Daycare Nightmare

Daycare Nightmare, Floodgate Entertainment, 2007.

Daycare Nightmare is a fun, little mini-game similar to Diner Dash.  Molly, a sales-clerk in a Donut Shop, discovers that she is serving an unusual customer–a blob.  When the blob threatens to eat her, Molly volunteers to baby-sit Blob Junior so that the mommy blob doesn’t have to take the little one to the office with her.

Word gets around that Molly is a good sitter, so soon her little daycare fills up with monster babies–blobs, vampires, dragons, ghosts and cyclops.  The goal is to keep the babies fed, changed, entertained and–above all–happy.  When the babies cycle through all of the options–food, play, naps and diapers successfully they get a little halo.  If they cycle through more than once, the halos change color.  Each successive color change on the halos multiplies the basic tip for that type of baby by 2, 3, etc. up through four or five.  (Times three is the best I’ve done so far.)  If the happiness meter falls too low, Molly gets eaten, and you lose that round.

Just as the player believes that all is going well, and s/he is going to avoid being eaten, the blob mommy announces that the daycare needs to move out of her house; Molly can use the home of her former mother-in-law–now deceased.  Now the player receives added babies, types not seen at the lower level, and a higher happiness threshold.

There are seven “days” in each level.  It is important to try for as much happiness and as many halos as possible in the lower levels, because tips are used to purchase improvements to the daycare and to Molly’s personal gear–such as faster running shoes, more cribs, and a Terrorvision with a VCR.  By the time you reach the Vampire’s Lair (Week four), the Terrorvision will be essential for keeping happiness at an acceptable level.  I have finally managed to get a run half-way through the Dragon’s Lair (Week Five), and have started over because I need more “goodies” for my daycare.

This is a challenging game that requires speed, hand-eye coordination, thought, and reading the directions.  It has a fun background story that is dished out in comic book format at each level change.  I down-loaded my copy from PopCap Games.  I played through all the trial minutes, and decided I really wanted this game.  I waited three months before actually buying it for $19.95, and have been having challenging fun with it ever since.  My room mate, who is a skillful video gamer, has made it through one more level than I have (with fewer restarts).  It makes a change from the longer games we play or from writing.  It is completely clean and kid-friendly, although my younger grand kids found it too much of a challenge.

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