Game du Jour is a "One Deal a Day" website for casual PC games. Every day of the week, GameDuJour.com sells one downloadable game at a steep discount.

We aim to publish reviews at least one day before the game goes on sale at GameDuJour.com, so please check back regularly. But we will admit, as much as we love casual games here at Blogcritics, we won't be able to get to every title.

This Week's Deals
3/5/2007 The Alchemist — 50% discount
3/6/2007 Around the World — 50% discount
3/7/2007 Tropical Puzzle — 50% discount
3/8/2007 QuesTrix — 60% discount
3/9/2007 Tangle Bee — 50% discount
3/10/2007 Feyruna — 50% discount
3/11/2007 Wu Hing: The Five Elements — 50% discount

The Alchemist
Writer: Jim Symcox

The Alchemist is a name that immediately conjures up images of spell-wielding wizards and hugely-muscled barbarians chasing after forgotten treasure in a richly painted landscape of dragons, knights and castles.

However, after I'd downloaded The Alchemist I discovered it was more along the lines of a 3-D Tetris game. 

The user interface is well presented and the graphics are well thought out and are the star of the game. One minor quibble on my computer was that the writing on the control panel elements was a trifle indistinct. I'm sure this was intentionally created to give atmosphere to the game. However, I found it slightly off-putting.

The game itself consists of you placing groups of different shaped pieces on a board that looked rather like a chessboard. As you place like pieces against like pieces they disappear from the board. The pieces look rather like fires or potion containers that you might fondly imagine alchemists using.

The actual play was rather pedestrian and I lost interest in it completely after a very short time. 

In summary the game is well presented graphically, the controls work well and the rules appear quite clear. But I didn't want to keep going on to see if I could better my score.

If you like Tetris you may want to try this out. If you find Tetris boring, this game will do nothing to change your mind.

Around the World
Writer: Anna Creech