by Heather Viars

Created on: June 05, 2008   Last Updated: June 08, 2008

Money Tree by Mumbo Jumbo is a fun new game that offers a brand new style of game playing, something always important to gamers. The plot is cute and simplistic, the hired gardener trying to win the love of his employer's beautiful daughter by growing a garden of his own. But instead of just being a background feature, as with a lot of games, it is actually worked into the game itself. As you progress through the game, you earn money with which you can purchase items for your garden, some of which trigger clips from the girl's point of view, and increase her affection for your gardener.

Game play is easy to understand, a simple click and drag or double-click mechanism which is used in all games. The only negative aspect of the game does come into play with this mechanism though. The whole point of the game is to grow a tree, or trees, and harvest the fruit, or cash given through special power-ups, as well as fight off insects and birds that would destroy your harvest within a certain amount of time. To grow the tree you have to click and drag or double-click falling leaves and power-ups which then attach to the base tree trunk. The more leaves that are attached, the bigger the tree grows, allowing for more leaves to be attached, and so on. This is where the game play gets sticky. As the tree gets bigger and fills more of the area, it becomes very hard to get your falling leaves to attach where they are supposed to, which can be the difference between winning and losing the level as they are the spawn points for your harvest. Aside from that, which you can learn to work around, the game play is smooth with no noticeable lag time while changing areas.

All in all, this game deserves a 4/5, deducting a point for the leaf issue mentioned. The music and accompanying sound effects are pleasant to listen to, and avoids the overly high pitched and hyper music often found in this type of game, and honestly, who wants to play a game if you can't stand to listen to it as well. The graphics are smooth with a cartoon style look to them during game play, while the still shots telling the story look more like drawings, which adds to the romantic feel of the story it is telling.

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