Quick Draw Rangers is an action game written in flash. The goal of the game is to shoot the bad guy before the bad guy shoots you. The game is set up like a western style gun fight. Each person, meaning you and the computer, hide behind the respective objects until the sheriff yells draw. At that point you stand up and shoot your opponent before they shoot you. Players shoot by clicking on the opponent.

There are three modes of play, easy, medium and hard. The easy levels are pretty easy and you can finish them without too much problem. The medium levels get a bit harder towards the end of the levels. The guys start to move on you, but you can figure out the pattern and beat that mode too. The hard mode was pretty difficult. I didn’t “get” it. The first opponent doesn’t stand up. He stays crouched down behind the barrel and then you blow up. I tried multiple times to click on things to shoot, but to no avail.

I must be in the minority, though, because many of the comments for this game said the game was too easy and boring even on the hard setting. To see if you have what it takes to shoot down the baddies, try your hand at Quick Draw Rangers.

Independent developer, 2015 Inc, received an undisclosed amount of funding. 2015 Inc has used the funding to open a casual games development branch, Tornado studios. Tornado Studios will focus on developing casual games for the mass market. The success of the Nintendo Wii has proven to 2015 Inc that casual games for the masses will sell.

“The success of Nintendo’s latest consoles, and the recent growth of the casual games market as a whole, has provided an incredible opportunity for us to reach a whole new audience,” said 2015 founder Tom Kurdika.

2015 Inc is best known for their first person shooter, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. 2015 Inc will continue to make the popular first person shooter games under the 2015 label.

Thanks Gamasutra

If you have ever wanted to try your hand at running the United States and run for President, now is your chance, virtually anyway, in The Political Machine. The Political Machine is a strategy game, where players pick a candidate or create one and run for President of the United States.

After choosing a candidate, the player moves on to pick a campaign to play. The campaign can be against the computer or another player over the Internet. The candidate has to do everything a real politician would do, such as learning to avoid the tough questions and taking out TV ads to get the public to care about your issues.

The Political Machine sounds like a great way to experience the ugliness of politics without having to go through it in real life. Who knows, you may enjoy running for President so much, virtually, that you run for President in real life.

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PopCap Chicago Studio has announced the release of Wizard’s Pen for the PC. This hidden object game puts a spin on the hidden object genre by having players identify the object through layers of different pictures. Players use a magic pen to unveil hidden objects.

The goal of the game is to find your master, who has mysteriously disappeared. The master is a conjurer, which means he could be anywhere and the only way to find him is through his workbook. The problem is, the pages of the workbook are blank and the player has to figure out the pictures on the pages to uncover the mystery.The workbook offers 400 pages of different pages to discover and 16 different mini-games.

Wizard’s Pen sounds like a great addition to the hidden object genre. Hidden object games are very popular and to add a different spin is nice. It is nice to see new games that keep the hidden object genre new and fresh.

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Gaia 3D Puzzle is a virtual jigsaw puzzle with full customization for your PC. Players now have the option to assemble any number of puzzle pieces they would like. Some days you may feel like putting to together 500 piece puzzles and other days you may opt for 1000 piece puzzles and now you have the choice.

Gaia 3D Puzzle allows players to choose the picture of the puzzle. Any picture on your computer or one you found on the internet can serve as a puzzle picture. The game lets you choose the pictures and then chop the picture into 3D pieces so they look like real puzzle pieces and you can control the shape of the piece, with four different options to choose from.

I love doing puzzles and virtual puzzles are the best type because there is no chance of a piece getting lost. It is nice to be able to customize the amount of pieces in a puzzle and to be able to choose your picture. Gaia 3D Puzzle sounds like a great game for jigsaw puzzle fans.

Gaia 3D Puzzle is reasonably priced at $19.95 and can be downloaded from Gaia Dream Creations.