oh well. i only just really got to playing the game, and i get a blue screen of death whenever i click on the barn. the image loads and then i get the bsod*. most times it immediately rebooted the computer, but a couple times it froze on the blue screen and made a scratchy noise. made sure directx is up to date, uninstalled and reinstalled flash and shockwave. can't reinstall the game. system specs are below.

i was going to make a quip about how watching the game load is like watching grass grow but didn't intend to complain about the load time. most times, i would set the machine aside and do something else until it was ready. then i decided to pay attention and time it, and it really is slow -- five minutes to load!

a thread at bigfishgames.com indicates that the bsod and load time problems have been ongoing for at least a year.

it looks like a fun game, and if i could get into the barn, i would still play it despite load time.

thanks for offering it!


*fwiw, the message is
STOP: 0X0000007F (0X0000000D, 0X00000000, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)

(system info: winxp home sp3 on an acer d250, 2gb ram, 1.6ghz, 1024x600 resolution. tested with and without gamebooster 3.3.1 and a1ctl 1.0)


.............................Moderator Comment..........................

Try updating your graphics drivers and also reinstalling the game.

Does the game finish? I have my three farms and lots of money...

Absolutely top game here.

I found this game to be very enjoyable. I really liked the variety of matching games, hidden object games, and farm puzzles. The dialogue was probably meant for a younger audience, but it was still fun (I liked the option to skip if it seemed too long).

WOW!! Really fun, and a big hit with our entire family!

Pros:
* Mixture of gameplay styles makes this an always changing activity and helps keep you focused on "just one more" level.
* Character interaction is fun to watch - great sense of humor and fun.
* Beautiful graphics!
* Relaxed mode is just that, which helps make things fun for some of us. Nice to have the timed option, but glad to have the relaxed option.
* Butterfly hints are useful and helpful, especially for younger players.
* It's just fun to play!

Cons (really all minor):
* Slight disconnect between "Aw, gee shucks, I gotta be here ALL SUMMER?" feeling of intro and infectious, happy enthusiasm during gameplay, even at early levels. Bit of goofy irony in forcing the boy to keep away from video games - in a video game that I want to keep playing... That said, I prefer the infectious, happy enthusiasm.
* Goals aren't always clear - I like the discovery of finding this out, but sometimes it feels weird to try to figure out what I'm supposed to do before going on. It's sometimes difficult to follow what the grandfather and grandson are getting at.

Many thanks to GGotD for this one, and to Playrix for another great game. I want to know where to get more games by Playrix, because these seem consistently good in simple gameplay, great graphics, and engaging humor. Nice Job!

Thank you for offering this game. But as I am in hospital, the download via stick took me 40 hours! and of course the activation time was over. What a pity! Hope you had a wonderful St. Patrick's day anyway!

The game downloaded fine on W7
Its a bright fun game - thoroughly enjoying the mix of genre

Hi! It's a nice game, I have tried it with my mother and my brother, but I found a bit hard to translate to them so fast. Therefore I would suggest to Playrix to have 3 levels for the speed of the dialogues in the Options menu: native English (fast dialogues), intermediate English (a bit slower / average speed), and beginner's English (dialogues go on to the next sentence with a click on a Next button). It would fit to even those families, whose mothertongue is a rare one to translate the game to it.


................................Moderator comment............................

Thank you for your feedback

Thanks to Playrix for offering this game. I was disappointed that it was not the Collectors Edition, as advertised. I already own and love the regular edition, and had eagerly anticipated the extra levels. Please let me know if this is corrected.
Thanks again for making the game available!

Thanks for a lovely game. Keep up the good work and offer us more good games.
Thanx

This is the best free game that i tried out in months! Thank you so much and go Playrix go keep the good games coming!

Installed and activated OK - tried to play, received message (translated from French):
"The point of entry of the procedure MiniDumpWriteDump is not found in the dynamic links library dbghelp.dll"
W2000Pro - system adequate for game

.........................Moderator Comment..........................

