Jewelleria Review

If you’ve played any of the other store-based time management games like Cake Mania, Turbo Subs or Coffee Rush then you need not download Jewelleria. Not only does it offer the same play mechanic as other serving-style multitasking games but it doesn’t do as good a job.

As told by the crudely-drawn comic strip, you play as Elly, who just graduated from college and decides to help her dad out with his ailing jewelry store. Right away you’ll see spelling mistakes and awkward grammar with sentences like “I’ve always love the shoep!” Um, I understand and respect these developers are Russian, but why hasn’t anyone caught this? Don’t they test the games they’re publishing?

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If you’ve played any of the other store-based time management games like Cake Mania, Turbo Subs or Coffee Rush then you need not download Jewelleria. Not only does it offer the same play mechanic as other serving-style multitasking games but it doesn’t do as good a job.

As told by the crudely-drawn comic strip, you play as Elly, who just graduated from college and decides to help her dad out with his ailing jewelry store. Right away you’ll see spelling mistakes and awkward grammar with sentences like “I’ve always love the shoep!” Um, I understand and respect these developers are Russian, but why hasn’t anyone caught this? Don’t they test the games they’re publishing?

The game-play in Jewelleria works as follows: Customers pour into the jewelry shop and you must click on them to give them a catalog. Revealed as a speech bubble over their head, they’ll ask for a piece of jewelry such as a gold necklace with a ruby on it, silver ring with an emerald stone, or watch, crown and other items. Some can be clicked on and given to the customer right away while others require a machine to create the jewelry, such as bracelet, and then you must click and bring it to a setting station or two to place the proper colored gem inside, which also requires time. Make a mistake and you can place the item on a table in the hopes another customer will ask for it or dump it in the recycling box.

The goal is to serve enough customers in a timely fashion, so that they give you money for the item and a tip; by reaching a specified amount of money each day (or better yet, achieve a professional goal or master goal by playing well) you’ll move onto the next level.

Different types of customers come in, such as a sailor, businesswoman and professor, but while one might have slightly more patience than another they more or less act the same. In fact, it’s frustrating when a customer still has 3 or 4 hearts left, which is plenty, but they’ll utter comments to you like “helloooo!” This might be a technical glitch.

Before you start the next day and advance through various locations, such as an ocean liner, shopping center, casino and fancy hotel (they look a bit different but are designed in a similar fashion with customers approaching from the left) – you’ll have a chance to purchase upgrades for your store such as additional or faster setting machines, newer and higher-quality jewelry pieces that will net more money, and a candy dish to help with customer patience.

Bonus levels take place every few levels or so, such as having 60 seconds to quickly click on an item a customer wants from a grid that shows every jewelry piece. These mini-games nicely break up the otherwise mundane gameplay. I did, however, like how some levels focused on a particular type of jewelry, such as rings, giving you an additional challenge since you’ll rely on the same machine(s) for that one item. Play well and you’ll earn little awards which you can see from the main menu and you’ll also unlock more of the tale with additional comic book-like story elements.

While not quite fool’s gold, Jewelleria is a much less glittery version of many other time management games on the market. Perhaps if the developers came up with something new to add to the genre or additional game modes or more polish in the graphical and language department, it would be an interesting casual game, but as it stands now this shop should be closed for maintenance.

The good

    The bad

      50 out of 100