Giveaway of the Day - Fishdom: Frosty Splash

The usual 24 hour period has been returned to normal.

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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Fishdom: Frosty Splash has been given away once before last year, December 18th where it received a warm welcome with a positive 82% thumbs up out of 548 votes plus it received 65 comments which can be read HERE

We’ve previously also had Fishdom twice and Fishdom H2O: Hidden Odyssey Premium once.

I’ve tested the game on four operating systems; XP Pro with SP3 32 bit, Vista Home Premium with SP2 64 bit and two versions of Win 7 Pro and Ultimate, both with SP1 and both 64 bit. The installer places shortcuts on the desktop and into the Start/Programs list together with an uninstaller and a link to the developers site Playrix.

Installation:

Today’s game giveaway downloads to a 40.7Mb zip file that unpacks to a read me and a dual activation/setup file. The game is installed to the following path if you have Vista or Win 7 64 bit by default, but you can change this during the installation wizard if you wish. The size of the installed game is 58.3MB.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Playrix Entertainment\Fishdom – Frosty Splash\Fishdom.exe

Or if you have Win XP or 32 bit versions of Win 7 or Vista:

C:\Program Files\Playrix Entertainment\Fishdom – Frosty Splash\Fishdom.exe

A desktop shortcut is installed as is a start menu/programs shortcut (which can be found in the Playrix folder (Playrix Entertainment\Fishdom – Frosty Splash); you’ll also find an uninstaller in the Start menu/programs list. The game will automatically start once the installation wizard is complete unless you uncheck the check box at the end of the wizard. The installed game is 57.7Mb in size.

Introduction:

Enjoy winter with Fishdom™ – Frosty Splash! Cheer up and spread the merriment of crispy clear days around! Use your imagination to recreate the nippy and fun atmosphere of winter in your tank. Earn money as you complete challenging match-3 levels and use it to buy festive fishies and winter-themed decorations. Get splashed with frosty joy in this sparkling and snowy sequel to Fishdom™!

Reference accessed HERE 18th Dec 2010

The Game:

Today’s game giveaway is basically the same as our previous giveaway Fishdom except that it has a festive snowy theme. The same match three game with different tiles and another fish tank to build. If you liked Fishdom you will almost certainly love this one as well.

The options menu enables you to change from full screen (default) to windowed mode. You can also toggle tips and hints , a custom cursor and a relaxed game mode as well as the usual music and sound effects sliders. You can choose the relaxed game mode when you first start the game up either via the options menu or when the game starts up. (See images I’ve posted below via the images link)

The Shop

Choose timed or Relaxed mode of Gameplay

It’s a pleasant match three game with an upgradable screensaver that you transform from an empty fish tank to a fully stocked aquarium while playing the game. Gameplay is as you’d expect for a match three; basically you have to create matches of three or more to destroy tiles. The aim is to clear the gold coloured tiles which are placed under the symbols. When you create matches on these gold coloured tiles they are removed. Creating matches of five or six add explosives, rockets and bombs to the playing field. To activate these either create a match three that moves one of these power ups or double click on them to make them explode. You score points for every tile you remove. As you progress through the levels they get progressively harder, with different layouts and tiles that required unlocking or double matching to remove the gold tiles. I was only able to progress to about level 8 while checking this game as all I had was an hour demo. Taking screen captures (nearly 100) of the tutorial and various items that you can buy in the shop took up a large part of my hour. So I can’t say if there are any more surprises. At the end of a level once all the gold coloured tiles are removed you are awarded money based on how many points you scored, the time it took to complete the level and the number of gold tiles you removed. This can then be spent on fish and other objects for your fish tank screensaver.