Try replacing dbghelp.dll with a new copy. You can download it via the following link:

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?dbghelp

Really exceptional giveaway today. Nice job and kudos Playrix and ggotd. The only concern I had playing this was actually a licensing issue where on the hog section I was told to look for "Lego" blocks. I just don't want you guys to get into trouble by putting a licensed name on there w/out permission. Really enjoyed the game just trying to look out for you guys. I thought that the game meshed the sections together really nicely and I enjoyed how it tried to make the player feel like he/she was part of the story as well. Nicely done Playrix.

I enjoyed playing but it was tough getting started. It insisted on going through steps of the story before I could get to the options to turn off the sound and switch to windowed. I'm glad those options are provided but wish they'd have been presented immediately upon launching the program.

I don't play a lot of games so this is the first one where I've had to go through the story to progress in the game. There were some steps that seemed like they didn't go with the story, but I just went along with it. Not sure if I like it, but it was tolerable.

The graphics are nice and the animations cute. I get a kick out of how different characters respond to being clicked on (it doesn't take much to amuse me). I'll probably be playing this quite a bit this week -- need to break away from last weekend's games before I start playing them in my sleep.

Downloaded, installed, and started up just fine. Bust right at the start (plant tree), I clicked on the barn, and when the interior of the barn appeared, my computer was locked up. Couldn't Alt-Tab or Ctl-Alt-Del - had to hit reset to restart my computer. Then uninstalled.
Too bad. I usually like Playrix games.
Running Windows XP SP3 all updated, ATI HD4850 video card with Catalyst 11.12 drivers, Steam & Avast Anti-virus running (don't know if either of those might be the problem - never been before).

I like this game and would love to play to the end, but I am having a strange problem I can't solve. It is acting like a demo or trial and cuts off and tosses me back into the desktop with no error msgs. It usually happen shortly after I buy a fence or barn. Tried every trick I know including not not buying fnb's so it seems to be a time thingy. Nothing seems to help, gamebooster, dxdiag, compatibility settings, deleting and downloading again, etc. Using Xpsp3, all drivers etc up to date. Every test run says everything is a-okay.

Get a kick out of Tom and his grandson and want to see what else I can plant and how to help the lady with her farm!! LOL Love the loading bar with the flowers growing and the bees taking away the the loading sign, but am getting tired of restarting.

One suggestion, the match 3 game board could be a bit larger with the veggies; kind of hard to see with old eyeballs just where those gold tiles are.

Haven't been able to get far enough to see if there are any other puzzles other than the hog, personally I like those.

If anyone can think of anything new to try, pls let me know. Will check back here tomorrow. Thx. CabLady

Thanks Gmman (#44) - that change does make it at least SAY it's "Collector's Edition". My problem was finding out how to edit the file. The "edit" option just gave me a "no file association" error. Open with C++ worked!

Enjoyed this giveaway!! Would have liked a better bit of music, the graphics and story are really cute. It's charm pulled me right in. I liked the fixing up the farm, would have liked to see a bit more of this for strategy. I did like that you could play either timed or not timed. A few more mini games would be great too. Missing the Collector's Edition. =(*************************************

I love MyPlayCity, I go there all the time. I also agree with White Rabbit about Steam. if you have not tried it, please do! They have tons of games and sales all the time! Top of the line to classic. Many of the Lego games are on there. I had picked up Batman for 5 bucks at one time. Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic for the same price.

This was my first game download since I got my new computer (W7 64bit) and it downloaded and ran just fine. I am hoping that it is a stand alone like my other Playrix games as I do switch computers frequently and always save my games to an external drive.

I would really like to be able to skip past some of the farm scenes where I have had to use a hint for everything. It would never dawn on me to move a rock beside the spring to find a piggy bank and I should be able to figure these things out logically instead of relying on hints. I am now at the level (also wish there were level numbers) where you need to make a pot to put a tree sprout into. The hint keeps highlighting the grandfather but when you click on or around him he just moves around or grunts. I have already exited and restarted but get the same result. Either make the hints better, the action clearer or allow jumping past.

Other than that I have been enjoying this, as I usually do with Playrix offerings. I hope to get past this problem so I can finish it.

