Crazy Daisy Review

Crazy Daisy is another puzzle game by Astraware. That pretty much sums up this game. It is not a particularly bad or good puzzle game. It is of basic Astraware quality, but certainly not one of their better releases. The game was released on Valentine’s Day, and takes a theme for that particular holiday.

In this game you are the master of seven flowers, one in the middle, the others arranged around it. Each flower has six petals. Your objective is to rotate the flowers and connect petals of the same color so that groups of petals of this color fall off of both flowers, which gives you points. To rotate a flower, you simply tap it. Each flower can only rotate in one direction, indicated by a little arrow in the middle.

This works quite well. The only problem is that a flower is not rotated instantly if there is something else going on, like petals falling of somewhere else, and then your taps are counted with some lag. This will often lead to you tapping once too often and missing the right petal. You then have to do another five taps to get where you wanted, which can be frustrating and also deadly if you play one of the two game modes that actually make sense.

There is an arcade mode and a puzzle mode. In arcade mode you only have a certain amount of time to accumulate enough points to get to the next level. In puzzle mode, you have a certain amount of moves. Then there is the endless mode which does not make any sense at all. The first two modes can be fun for a short while. There are even some basic strategies to learn. All in all you, will play Crazy Daisy less than other puzzle game. Gameplay is too poor and the game is too primitive to come back to it often.

The graphics of Crazy Daisy are okay. The color combination of the flower petals does not fit well. They just do not look nice. While there is some animation, the graphics simply are not varied enough, even for a puzzle game. The music is a little annoying, but the sounds are a problem. There are comments every time you do something special (like get a level up) and they are designed to sound like insects. Well, it is a good thing that insects cannot speak in real life because those sounds really get on your nerves after a while. Fortunately, you can turn them off in the menu.

There are much better puzzle games from Astraware as well as other developers than Crazy Daisy. That is why I cannot really recommend a purchase. Through the end of March 2005, Astraware is offering an introductory price of $9.95. Unless you are a puzzle game fan that can’t get enough of new puzzle games or if you like the demo, don’t buy this game.