Reviewed: December 3, 2008
Reviewed by: Chris Wong

Publisher
Game Factory

Developer
Shin'en

Released: November 6, 2008
Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1

3
4
4
2
3.3

Supported Features:

There are 6 minigames and each one varies differently. There is no use of the A and B buttons, only the stylus. Before each game begins there is a tiny description of how to play the game, but many times it is hard to understand what it’s trying to say that it is easier to just jump in the game and try it out.

One of the games require you to press a left or right arrow to flip the board in order to connect flower orbs together, which will clear a stage once each flower orb is touching another one. It all seemed very easy, until I reached a stage where a flower orb was between 2 unmovable blocks and the block that I could move was next to another unmovable block that it became unmovable, therefore the flower orb was stuck in one spot the entire stage and there was no way for me to complete it.

Another game requires you to create a complete shape, circle or square, as they fall down a waterfall. You have to drag a big circle to a medium one to a center filler; the same goes for the squares. There’s not particular order to connect them, just as long as all three connect. More often than not, there will be an abundance of one sized shape that you will have maybe 3 pieces all waiting for a single size that it just won’t fall. And you want to keep each shape you’re working with above the bottom or else you’ll lose it and have to make another one. Your patience will grow thin in this game because that single size won’t fall in order for you to complete a stage, which is determined by how many complete shapes you make.

Yet another game that will throw you into frustration is one where you fill in the dark area using trapezoids and big and small triangles. It’s similar to that game for 1 year olds just learning shapes. On the left side of the screen, you have your shapes you use to fill in the area and it falls lower as you use one. You can’t dump any; you just have to use it. Sometimes, you’ll be getting numerous copies of one shape that it crowds the whole column. And if you can’t use it, it’ll be stuck there the whole time. Then you get to the point where you’re almost complete, but these shapes just can’t go away. They were given to you early on in the game but there were never any space for them to be used causing you to lose automatically. This might raise that blood pressure which isn’t good for a relaxing game.

The graphics are definitely not the best for a DS game. For the games that deal with shapes, each one is colored plainly with just a bit of shading. Not very impressive. The background is often just a landscape picture rather than a graphic; the only one that is a graphic is the waterfall game. Overall the graphics just could’ve been a lot better with more creative puzzles.

Just like Zenses: Ocean, the relaxation sound isn’t really the sounds of the rainforest; just some rainforest inspired relaxation music. I would say that they are a bit better for relaxing than in Ocean, but sometimes they can be rather upbeat and more trance-like than relaxing. On the other hand, unlike Ocean, there are sometimes bird noises which can make you feel like you’re playing a frustrating puzzle game in the rainforest.

This game will probably not last longer than an hour before you have to shut it off out of your anger. You might play it again just out of boredom, but other than that, you’ll just be too frustrated with this game to play it again. You definitely don’t want to pick this up for its $29.99 price tag.

The sheer frustration of the flaws of each minigame was just enough to want to forget about the game altogether. It’s not relaxing at all. It does at first seem like it could be fun, but you’ll lose patience and find you can’t beat a stage just because one piece of the puzzle is stuck since the very beginning of the level. This one could be avoided or at the very least, pay for it when it’s very cheap.