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Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom Giveaway
$9.99
EXPIRED

Game Giveaway of the day — Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom

Help Victoria in launching a chain of exotic restaurants!
$9.99 EXPIRED
User rating: 12 9 comments

Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom was available as a giveaway on October 15, 2022!

Today Giveaway of the Day
$5.00
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Help Victoria patch things up with her estranged father by launching a chain of exotic restaurants in Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom! Find the ingredients for spicy fajitas at Tres Amigos, or prepare a mouthwatering Greek Salad at Aesop's Tables! From pouring hot java at Bean Me Up to serving ice-cold treats at Beaches and Cream, there's never a dull moment as you work quickly to please your customers and increase your profits!

System Requirements:

Windows XP/ Vista/ 7/ 8/ 10; CPU: 1.6 GHz; RAM: 256 MB; DirectX: 9; Hard Drive: 139 MB

Publisher:

ToomkyGames

Homepage:

https://www.bigfishgames.com/games/6282/gourmania-3-zoo-zoom-f6282t1l1/?pc

File Size:

117 MB

Price:

$9.99

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Comments on Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom

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#1

Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom:
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In Brief:
We've now received three different Gourmania tiles over the last fortnight; getting Gourmania a week last Saturday (it was first given away HERE on the 27th Jan 2013), then last week we were given Gourmania 2: Great Expectations (previously given away for the first time HERE on the 23rd of Nov 2013); and now we get the third in the series, Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom. It was last given away on July 20th, 2019, where it received a positive 100% from 17 votes with 4 comments which you can see HERE. It was also given away for the first time on June 21st, 2015, where it received a positive 60% from 306 votes with 24 comments, which you can see HERE


As with the previous two titles, todays giveaway is a cross between a low-level time management game combined with a hidden object game, where the hidden objects are items of food. Today's game also includes a simple building program where you repair your restaurants and create a zoo, repairing various part of the zoo and buying items to build up the attractiveness of your zoo.

What I mean by a low-level time management game is that the amount of money you earn is factored in on how quickly you can complete the orders of the day. If you are too slow, you'll fail to reach your target amount for that day so will be awarded the title of Sous Chef. If you earn the specified amount within an unspecified time, you'll earn the title of head chef for that level. There are buffs such as coins and percentage increase tickets that can improve on your earnings for each level. The results are calculated on a combined total of the amount you earn for completing each dish, a speed bonus and if you earn the target amount for that level you get an achievement bonus.


You can see a few videos of game play HERE, HERE and HERE.
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The Game:
The Gourmania series hasn’t been without its faults through its previous two iterations, but Alawar is hoping that the third time’s the charm with Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom. This instalment follows Victoria, the heir to a fortune who is shunned by her father (and cut off from her money) until she can learn the value of a hard day’s work. With her family crest to guide her, she sets off to master the restaurant business in this continuation of the time management / hidden object series.

Unfortunately, the game’s story goes from semi-believable to downright silly as you’re introduced to a chef who has also let your father down and is determined to earn back his respect. Your father, for all of his apparent hatred of your lazy attitude, has given you complete control over all of his restaurants, which range in theme from Mediterranean to Mexican, and include some specialty shops like a Coffee Shop or Ice Cream Parlor. For someone that’s upset with your lifestyle, you really don’t have to do that much “work” to get going.
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The majority of gameplay will see you working day to day in each restaurant (your location changes at random), with each restaurant containing a single scene that varies in its amount of clutter. Food items and themed accessories are scattered as though a tornado has had its way with your pantry, and you’ll need to search the shelves, windowsills, counters and even floors for items like cheese blocks, olives, peppers, etc. to fulfil orders placed along the top of the screen.