This is really a cute game, love the graphics and the story line. This kid reminds me of my nephew. Great game, thanks GGOTD & Playrix! PS: Did have a few glitches while playing the story in the beginning, the sound "skipped" and was slower than the picture. No other problems so far.

This is FANTASTIC! So much fun. My favorite so far. Love it, and I'm 53! I can't wait to tell all my family and friends to get it ASAP. Was looking for a link to share it with FB but didn't see it. Still I will post the address for it. Hopefully some will get in on it.

Nice game! I thought it was a time management game, so almost didn't download. I was pleasantly surprised! Thought I'd play just a bit before dashing off to buy groceries, and an hour later... yep, still playing! Very addictive!

I enjoy the option for relaxed mode, since you can keep matching and rack up more money without worrying about timers. I like the HO minigames and the little adventure elements. LOL, I kept trying to pick up the ladder to go get the key from the roof. Had a good chuckle when I discovered how to actually get it.

The graphics are excellent, music is pleasant, and the gameplay is straightforward and cursor works fine. Will be enjoying this for some time to come! Thanks to Playrix and GGOTD!!

I actually bought the the normal edition just because I love Gardenscapes and I hope it would have the same fun with Farmscapes. I think the graphic was not as superior as Gardenscapes. The match-point games get old fast. Plus they are some very difficult levels that I keep failing.

I also wished that we could actually harvest vegetables in garden patches in the main game page. The dialogues and scenes are too long. I want the ability to left click to fast foward each line.

I am abit disappointed with Farmscapes. I hope there is a seccond Gardenscapes where it's similar to the first one but you can also make money to redecorate the old rooms that we clean up.

It looks promising, but 189MB is such a torture...no, my hard drive is capable, but my bandwidth is not..
It'll be better if games with size this big is getting 2 days giveaway..

Installed and activated with no problem on my Win7/64 system, even though it took 30 min on my slow internet(it gets very slow at night for some reason). First time opening it took a little while to load, but that's not unusual for any new game. My 12 old daughter took one look at it, called it stupid, but hasn't left the game in almost an hour, LOL! She wants it on her laptop so it's going in now. Love Playrix games, and appreciate today's freebie. Thank you GGOTD and Whabbit for everything.

Downloaded and installed. When the game is played, after loading and skipping the dialogue, the farm scene is showing with the kid and grandpa, but no buttons for start, options, quit. So there's nothing to do, and the characters move like molasses. Without the buttons I can't go to options to try to make it better.

Rofl, I have been in the garden cleaning up almost all day because the weather is so amazing here(last year about this time we had 6 inches or more of snow) and I start playing this game....about veggies and flowers. Too funny.

Yes, they need a cat to get the mice etc but I do like the dog. The little boy is too funny and that phone..is unreal. I like the way they help out the people in the town too. I was kinda lost at first but figured it out soon...Clicking around helped. Reminds me of the Fishdom games. I agree about using the wooden slats as barriers..
makes me think they are borders. Love the graphics. I wish we could interact with the game more since it asks you questions like..."What's you favorite Playrix game, Delenn?"

Thanks GGOTD and Playrix for the awesome game. Not to be greedy..but ...Can I have some more, kind Sir? :)

Thanks Wabbit for a great review...as always. Get some sleep! :)

I like the combination of several game types and that I can choose between the relaxed mode or a timed play. Amusing graphics, nice little story, so thanks a lot!

I stayed up way too late playing this game. It's lots of fun, the story is cute, I really like the graphics, the music and the sound effects. The matching game is challenging without being too hard, and the occasional mini-games (if that's what you'd call them) break things up nicely.

My only complaint is that I had no idea what to do at the beginning, and there was a general lack of direction overall. At the start, I was randomly clicking on things and would get lucky sometimes. I didn't know the main point of the game was the matching part, and didn't figure out right away to focus on clearing out the gold boxes while matching.

I've never really played this type of game, so maybe that's how it's supposed to be, and it was fun enough to stick with, even if I didn't know what I was doing.

