Mac Game Review: Sunset Studio Deluxe

When I get bored, I tend to kill time by playing games these days. I mean to quit playing games, but… Oh, well… This time, I played Sunset Studio Deluxe. We wrote a review on “Little Shop of Treasures 2” at the end of last November. And Sunset Studio Deluxe is pretty much similar to this game. It’s a downloadable game published by GameHouse, a a division of RealNetworks, Inc and is available for both Mac and PC users.

A simple story about Sunset Studio Deluxe goes as follows. You arrive at a movie studio called Sunset Studio. It’s your first day at the job. A famous director named Cecil B. Windmill will show you around. This movie studio is not so big. It has 11 different movie sets including Science Fction set, Western set, Adventure set, Romance set, Star Trailer set, Horror set, Sitcom set, Courtroom set, Pirate set, Musical set and Detective set. In order to complete one film, Cecil will use only some of them. The first movie he is going to shoot is “Pirates of the Lost Abyss,” and he will use only two of them. (See Screenshot 03.)

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Whenever you enter a set, you will be given a list of items to find. Cecil will tell you that your predecessor has misplaced items, and he needs them to shoot a film. So you need to find as many as 20 items in 5 minutes. The names of the items to find will be shown on your left. All you have to do is to see the list and locate items one by one by clicking on them. If your click is correct, you will get a yellow symbol. And you have to locate at least 12 items. After completing each scene, your see your score with the number of stars. (See Screenshot 07.) If you find 12 to 13 items, you will get one star. If you find 14 to 15 items, you will get 2. And you will get 5 stars if you find all 20 items. Each movie involves several sets, and your overall performance for an individual movie is represented by the average number of stars. (See Screenshot 08.) Furthermore, if you finish a movie with 5 stars for all sets, you will get a trophy. (See Screenshot 09.)

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Okay. So far, we haven’t see anything new beyond the game play of Little Shop of Treasures 2. In fact, there are a few new features in Sunset Studio Deluxe. In Little Shop of Treasures 2, there is only one toolkit to help you find missing items. That is, if you click on ‘HINT,’ you will get the pictures of missing items. In Sunset Studio Deluxe, you have 6 different toolkits. At the beginning, you won’t get to use all 6 of them. And Cecil will introduce them one by one to you. The first toolkit is Spotlight tool. (See Screenshot 10.) If you see a number greater than 0 next to the toolkit, that means you can use it. Spotlight tool works in such a way that the spotlight becomes smaller as your Mouse pointer gets closer to the item in question. That means this toolkit only applies to a single item, not to all 5 items. Other toolkits include Snapshot tool, Type (or typing) tool, Location tool, Camera tool and Timeout tool. Timeout tool is different kind. All other toolkits work on individual items. If you use Timeout tool, you will get extra 30 seconds to complete your job. You have to be careful a little when you use it because you cannot use other toolkits while Timeout tool is effective.

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Occasionally, Cecil will place a quick request. This feature is called the rush job. (See Screenshot 16.) You only have some 20 seconds to find a particular item. And depending on how fast you find the item, you get bonus points.

Another interesting feature is the bonus item. If you see the left-hand side of the screen, there is an area covered by a red curtain. Occasionally, this curtain opens, and an item will appear. You won’t see a complete image. Rather, the image of an item will materialize itself gradually. (See Screenshot 17.) Unlike the rush job, there is no hurry for bonus items. But you want to find a match to the item in question as soon as possible so that you will get as many bonus items as possible during each scene. Whenever you find a match, you will have a chance to earn one tookkit. (See Screenshot 18.)

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I found this game more enjoyable than Little Shop of Treasures 2. It took me about 6 hours to complete the entire game. There are 12 movies. After finishing the entire game, I went back to each movie to earn all 12 trophies. And it took me about additional some 3 hours.

By the way, let me warn you not to press the escape key at any stage. After earning all 12 trophies, I pressed it, and my player set disappeared. So I ended up creating a new player and playing the entire game all over again.

We won’t give recommendation as to whether or not readers should buy the games we review because everyone has his/her own taste. Some people like 1st-person shooting games. Some people like real-time strategy games. As for this game, I played it for 8 or 9 hours. And I didn’t feel bad in killing my time in this way. The price tag for this game is $19.95. Let’s say that I played it for 9 hours. So did it generate $2.22 worth of happiness for each of those 9 hours? And I would say yes. On the other hand, I assume that it will be a waste of money for those who enjoy playing first-time shooting games.

Developer: Unknown
Distributer/publisher: GameHouse, Inc.
Website: gamehouse.com
Genre: Quiz
Price: US$19.95
System requirements 1: PowerPC/Intel, Mac OS 10.2 or better
System requirements 2: 800 MHz with Windows XP (SP2), 256 MB RAM, Direct X 7.0 or higher
Multiplayer: Not available