In this instalment perhaps more than ever, you’ll need to focus on working on one customer’s order at a time. If you choose to play the game while being timed (you have the option of an unlimited time clock), the customers that you choose to ignore will become upset, and your profits will suffer because of it. You’ll need to ignore them though, as working on a single order at once earns you speed and service bonuses. Each dollar counts in Gourmania 3, as your day’s goal earnings are incredibly high, and mostly impossible to reach without taking advantage of every bonus you can.
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Other bonuses include coins scattered in each scene that must be clicked on to claim, presents that instantly finish an order if given to a customer, lollipops that raise each order’s cost, and even percentage tags that can double the cost of a single dish if given to a customer. With all of these bonus items, that’s even more time wasted searching for them to up your score, while customers lose even more patience. Of course, simply choosing to play the game without a time limit eliminates this stress, but also eliminates any challenge you may have been wanting from the experience.


Perhaps the biggest problem with the gameplay here though is the fact that many objects have similar names or odd appearances. For instance, the word “Pepper” may appear, and your restaurant may have Black Pepper (the spice), Bell Peppers, Chili Peppers and more available. You’ll have to use trial and error the first time you see these words to figure out which item is appropriate (in this case, you’d click on the Bell Pepper). Furthermore, a red apple in one level may be a green apple in the next; grapes may be green or red, tomatoes may come on a vine or as a single fruit and so on. Don’t get comfortable with an item’s appearance, as it will likely change as you enter the next level.
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After each shift in a restaurant, you’re sent to work on Victoria’s side project – a small zoo that will house each animal represented on your family’s crest. You’ll need to use your funds to purchase habitats, decorations, and even the individual animals for your zoo, which then sees you taking part in short and very light puzzles as you’ll need to repair everything you’ve purchased. I still would have appreciated seeing a complete removal of these cleaning and repair tasks from the entire experience, but I’ll take a toned-down version for now.

All told, Gourmania 3: Zoo Zoom fixes some of the issues found in the previous game, as there isn’t as vast a focus on cleaning and repairing as before, although it’s still there (and still unnecessary). The environments are highly varied, which is appreciated, but some are so cluttered that it makes things downright confusing. There are still a lot of issues plaguing this kitchen adventure, so you’ll need to use your past experience with the series’ other instalments before deciding to give this third one a chance.

Reference accessed HERE 21st June 2015, originally posted by Brandy Shaul on the 20th of June 2011 and reposted by Whiterabbit-uk on the 14th of October 2022.

You can also see a second review of the game HERE
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Conclusion:
If you enjoyed playing the first two Gourmania games given away over the last fortnight, you'll probably enjoy this one as well. I recommend downloading it and see what you think; please post some feedback if you enjoyed playing it. If you found it boring, please post some feedback on why you thought it was boring. Thank you.

I did find that the further in you got, the easier it became because most of the food in each of the restaurant's pantries stay in the same place on the shelves or work surfaces, so eventually some of the items you require to complete a meal are easier to find; especially if you've got good spatial memory.

After playing it for over an hour, I'd score it a 7.5 out of 10 (I'm not really into TM/HOG games, though this combination of both I quite liked; plus the additional building and repair aspect of the game added to the game compared to the previous titles; though, with respect to building games, I much prefer fully fledged building games like Cities: Skylines (though I don't like their cash cow, money grabbing DLC content that costs well over £200. Thankfully I got a large chunk of the DLC via The Humble Bundle for about £17 that included more than half of the available DLC, so was a bargain); however simpler dedicated but less expensive building games also appeal to me such as the Sim City franchise that aren't burdened with excessive DLC content.

Gourmania 3 was one of the last games I βeta tested for Alawar. They sacked the lot of us in favour of getting Alawar community members to test demo's and give a 30% reduction on the games they tested. We used to get the full version for free; I continued for a short while in that way, but decided most of the games I was testing (apart from only getting a small discount - back then games were $19.99 each, with expansions/ addons costing $14.99 each) only allowed a short time to test due to the demo limitation of 1 hour) plus most of the games they sent me were either Time Management or Hidden Object Games, which I'd had enough of. So finally stopped βeta testing with them.

