Time-management games have become a huge trend since Diner Dash came along. Clicking and organizing a series of tasks has become the basics of a series of casual titles, and once again it appears in the latest Halloween-themed Playfirst game.
In Daycare Nightmare Mini-Monsters you control Molly, a kind-hearted girl who cares for the sons and daughters of the monsters in the neighborhood. But things aren’t going so well in this town, with a rude egyptian mummy trying to drive Molly out of the building. Your goal becomes to raise enough money to open your own daycare, but in the meantime, you must deal with some strange shady character and two special agents who are investigating monster occurrences. How to run a monster daycare and still keep it a secret? It’s not an easy task, that’s for sure.
A “normal” day at Molly’s daycare begins with parents dropping off a monster baby at the door. Monster babies come in all sorts of “flavors”: ghosts, witches, gorillas (kongs), vampires, slimes (blobs), werewolves, mummies. All babies require their needs to be satisfied: diaper change, food, nap and play time, so Molly has to juggle all tasks one baby at a time, for either the crib, changing station, feeding chair or play mat. Each baby has a happiness meter, and your interface also shows a large meter for overall happiness. Really happy babies will show halos above their heads.
Occasionally, babies will get angry at each other and fight, so pick them up quickly so they don’t get hurt. If they do, you must take them to the first aid station to cure their “booboos”. Watching them transform while they are angry is pretty fun though, but definitely not efficient. Babies also get mad at you if you don’t act quickly enough to fulfill their needs. The vampire will bite you and make you drowsy for a short time, while the ghost will transform into something that will scare all the other babies and make them wet their diapers. You can carry one item with Molly at any given time, and I personally picked the diaper, since it helps save time.
Caring for the babies’ needs will reward you with tips. The tip jar fills up gradually throughout the day, and at the end of each day you can visit the store to purchase upgrades for your daycare items. You can get new running shoes to make Molly faster, purchase better diapers to reduce the chance of babies getting wet, upgrade the crib, playmat and feeding chairs so the activities take less time – which means happier babies, quicker.
I think the major difference with Daycare Nightmare versus other similar games is the chain system. You can chain the baby pick-ups at the end of the day, but that’s all I’ve noticed adding x2 or x4 bonuses. You can’t really chain tasks nor Molly’s actions. The closest you get to it is clicking one thing then the other while she is still doing the first task. There’s no actual queue.
As far as the look of the game, the cutscenes are presented in 2D artwork with speech ballons, while the game itself has a 3D look to it. The monsters are especially fun to watch, with little animations while on the rug playing with others, while playing with a toy on the playmat (it’s cute to see the little vampire hammering a little skull or the witch stirring a cauldron) or drinking their bottles. It’s especially funny to see how they react when they get mad!
The music is definitely Halloween-ish but it does become repetitive after some levels, while the sound effects for all babies are pretty cute. I especially loved the vampire’s “bluh!” and the witches giggles.
Despite a few differences in gameplay that we have grown accustomed to from the Dash games, the little tricks in this game don’t take away from it being a treat. Daycare Nightmare Mini-Monsters is still a spooktacularly fun, casual family game for Halloween.