Do you remember Dennis the Menace? This completely annoying, artificial character who always made his neighbour see red and got on the nerves of the audience? If not, congratulations – keep it that way. All those unfortunates who have been scarred already will, however, feel a deep pain looking at Enviro Kids for the first time: the same slingshot in the pack pocket, the same haircut, the same hat… this does not bode well! Or does it?
A quick glance at the screenshots of this game may cause some to assume that this is a digital version of the very well-known board game Othello, which is particularly popular in Japan. Unlike Othello, the present game called Spot is played exclusively on the computer. This is because the rules require a complex regrouping of the pieces for almost every move. This can be handled better virtually than with real board game equipment. At the time that the basic rules for Spot were invented, the Internet was not anywhere as widely spread as today. Therefore, the artificial intelligence became the adversary of choice. Competition between human opponents is still rather rare, in contrast to Othello.
Life simulation games have a special charm: On the one hand you go through your motions from day to day, on the other hand you want to escape it by having a go at the motions of someone else. So, you kind of ask yourself what it would be like to replace your daily routine with a more exciting one from somebody else. And that is the crucial point of the genre: Is the virtual life different enough to entertain you? Has it got enough distractions to offer, at least for a short while? For Space Jobs the answer is clearly no. Because although shows signs of some promising attempts, they get lost in a maze of advertisements, half-done ideas and programming bugs.