(Before I started βeta testing, I used to post reasonable feedback on all of the games I purchased (I paid over £100 for the complete Hyperballoid breakout because I purchased every add-on that they released) and was invited to their official βeta test team after reviewing Magic Ball 3. They sent me a package of goodies for Christmas that year as a thank you for all of my reviews, that included a mug, calendar, courier bag, a cuddly soft toy for the kids and a few other goodies all themed on Magic Ball 3 game.
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Reply   |   Comment by Whiterabbit-uk  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+16)

Whiterabbit-uk,


Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found 2 hits (VBA32 & Jiangmin) from 64 antimalware engines. These two nearly always show up with Toomky games and are amongst only several antimalware suites that often tag these free games compared to most better known and more reliable antimalware engines; so, it's very likely to be a false positive.

You can see the results of the scan HERE.

The installation DOES NOT inject any malware into your system. THough your brower is opend to Toomky's home page when you first install the game and using the main game executable, whenever you close a game down, it will open your browser to Toomky's home page.

This earns them some money, part of which is given to the developer of the game for allowing the game to be given away for free.

If you're still not convinced of the games efficacy and want to be absolutely sure that the game is safe to install, please use a sandbox program to check that the game is safe to install before installing it to your C drive or other drives on your computer (assuming you have more than one drive).

Personally, I've never had any issues with any of Toomky's games.

There are free sandbox programs such as Sanboxie, GeSWall, BitBox, Windows Sandbox, Bufferzone (a six month commercial license was given away via the applications side of the project back in December 2009 HERE), Shadowzone, as well as others. (You'll find them all on the same page from Techwhoop.

Reply   |   Comment by Whiterabbit-uk  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+11)

Whiterabbit-uk,

That CrazyCrawfish guy in the first linked video is quite entertaining.

I hope all is well with you!

Reply   |   Comment by J  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+6)

J,

Yeah.

I'm feeling much better now. The effects of the booster have almost worn off. :)

Reply   |   Comment by Whiterabbit-uk  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+6)
#5

A cross between a time management and a hidden objects game. You have to find the ingredients for the meal made. works on windows 11.

Reply   |   Comment by ros dennis  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#4

I must compliment you on the review. It is very pleasant to read and it covers many aspects of the game (or all? I don't know ;-). The review also gives me a good idea what I would like about the game. Thanks! \

Reply   |   Comment by Review Liker  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#3

Got this at a previous giveaway. Like these. Of course, not the way a real restaurant kitchen is organized, questionable how many of the recipes are real, lol, and no refrigeration! Health department would have shut these down a long time ago! But, it's about game play, and this is a decent challenge and time waster. And can be taken in as small or large chunks as you want, unlike say, an Adventure game. Not sure which is better, Gourmania 1 or 3. 2 just doesn't work, with it's cleaning fetish and disappearing food, it pretty much derails itself in minutia and unnecessary elements. We often talk of these as time management, which they are, but finding the food adds an element of memory game to these which you don't have in the clear the swamp, build the house, take the suitcase to the hotel room, etc., type of TM game. What you lose here, from a good TM game, is the slight element of strategy - what to do and in what order. There can be a fraction of that here, but it's basically find it, cook it, and collect the money. Though many don't like timed games, I feel that without that real world element of customers not wanting to wait while you leisurely complete an order takes away some of the "rush" (meaning the endorphine high) you get from "beating the clock", and gets it more away from being a game, or at least makes it more of a game like solitaire. Which, to be fair, I also enjoy. Not to say that I'm that good at beating the clock in Gour 3. Destined to die a sous chef, I think. Sob. :P

Plus compared to Gour 1: you keep shuffling back and forth randomly (or so it seems) between different kinds of restaurants. That's not realistic, but it ups the variety and challenge, since you have to reacquaint yourself with the layout at the beginning of every shift - the memory game aspect.