I love this game. I'd definitely recommend it, though $20 seems like a lot. Thanks for the GGAOTD and for the moderation!

Do you know how many times today I've said, "Just one more level and I'll quit?" I love this game. I could live without all the extras - I'd be happy if it was just the match 3 part, but it IS cute and I love having that "Skip" button!
Great game!

This is a fun, entertaining game-- great graphics, humorous dialogue, and lots of "extras" with mouse-overs and little surprises. Installed and running without any probs on my Vista/64. Thanks GGOTD and Playrix!!!

I had the same issue as #8 (the game downloaded & installed fine, but when I execute the game, the screen blinks, then nothing). I followed the advice given to GMMan in #44 and installed Game Booster; now the game loads and runs just fine. Thanks for the advice Mr. Rabbit. :)



........................ModeratorCcomment.......................

Glad you got it to work :)

Got it. I reset the modem. Told IE to run instead of save and it worked..Thanks


........................ModeratorCcomment.......................

Excellent :)

I will continue to moderate; but need to go sleep for a few hours or more, so your comments may not appear for some time. If you are having problems I will try to address them as soon as I return.

In the mean time I would suggest you post the problem in the forums as well, as you may get some feedback from the community. you'll find a thread already started via the following link:


http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/11453?replies=3#post-100356

I almost bought this game a few weeks ago! Thanks SO much, GAOTD. I really appreciate your offerings and effort. You guys are great.

I've never experienced a thermal shutdown of my laptop before, but this game repeatedly forces the computer to black screen and shut down. Unplugged the Internet and played it solo, without a connection. Same result. No other background progams seem to be added to create this situation. Again, it is ONLY the game that seems to be created the thermal shutdown. I have plenty of memory, temp files cleaned, etc. Not looking for a lecture on computer diagnostics, but welcome comments on how this game may be creating this situation. Thanks.

.......................Moderator comment.....................

The game is quite graphic intensive, which could explain the shutdown. Do you use one of those mats that allows the underside of your laptop to cool quikly? I purchased one for our laptop and it's been brilliant. It's made od a type of airtex. The whole thing looks like a fine messh so that air can circulate beneath the laptop. My wife uses it on the bed quite often and it used to get really hot resting on a high TOG quilt, now it hardly gets warm.

If you've got one of those desktop fans you could try cooling the laptop down by having the fan blow onto the laptop. :)

Thanks, Willy, it took longer than a couple minutes, but eventually it did load. It is a very enjoyable game, and my children love it.

I already played this game the last time it was offered and I liked it very much - it worked fine under W7.

this is great I have a special needs child with Autism and she already loves this game great graphics and she's been playing since I downloaded the game wish you guys did games more often.. The games help so much with simple reasoning and hand, eye functioning also giving them games that are not too babyish Thank you Giveaway of the Day more games anytime are great


..............................Moderator Comment...........................

Hello Mary, you'll find over 500 good quality arcade games over on MyPlayCity (MPC) which you can access via the following link. http://www.myplaycity.com

:lol:

When you install a MPC game you have to make sure all the checkboxes are unchecked while you are installing he games otherwise you'll find a MPC toolbar in your browser (which can be turned off via View/toolbars), and you may find your home page changed as well. That is also easily fixed, but it's still annoying; so always make sure those checkboxes are empty.

The only other thing that happens apart from gaining access to great games is, when you close any MPC game down, it will automatically open your browser to MPC's home page. That is entirely safe and can be useful becasue they are adding new games to their extensive catalogue frequently. You just have to close the browser and its done. You can download from MPC 24/7.

There's several game sites where you can get free games. some are more risky than others, for example Gametop, an old favorite of mine at the moment are 'forcing' you to install toolbars and change your home page before they allow you to play their games, wheras FreeGamePick are now similar to MPC. There's also Jenkat games and a couple more i've forgotten, but if my memory serves me well, those two cost in the way of tool bars, or in the case of free Gamehouse games, in game advertising.