The screen saver tank starts as an empty tank. You can purchase fish for it via the shop , where you’ll find three tabs labelled Fish, Beauty and Comfort. For example clicking on the beauty tab you’ll find various plants, animals and other objects to make your tank look like a well stocked aquarium. All of the comfort items which include filters, feeders and air supplies can be upgraded; though each successive upgrade costs a lot more to purchase. There are several tropical fish you can choose from, each with its own characteristics, for example the Emperor Angel fish needs a varied diet in order to preserve their distinctive coloration, whereas Royal Gramma fish though shy will aggressively defend their territory in the tank. To create a good looking tank there are loads of items you can buy from various plant species such as Acetabularia Calyculus, Microsorium, and Myriophyllum Aquaticum amongst several others species, some sea organisms such as the Rapa Whelk and Starfish, to sunken ships, lamps, lighthouses, several christmas themed objects (such as a Christmas fish that has a santa hat on) and the traditional treasure chest amongst other items. All items purchased for the tank can be sold back to the shop so that you can choose other items. This makes for an excellent fish screensaver that is very much configurable to your tastes. You can also take photographs of your tank at any time and use these as wallpapers for your desktop; (great for a childs computer). To unlock new tanks you have to satisfy all of the criteria which can be found at the top right of the screensaver, that is you have to fill your tank with enough fish and create a beautiful and comfortable environment. Purchasing fish or other items from the shop will help to achieve these criteria. you can see what effect purchasing an item or fish makes to the indicator before you purchase it as the indicator bar moves to a new position when you hover your mouse over a particular object. when all three bars are at 100% you will be awarded a bronze cup. You can either unlock a new tank or go for a silver cup in the same tank. Opting for the silver cup reduces the bars to almost zero. to attain a gold cup you must carry out the process three times.

The screensaver is activated by ticking the checkbox via the main menu which also gives you access to the options menu and the start button. There are three different tank settings called Pirate Treasure, Coral Reef and Lost Atlantis, though the second and third tanks are locked at the beginning of the game. The options menu enables you to adjust the music and sound effects as well as toggle on or off full screen mode, a custom cursor, in game tips and hints.

Clicking on a fish will cause a reaction

Features:

• Almost 100 winter-themed decorations

• Unlimited number of festive tanks to create and design

• Endless replay value

• “Relaxed” and “Against the Clock” game modes

• Set up your aquarium as a screensaver

Images:

You can see nearly 200 images of Fishdom: Frosty Splash, that includes many of the hints and tips that pop up during the game (assuming you have them activated via the options menu – they are activated by default). Just click HERE to see them. You can look at all the images as thumbnails by clicking on the grid button to the bottom right above the filmstrip. There’s a slider to increase or decrease the size of the thumbnails. I reduced the quality of the posted images a little too much, but you can also see them much better via the slideshow.

Video:

You’ll find a video of game play HERE, HERE, and HERE.

You can take a photo of the aquarium to use as a wallpaper

System Requirements:

OS – Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista
CPU – 1GHz
System RAM – 512Mb
Video RAM – 128Mb
DirectX – 8.0 or higher

Conclusion:

This match three game play is really just standard fare compared to other match threes IMO; I’ve played many of this genre that have found much better game play; however what I really enjoyed about this game was earning money to upgrade the screensaver. I love fish screensavers and although it’s not the best fish screensaver I’ve seen (for example you can get something similar from other match three games such as Big Kahuna Reef and one of the Atlantis games), it does have loads of items that you can add to one of three tanks, though you need to earn cash by completing levels, and only one of the tanks is available at the start of the game.

I’d give this game 7 out of 10 for family fun and the addition of a configurable fish screensaver.

Thank you to Playrix and the game giveaway team for providing this game for free.

Suggestions:

The addition of the screensaver adds to the average game play, however I’d try and improve the game play by adding some mini games and more power ups to the game. You could also make the power ups upgradeable so that they become more powerful. These upgrades could be paid from some of the money earned to purchase items for the screensaver. I’d also add more species of plant life and enable those to be upgraded as well. Each upgrade could increase the size of the plant or animal that you purchase for the tank.

