the customers!

Reference http://vasilek-games.com/index.php/en/products/windows/9 accessed 29th April 2011

The Game:

The option menu is fairly basic, with a toggle for full screen to windowed mode, a custom cursor toggle and the usual music and sound sliders. The music gets very repetitive quickly, so you may want to turn it right down at some point in the game. Unless you are adept at editing executables, there is no easy way of changing the music except for turning it off and playing your own music via your media player.

When your first customer arrives until you recognise the various images of sushi meals, or until you can buy and use power ups you just need to hover your mouse button over the meal that the customer is thinking about. It will briefly list what you need as a pictogram. You then have to click on the ingredients and drag them to the preparation board. If you have time you can prepare spares which can be stored in the container next to the preparation board. Once you’ve completed the meal drag it to the customer, who will then leave the Sushi bar leaving behind a small pile of money. You can use the recipe book that is situated just above the green pause button too see what is required as an alternative to hovering over each customers thought bubble. Clicking on the recipe book will show you all the available meals and what ingredients are needed. At the start of the game there are only three meals available , but this list increases as you progress through the levels and unlock more recipes.

If you don’t serve a customer quick enough you will lose that customer and valuable money. The blue dragon to the left of the screen is the indicator as to how near the end of the level you are. As you make more meals and collect the money, the dragon will gradually turn red. When the dragon is fully red the level will end. Each level is timed. If the dragon is still partially blue when the time ends you lose the level which fails to unlock the next level. Thankfully the time to complete a level is generous. You can win the levels with one two or three stars. Three stars is the best. You get five minutes to complete the three star win, 20 minutes to complete the two star win and a lot more time to complete the three star win (I didn’t bother to check the third setting)

The quicker you serve customers the higher your score will be. This is important because this will determine what power ups you can purchase at the end of a level. Initially at level 2 you are introduced to three power ups, but there are twelve to unlock. The first power up is called ‘Quick Memory, which allows you to view a recipe without looking at the recipe book. The first power up costs 1000 credits to purchase. My first level score was 1500 credits, which was relatively low, but I was taking screen captures and taking notes for the review, so you can expect to score more in the first round. The other two unlocked power ups are ‘Retentive Memory ‘ which gives you the option of viewing recipes from the book for several seconds. The power up is activated when you first click on the customer’s order and appears to remain active for the rest of the game . The cost of this second power-up is 2000 credits. The third power up is called ‘Super-Eyes’ which when activated causes all the ingredients to vibrate so that you can see them easily. You have to click on the customer’s order first. All power-ups activate will continue to work. Super Eyes costs 3500 credits.

Occasionally you will get a customer asking a question. To see what they want to ask, click on the question mark. You’ll get a dialogue box opening which gives you several responses. Depending upon which you choose, the customer will be happy and remain, or will leave in disgust. (I’ve captured several of these, which can be seen via the images link below. For example the customer may say:

“It’s a nice day”

To which you can respond by clicking one of the following:

Um
Get off of me!
It’s really tasty!
Yeah fine.

The levels are interspersed with more story dialogue which can be skipped by clicking on the story board.

As you progress through the levels more ingredient’s appear as well as more complex recipes. If you place an unwanted ingredient on the preparation board, you’ll get a message telling you that you can’t cook any sushi due to an unnecessary ingredient. You must remove the incorrect one before the meal will complete.

You can restart a level by clicking on the green pause button to the bottom right of the screen, or you can quit. If you want to return to the main menu click on the pause button and select quit. This opens up a second menu that allows you to either return to the game, go to the main menu or quit the game completely. If you want to create a new profile, of which there is space for 10 you have to return to the main menu.

There are five difficulty levels.

1)…Ashigaru Way (Easiest)
2)…Onna Bugeisha Way
3)…Kensei Way
4)…Daimyo Way
5)…Shogun Way (Most difficult)

I’m not a lover of TM games, but I found the easiest level easy to cope with and was attaining the best results for each of the levels I completed. that is three stars. The difference between difficulty levels is the number of meals you have to prepare. The harder the level, the more you have to prepare to complete the level.

Summary:

• Choose ingredients, dressings and tools, put it on the board and make sushi. Don’t know a recipe? Look at your cookbook.
• Don’t keep your clients waiting.
• Talk to your clients politely. Don’t be rude or you’ll lose them
• Power up your samurai by developing his skills! It will not be easy to finish the game without these power-ups as some recipes are quite complex.

Suggestions:

The collision mesh is too precise, you have to click on an item exactly right to pick it up. When you are rushing to complete a meal, this can be very frustrating because it’s easy to miss the item.

Power-ups once activated appear to last for the rest of the game, not just one level. Maybe change this so that they last only for a specific number of levels. You’d have to make them cheaper as well.

Images:

You can see a slideshow of around 70 images via the following link:

http://s571.photobucket.com/albums/ss160/Whiterabbit04/Samurai%20Last%20Exam/?albumview=slideshow

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNDhDESg2ek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgidYmad5Zs

Features:

• 5 difficulty levels

• 40 game levels

• The hero skills improvement

• 30 kinds of sushi

• Original Japanese style of music and art

• The clients are talking to you. Be tactful!

Reference http://vasilek-games.com/index.php/en/products/windows/9 accessed 29th April 2011

System Requirements:

32-bit OS Windows XP/Vista/7
Intel or AMD 1500 MHz or more processor.
DirectX 9 compatible video card with 32 Mb video memory
Screen resolution: 1024×768 or more.
DirectX 9 compatible sound card.
DirectX 9.0 runtime installed.

Conclusion:

The game has a charm of its own; you’ll certainly pick up a few sushi recipes if you play this game, lol. In my opinion it’s a game for those who love time management games; I think it’s too narrow in its game play for anyone other than the TM enthusiast to like a lot, but that said, it’s still playable. I am not into these games at all, but I did find playing it on the easiest level tolerable. You get a generous amount of time to complete levels, so there really is no need to manically click away. With the power ups I think it’s far to easy a game and soon becomes a little tedious. I do like the simple Japanese graphic, but that’s not enough to hold my interest for long. I’d give it a go without the power ups; though I think that it may not be possible because you were forced to take a power up when they were first offered after the second level. Not sure about later in the game. I gave up after level 7.

• Graphics, I like the style so despite it looking fairly simplistic I give it a 7 for graphics.
• Music is very repetitive, and although it’s got a Japanese flavour, I’d liked to have heard some mellow Japanese tunes in the background instead of the manic drum beat that we get. 4 out of 10 for the music.
• For game play I’ve scored it a 6 out of 10. It’s passable, but not memorable.
• So… averaging out the scores to one decimal place we get a score of 5.7

Other information:

You’ll find over 40 time management games over at MyPlayCity, including todays game giveaway, just follow the link below:

http://www.myplaycity.com/free_time_management_games/

Do be aware that MyPlayCity have reintroduced toolbars and home page hijacks to their games, but these can be avoided by un-checking the appropriate boxes during installation. Also when you close any of their games down, your browser is opened and directed to MyPlayCity’s home page. This is innocuous so don’t worry. Closing the page ends any connection and nothing is downloaded.

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Just posting to say thanks for the giveaway, time management titles rarely feature on here so its nice to see this one, I think I may have tried the demo for this some time ago, well worth a look if you like TM games ;o)