Just as an example of the games you can get from MPC, the following is their full list of Match 3 games at this time. If your daughter loves today's game giveaway she will also probably love the two fishdom games as well both are made by Playrix games and are somewhat similar except you build a fish tank instead of a farm:


4 Elements, 7 Artifacts, Age Of Emerald, Amelie's Cafe, Amelie's Cafe 2, Aquitania, Around The World In 80 Days, Arxon, Atlantis Quest, Ballz 3D, Bistro Stars, Call of Atlantis, Captain Otto In Trap, Charma, Christmas Puzzle, Coffee Rush, Coffee Rush 2, Confectionary, Cradle Of Persia, Cradle Of Rome, Deep Voyage, Delightful Gifts, El Dorado Quest, Enchanted Cavern, Engineering - Mystery Of the Ancient Clock, Evoly, Fairy Island, Fairy Nook, Finding Doggy, Fishdom, Fishdom: Spooky Splash, Flowers Story, Flowers Story: Fairy Quest, Flowery Vale, Greedy Spooks, Halloween Night: Pumpkin Match, Hexus, Hidden Jewel Adventure, Ice Puzzle Deluxe, Ideabox, Jewel Island, Jewel Quest, Jewel Quest II, Jewel Quest III, Jewel Quest Mysteries: Trail of the Midnight Heart, Julia's Quest - United Kingdom, Lab Enigma, Lost City of Aquatica, Lost In Reefs, Lost Treasures Of El Dorado, Magic Crystals, Magic Gem, Magic Tale, Match3 Maze, Moabite Stone, Oriental Dreams, Pestering Birds, Pizza Deliciozo, PuzzleVille, Rainbow Mystery, Rainbow Web, Rainbow Web 2, Rhombis, Sea Journey, Season Match, Season Match 2, Simajo: The Travel Mystery Game, Sky Bubbles Deluxe, Sky Kingdoms, Smart Cook, Space Voyage, Story Of Fairy Place, Subaquatic, The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventures, The Enchanting Islands, The Rise Of Atlantis, The Treasures Of Montezuma, The Village Mage: Spellbinder, Tibet Quest, Treasure Pyramid, Treasures Of The Ancient Cavern, Trio: The Great Settlement, Tropical Fish Shop: Annabels Adventure, Vanilla and Chocolate, Villa Banana, Winemaker Extraordinaire, Wizard Land,
Woodville Chronicles, World Voyage.

! C:\Users\JimmyB\Downloads\Farmscapes.zip: CRC failed in Setup.exe. The file is corrupt
! Cannot execute "C:\Users\JimmyB\AppData\Local\Temp\Rar$EXa0.424\Setup.exe"
Is the entire message set.

The downloaded file size of Farmscapes is 194,305 Kb.

Thanks for the help.

..........................Moderator comment....................

The file size is less than it shouldd be. The file I downloaded that worked was 198.971.392 bytes or 198.971 KB.

That would point to your provider or possibly an error in your modem/router.

Try rebooting the modem and router and delete any cookies associated with the game giveaway site (from the Temp internet folder).

If that doesn't work try one of the other archivers that I linked to above in my review; other than the ones you've already tried.

Darn, computer's too slow for this game. It'll give me 15 FPS, but that isn't fun. Anyway, it's a standard Playrix game. You've got a lot of XMLs and Lua scripts. Feel free to change those. The build is dated at the beginning of the month, so it's almost guaranteed to be the latest version.

A few options in settings.xml that you may want to change:
numOfSplashes: set to 0 to disable splash screens
premium: set to true to enable Collector's Edition (bonus levels). I'm not sure what's all included. I can't seem to get to the wallpapers. Chances are you can get the files from Playrix's trial version.
advertisement/mpg_mainmenu: set to false to remove the "Try More Playrix Games" button from the corner.

........................Moderator comment............................

I know you are one of our resident experts, so the following suggestion has probably already been tried. Why don't you install Game Booster? It does give you up to 40% more system resources especially if you configure it to turn off all unecessary non system resources that may be on in the background. My son used it on his old system and it really did help with some of the games he liked to play that would otherwise lag due to low frame rates.