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Alternatives:

Don’t forget you can get a whole raft of match three games from MyPlayCity (I’ve removed the link to MyPlayCity because they have changed their policy regarding toolbars and home page hijacks. They removed these a few years ago totally after forcing users to install at least one tool bar or allowed your browser to be changed before you could play any of their games. Now they appear to give you the choice of not installing toolbars or changing your home page by unchecking boxes during installation, but even if you uncheck the boxes you still get a MyPlayCity tool bar installed as well as your browser being changed to the ask web site. Though instead of totally hijacking your browser you still can open your usual home page but a second page always opens. That is done without your permission. They can be uninstalled, but it’s a hassle. That said, MyPlayCity offer a very large selection of over 400 quality arcade games. There is an alternative via Gametop, but they also try to install toolbars. Thankfully you can stop those by unchecking the boxes during installation. Unfortunately Gametop seem to have lost a large number of the games they used to offer. Both sites offer commercial games by paying the developers a retainer for being able to give them away. They are not technically free, but you can play them for an unlimited amount of time and they are available from these sites 24/7. The only drawback apart from the risk of installing toolbars is that your browser will open to the home page of either site depending which you got it from. There are a couple more sites like this such as FreeGamePick, all with the same risks. The actual games are fine to play and done hold any malware. You can go to the Gametop site HERE
There are some decent match three’s versions, of which are really good examples of the match three genre; including previous giveaways such as Inca Ball, Around the world in 80 Days, Flower Story, Halloween Night: Pumpkin Match, Story of Fairy Place, The Rise of Atlantis, The Treasures of Montezuma, Trio: The Great Settlement, and Atlantis Quest. Last weeks Cradle of Persia is also available from Gametop, though it’s called Persian Puzzle. You can also get one of its counterparts that’s usually called Cradle of Rome,, though that has also had a name change to Rome Puzzle.

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

If you are having problems unzipping the game giveaways zip file, for example getting a message saying the file is invalid try using a different file archiver such as 7-Zip, J-Zip, CAM UnZip, Hamster Free Zip Archiver, GZip, B Zip2, peazip, ZipUnzip, FreeRAR Extract Frog, RAR File Open Knife, ALZip, The Extractor, RarZilla Free Unrar

Okay, that should be enough. there are actually many more free versions available. also there are other commercial titles such as the well-known WinRAR, Stuffit, WinAce, NXPowerlite and Corel Winzip Pro, but IMO 7-Zip is probably one of the better freebies. I did purchase a copy of Stuffit when it was on sale a few years ago, but didn’t like the interface for some reason, so hardly ever use it.

If you are posting late in the day I would also suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game discussion section. If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed. It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well; for example, I’m sure Fishdom, the first in the series is now available from at least one of the free sites.

Finally if you are looking for something else check out the game discussion forums and the free games synopsis. We’ve posted a couple of thousand free games over the last three years, some of which are fantastic. All of the major game distributors such as Steam, Direct 2 Drive (soon to combine with another site), Impulse and GOG all have fantastic sales with savings as good as 90% in some cases. My favourite Steam has virtually all of their games on sale plus there are daily deals as well. At the moment you can get amazing deals on Fallout New Vegas plus DLC 75% off, the Grand Theft auto Franchise 75% off, Deus Ex: Human Revolution plus DLC 66% off, Super Meat Boy (the developer of Gish) 75% off, Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalker plus all DLC 60% off, Driver: San Francisco, 50% off, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (includes a re-mastered Escape from Butcher Bay which was the first game) 75% off, Puzzle Agent I & II 75% off, SpaceChem plus DLC 75% off, The Command & Conquer franchise 75% off all titles, The Universe Sandbox 75% off, Civilization V plus all DLC 66% off . These deals end around midnight GMT though a new set of daily deals starts about 10 hours after the game giveaway starts. The sales are almost over. The daily deals end on the 2nd January. You can check out all of the main distributors via the Didematic Site

Installed and plays on Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit.
I have several Fishdom games and this is my favorite and I’m very happy to have it on my new laptop — I’ve missed playing it.
The game has timed and relaxed mode. It’s a nice match 3 game (with screensaver option) that can be played by the entire family.

Thanks GGOTD and Playrix for ending 2011 with one of my favorite games.

If you’re reading the comments before you decide to download….take note of the time left — it’s 5 hours less than usual.

………………….Moderator Comment……………..

Thanks for the feedback and pointing out about the five hour difference. I’ll add a note to my review above.