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A Working Workshop 

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By creating mosaics, you can earn the funds to pay for a mechanical horse.

Game Miras Workshop

This next game from Digimight shows a change of focus.  Rather than deal with the Dwarf Brethren, this game concentrates on the work conducted at Mira's Workshop.  While the location of the game may have  altered from the forests and mountain homes of the Dwarf environment to the workshop, used by Mira and her friends to deal with mechanical matters, the style of game play remains the same.  This is a nonogram game.

As you would expect with game of the nonogram genre, you will need to create mosaic type images on a grid area.  Aiding you with this task are numeric clues arranged along the top of the grid and down the left hand side so that each row and column is covered.  Further assistant is provided by the appropriate use of layers assigned to each of the colours making up the current mosaic.  A couple of rechargeable hint features are also available.

When creating the mosaic required by this game, you are allowed to make an occasional mistake.  With each grid you make up to four mistakes.  If you exceed this number then the grid will need to be replayed.  At the conclusion of each completed grid you will be awarded a number of stars, depending upon your performance, plus given a number of coins which will need to be put towards the building of a mechanical horse but more on this feature a little later.

The game consists of 150 levels of mosaic creating levels.  These mosaics have been sub-divided between five different locations.  The mosaic grids and locations have to be tackled in a pre-defined order.  You start off in the Workshop location before moving through Godville Square, Spare Part Market, Floating Diner and Rural Gas Station.  Basically each location is very similar with just a different background scene on which the grid is laid out in order.  Each location may have a cut-scene featuring dialogue between Mira and her various friends, mainly female although there is one bloke who seems to do the heavy lifting, as they set about their tasks.

Occupying the space on the right side of the current grid is a panel that can provide useful information.  Along with the two rechargeable Hints, allowing you to target a random cell or cross shape area, is the colour palette for that mosaic.  You can either manually switch between the different colours or be automatically switched when you have finished with a colour.  As you switch between the different colours, so the numeric clues will also change colour to match the level.  There is also options to hide the grid and view just the background or single step through the game's menu.

Having to single step through the game's menu, either moving forwards or backwards, is the game's most annoying feature.  For instance, it requires six mouse clicks from first selecting the menu to reach the game's shut down which is far too many.  You also need to use this menu to click your way to two additional features available in this game.

Each of the five locations has its own mini game.  This is a Spot the Differences in two similar scenes based on the location.  You will need to find ten differences that could involve colour, positioning and the presence or non-presence of an object.  Apart from giving a welcome break from the diet of nonogram game play, these mini games seem to bring no other reward.

As mentioned earlier, this game features the building of a mechanic l horse.  Taking place in the game's Repair module, the building involves little more that selecting from three different choices relating to parts of the horse anatomy which is broken up into legs, torso, head, tail and mane.  Each part has a different price and you can use the coins earned to make your purchase.  Even when you have plenty of  money to pay for a part, you will have to wait until the game is ready to let you make a purchase.

Despite the addition of the Spot the Difference mini game and the mechanical horse feature, I felt the game will only really appeal to nonogram fans.  I also feel the game's developers need to come up with a more user-friendly method of moving between the game's different elements.  Mira's Workshop can be downloaded from Gamehouse.com where it is priced at $9.99.  The game requires a 1.0 GHz processor with 1024MB of RAM and 610MB of hard disk space running Windows 7 and later.

 Mira's Workshop | GameHouse

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OverallDigimight Mira's Workshop rated 64 out of 100

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