A very good game. It is enjoyable, and the mixing (or maybe rather coexistence) of the genres in the game is done well. It has fair and suitable music, pretty graphics and generally good flow.

On the negative side, I think it is a bit too easy, so I'll be playing with my child rather than for my own enjoyment. And a minor thing, as I put in the feedback, faster proceeding in dialogues without skipping them entirely would be good - each speech bubble delays too long before allowing dismissal.

The game is well worth buying, particularly for the children. Thumbs up!

I install the program, and it seems to install fine. I click start, and get to play with the 'loading' screen (Seeing the eyes of the boy and farmer follow the cursor, etc). Then it (finally) says 'click here to continue', and I do. The next screen is mostly black, but says 'Click here to skip' in the upper right corner. It sits at that screen for about 10 seconds, and then the program exits. It doesn't matter if I 'click to skip' or not.

I've tried re-installing DirectX, and tweaking with the various options under 'properties' as directed (some of those make it worse.


.....................Moderator comment......................

I'm eating so will get back to you.

I'm running a currently up-to-date of WindowsXP

I had the same issue as Maggie, but patience paid off, after two minutes waiting it started to load ;)

I get the message "CRC failed in Setup.exe. The file is corrupt."

I've downloaded with Firefox and Chrome. I've used 7-Zip and a fresh copy of Winrar. I've cleared the caches, restarted, and refreshed -- still the same error.

My downloaded RAR file size is 194305 Kb. In Winrar it shows 199,135,437 size.

Normal;ly, I have no problems with the gameoftheday downlaods, but I'm stuck on this one....


.........................Moderator Comment.............................

Have you checked the size of the zip file? It should be 189MB in size. I'll get back with some more suggestions in about 30mins. Can you post the error message in it's entirity, (or did you do that)?. Check the logs to see if there's anything else posted. (see the problems section for help)

I am not able to download the game. I press on the "Download Farmscapes Collectors Edition Now" link and nothing happens. I have downloaded previous giveaways, so I don't think it is a problem with my machine. I have Windows 7, 64 bit.


..............................Moderator Comment............................

Hi Maggie, we've had almost 10 thousand downloads already (higher than average for this time of day) and no one else has posted to report that problem, so on the balance of probabilities it's more than likely to be a problem with either your computer or your connection. Please read the problems section of my review at comment #1. you'll probably find a fix there. If not, please repost and i'll try and work through the problem with you. :)

It says that this is the Collector's Edition but it's not - it's the regular version.

I really like the regular version a lot but I was hoping to see what the Collector's Edition had that was different.

Will we be getting the Collector's Edition or is that a typo?


........................Moderator Comment..........................

I really don't know Lynn. It was pointed put earlier. I have the collectors edition so can confirm that the giveaway is indeed the normal version. I can only assume that it is a typo, or possibly a genuine mistake.

Nice little game. Always find Playrix games to be well done. Thanks for the giveaway!

Won't load keeps showing a problem[unspecified] was encountered and will close.
.................removed due to inappropriate language......... is this???


........................Moderator comment.........................

Mike, there's no need to swear, even if it's abbreviated. This is a family site with children visiting. The game is tried and tested and hads been sold for quite some time commenrcially, so the problem probably lies on your computer. Maybe a conflict with something you are running in the background, the giveaway cookie my be corrupted 9clear out your internet cache to cure that), make sure, if you use firefox that I.E. isn't offline, your screen resolution may not support the game or you may need to update your graphics drivers or a combination of the above. check the problems section of my review at comment #1 for further fixes (eg play in comatibility mode, disable visual themes etc.

A question for White Rabbit - how do you find the Alawar free game? I just looked at their website and I don't see anything there. I also don't see how to download their gamebox. Thanks


......................................Moderator Comment...............................

Sorry I didn't make it clear. You have to install alawars Gamebox to get the free games. They change them approximately every month. You just missed flowery Vale, which had been up for over a month:

You can download the Gamebox ia the following link:

http://www.alawar.com/game/alawar-game-box/

Once the game has installed you can play it either via the game box, or find where it installed to and create a desktop shortcut so that you can bypass the game box.