Thursday, October 21, 2010

Time Management Games, What Are They?

Time management games are a type of casual game that involves managing a variety of resources to accomplish a goal. These games can be broken down into 2 sub-groups: Life-simulation games and construction and management games. Each game type has its own unique challenges and game play.

Life-Simulation Games

Life-simulations are games in which you simulate the life of an organism or a group of organisms. These simulations are much like the popular game Simlife. They involve successfully being able to care for and maintain the organisms. This genre also includes games where you are actually simulating your dream life. I great example of that kind of game is Life Quest.

In Life Quest, your goal is to get a good job and live in a nice house. You must keep up with the Jones' to get ahead in life. In order to progress through the simulation, you must beat your high school rivals at individual tasks. It even includes buying pets to keep you happy at night.

Another type of life-simulation game is a social simulation game. This genre focuses on the social interactions between people. To be successful, you must be sure the characters in the game are getting along. The most popular life-simulation game is Will Wright's the Sims. The Sims has found its way on to several different platforms from the PC to iPhones.

Construction Games

Construction games involve building or expanding fictional communities or projects. The gamer is called upon to build up the entity with a fixed amount of resources to work with. Common titles include city-builders, business builders, and government simulations.

In city-builders, your task is to build up a city while meeting the needs and wants of your community. You must make sure they have proper food, health care, security, housing etc... You are usually tasked with managing taxes and elections as well. Probably the most popular game in this genre is SimCity. There are a few casual games as well like Happyville.

Business-builders simulate the day-to-day operations of a business. These can range from the popular farms or ranches to diners to hotels. One very popular business-building game is Diner Dash 5. In the game, Flo is the waitress in an incredibly busy restaurant. There is even a game that lets you simulate building a mall, Mall-a-palooza.

Government simulations attempt to simulate the ins and outs of politics and government policy. They typically involve making decisions about foreign policies, education priorities and building priorities.

Time management can be an excellent escape from the real world into something imaginary. You can have the job of your dreams, or try your hand at politics for a few hours. They can be a well-earned mini-vacation on a lazy Sunday afternoon as well.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/

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