Bipo: Mystery of the Red Panda is a puzzle/adventure game for the PC. The game starts out with a scene of Bipo’s grandfather leaving town for an undisclosed reason. With the grandfather gone, Bipo has to make his own money. Players are left in Bipo’s room and have to adventure around town to find the next piece of the story line. After a few hints, players find out the goal of the game is to capture the Snow Towhee.

Bipo is hungry and finds a cup cake store in town. Players go into the store and are taken through a piece of the story line. Bipo is looking for money and asks the cup cake store owner if she needs help. Of course she tells him she doesn’t need help in the store that would make for a boring adventure game, but she does need help finding the Snow Towhee.

Bipo needs money so he decides to go track down the Snow Towhee and the adventure begins. The adventure piece of the game is exploring the town and finding the different places you need to go. Bipo is able to enter shops and talk to the shop owners and travel around town. Eventually, you will find the shop you need to be in to get to the next “level” in the game.

The first “level” is the snow cave and players quickly find out they can not enter the cave because it is cold and Bipo is not dressed for the cold. Once, players have found warm clothes for Bipo to wear they can enter the cave and that is the puzzle aspect of the game. The ice cave is full of ice and Bipo can’t stop on ice unless he runs into an ice block. Players have to carefully navigate Bipo through the puzzle to find the Snow Towhee.

The graphics in Bipo: Mystery of the Red Panda are more of an Anime style. The graphics are clear and give you the feel of an adventure game. The town looks like a town you would find in adventure games and the people in the shops are nicely drawn complete with their own personalities.

Bipo: Mystery of the Red Panda is a fun game that combines two types of casual games genres, puzzle and adventure game. The combination makes for a fun game and broadens the appeal of the game. Anyone interested in puzzle or adventure games will find Bipo: Mystery of the Red Panda fun to play.

Legendo announced the release of Spooky Spirits a puzzle game for the PC. The goal of the game is to help Becky and Tim, the main characters, hunt stray spirits that have escaped the Netherward, the place ghosts are sent for being bad ghosts and scaring humans.

Players have to place falling blocks into piles of the same color in order to clear them off the screen, but Spooky Spirits lets players expand in any direction. There are three different game modes allowing any type of player to find a style of game play they like.

These types of games are challenging and fun. It is always a challenge to make the biggest block you can without causing yourself to lose. If Spooky Spirits sounds like a game you wouuld like, head over to Legendo and try it out.

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Crave Entertainment in a partnership with Professional Bull Riders (PBR), Inc and DC2. have announced the release of PBR Out of the Chute for the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2. Players get to experience the thrill of riding a bull or experience the entire experience from the bull’s perspective.

“A two ton bull is a lot less dangerous on Wii or PlayStation 2 than it is in a PBR arena, but Crave and D2C managed to capture the essence of the sport in this game”, says Sean Gleason, COO of PBR. “We are extremely proud of PBR Out of the Chute and couldn’t be happier about the relationship with such great game developers and publishers.”

Players create their characters and then take those characters through ten three-round events across multiple locations. Players can either challenge the best or play as the best players, such as Guilherme Marchi, Justin McBride, and Chris Shivers. If a bull rider is not your thing, then you could play as the bull. The bulls have to attempt to buck the rider off.

PBR Out of the Chute sounds like an interesting game. I like the option to play as the bull or as a bull rider. The motion control of the Wii Remote makes a good fit for controls for this game.

PBR Out of the Chute can be picked up for $29.99 on the Nintendo Wii and $14.99 for the PlayStation 2.

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Vyk Games is a company based in China that will help with development work for games. They have opened a casual games division of their company. Vyk Games will now help with casual games development work. They can help with graphics, design and development.

“Vyk Games has successfully provided top-tier developers and publishers worldwide with a wide range of development and art services aimed at alleviating the pressures associated with tight deadlines and high development costs,” said Tom Sperry, CEO of Vyk Games. “As competition heats up to capitalize on the significant market opportunities in casual gaming, we’ll see these same realities faced by just about every player in the market. By creating a team that specializes in casual games development, we can now address the rising needs of casual game developers to create great games on time and within budget.”

Interesting idea for a company and it sounds like they are doing all right for themselves. If you have a casual game idea or need some help with some portion of your casual games, this might be a good company to look into.

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Zatikon is a neat strategy game that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. The game starts out and the player has to decide what type of army they would like to build. The player starts out with a $1000 to build their army. Each member of your army cost money. There are all different types of troops to choose. There are ground troops, archers and even magic users. The more powerful troops cost more money, of course.

Players have the option to play against the computer, against other players online, or cooperatively with other players. Before the game begins, players are in a common area. Players can chat with other players or try and find another player to play against or cooperatively with.

Once you have decided which mode you would like to play, the game begins. Players have to decide which troops they would like to use. Each player has five commands they can issue each turn. Each troop has different abilities they can use and each ability costs a different amount of commands. Players have to keep track of the number of commands they are using or they will find themselves out of commands for that turn and not able to complete their plan.

Players move their troops around the board and try to make it to their opponent’s castle. Of course your opponent is guarding their castle with their troops. Players must move their troops towards the opponents castle without dying on the way.

Zatikon requires players to create a strategy to win games. The first AI opponents are not too tough to beat, but you can get stuck when your tyring to figure out each troops strengths and what is the best use for that troop. It took me a game or two to develop a strategy I could work with and actually won against the computer.

Over all Zatikon is a fun game. I have not played many strategy games like Zatikon and it is nice to see new and creative games. I also liked the fact that you can play cooperatively with other players. Not many games include a coop mode. If you like strategy/war type games you should check out Zatikon, it is worth the $13.95.