Orchard

Orchard is another strategy and time-management game devoted to the theme of gardening and running your own farm. The story involves Ivy who will inherit her granduncle’s orchard if she can prove that she has what it takes to make the fields prosper.

Each level has goals that must be accomplished, from hiring workers to selling pies. At the beginning everything runs slowly, and you have to do a lot of identical actions and wait quite a while until you pass the tutorial and start playing by your own.

The more you progress, the more time-consuming the tasks will be, so you’ll have to hire more workforce. But before you do that you’ll need to build a house for each worker and chop enough wood for the construction.

The graphics of “Orchard” are done typical 3-D style in vibrant cartoonish colors. The orchard, fruit plants and trees are highly realistic in nature with the movements of the characters being somewhat awkward and slow. The music is a typical little tune that starts to wear on you as the game proceeds with only a few sounds coming from certain tasks such car sounds when customers arrive, hoeing, chopping of wood, and building.

The entire game offers plenty of game play that allows you to also play in free mode to build your own orchard at your own pace. On the whole the strategy part of the game is quite engaging!

1, February 2009