Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan (iPhone) Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

I fear a new franchise is upon us.

The Dream Day Wedding concept has been around for year or two now and I even had the pleasure of playing its first outing on the Nokia. It was a surprisingly enjoyable game and the thought of bringing such a graphically detailed game to the iPhone sounded perfect.

Dream Day Wedding Manhattan sees you as chief helper who is left with organising all the finer details of your best friend's wedding. There isn't a whole heap of organising to do apart from trying to find hidden items across various locations. There is a little bit more to this than just a hidden objects game but I'll come on to those in a bit.

Most of the levels are of the hidden object type. In these, you have a list of objects to find in the cake shop, travel shop, dress shop, you get the idea. Each screen has a specific list scrolling across the bottom and you have to get your eagle eyes into action. To make things a little easier, you can double tap or pinch to zoom in and get a close up view. The level of detail throughout the game is excellent. Each level probably has about 40 hidden items that will slowly be branded in your brain. While you only need to spot about half of them for any single level, the subconscious will do its job and keep track for later levels.

Some of the objects are incredible well hidden and can be sketched into the fabric of a dress or the walls of the building. Luckily the bluebirds are quite easy to spot and finding 5 of these will award you a hint. It's also worth noting that some of the objects may not mean much (boutonnière anyone?) but the hints can help spot these tricky ones for you to remember. The levels all come with time limits and even you run out of time, the game just restarts and gives you a few extra hints on top.

To break things up a little, I-Play have thrown in a few mini games. These include a Pipe Mania style game (based around a chocolate fountain, naturally) and a simple slider/jigsaw puzzle. There are also a couple of detective levels where you have to rummage through the bride's bedroom to find the next list. Again these levels are quite easy and if you leave it long enough, clues will start to twinkle.

For fans of the original, or fans of this genre in general, Dream Day Wedding Manhattan should please. At the moment there are no trophies/achievements; seeing as these are present in the java equivalent games we are expecting these to appear in future updates. I-Play did manage to find time to add an extra bonus pack that you can buy for an extra few pennies...