Minus compared to Gour 1: might have been better if you had the choice to select the order on the map that you do the restaurants, except for the new ones that have to be gradually unlocked, or let the game take you through the "Magical Mystery Tour". Though the option to bounce back and forth in the order of restaurants you prefer might interfere with the unlocking of other ones. But it's likely doable - at least to a certain extent. In Gour 1, you can choose not to buy a new restaurant, though I get the feeling that buying most or all is practically inevitable, and adds variety of course.

Minus: The zoo. These things are window dressing. They are for the untimed players - and I don't blame them - but to be interrupted from one type of game to buy some item which means nothing to game play - you can buy the cheapest of everything and, if it looks good to you, well, that's all that matters. Or worse, to be interrupted from the restaurant game to clean up after an animal, well, to me that's more torture than challenge or game to me. I think that the type of games that have you build some pretty but irrelevant environment - like the aquarium in the Fishmania match 3 - are just sop to the untimed players. Which is fine, but why not simply design a program like that, where the interested player can play around with all of the options. I'm not going to replay the game unless it's good, not just because I can make a different aquarium or zoo. Why not simply design that program? They exist, have for years. Like the architectural programs that allow you to construct your dream home, and also let architectural students test ideas. Like a zoo or aquarium simulation. Putting the zoo in here just says the developer was devoid of a better idea. Here's a radical idea, how about she uses her money to design and build her own restaurant? Gour 1 wins this comparison, for 2 reasons. 1. You spend your money on restaurant upgrades, though this isn't handled well, I think in Gour 1. Some of the upgrades are mandatory, and, other than the obvious that every upgrade is faster, your not told how much or any other advantages so you can compare and decide what order you want to buy them, or to even know whether there's any advantages to skipping a buy. But, it still makes more sense than buying zoo animals (to clean up after!). 2. The "put ingredients in the moving conveyor to get new recipes" is similar to the restaurant TM elements and engaging and challenging - though pointless - and players that hate timed elements can take as long as time at it as they want, though, again, no endorphine rush if you do it that way. I like that type of play, GGOTD has given away a few games of that type, albeit with a time challenge, and I have and enjoy them.

You would think that with 2 minuses and 1 plus that I would prefer Gourmania 1, but I like this 1 better. The shifts in 1 seem shorter, and the constantly shuffling between restaurants in 3 which test you memory for layout - and add different types of ingredients more frequently, without having to "earn" new recipes (and the more and more varied recipes themselves, some of which are legitimate, add interesting color), is just more interesting game play to me. And my bottom line is gameplay. I like color, I like variety, I like an interesting game world which is logical and consistent, but if the game "ain't" fun to play, it ain't for me.

Like I say, I got it before, but thanks GGOTD, Toomky, Whiterabbit, and the community members. Keep up the good work!

Reply   |   Comment by watcher13  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

watcher13,

Thank you for your extended feedback, appreciated.

Reply   |   Comment by Whiterabbit-uk  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#2

Today's game is a little bit different in concept than the second one given away. It also has a story line that kids can potentially learn from to teach the value of hard work and so forth. Just watch the opening scene all the way and you'll know what I mean.

This installment of the game heavily pushes the clutter genre and time management genre. In the 2nd Gourmania, there was a lighter side to the game that combined easy Hidden Object Scenes but moved onto the clutter side of things in the kitchen.

The game has a relaxed mode so if going against a timer is not your thing and so forth its worth selecting. One thing new that I saw was that when you clear the first scene, you have the opportunity to make your block of restaurants beautiful by developing the scenery. Another genre built into the game where you build things.

I had no problem playing todays games and noticed that the 3rd Gourmania has the option to disable the custom cursor so if it gives you problems, check the system cursor box to turn it off.

Overall if you missed the last Gourmania 2 giveaway you will find it easy to get into and play it, just set some time aside to play as you may not complete it , in one day.

Reply   |   Comment by sailorbear510 aka Jason  –  2 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+13)
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