Babysitting Mania to cause stress on DS
Do housework and look after badly trained children
Hot on the heels of a whole slew of baby-looking-after and cooking games on DS comes possibly the ultimate example of the 'genre'. Majesco has announced Babysitting Mania, a game based on the seven million times downloaded PC title, which features a whole load of household chores and babysitting to balance, meaning a whole load of chaos for anyone who can't multi-task (i.e. the 50 per cent of the population that is male).
"Balancing a busy household with energetic kids of multiple ages is incredibly demanding," said Gui Karyo, executive vice president of operations at Majesco, having possibly just come off the phone to his housekeeper. "Babysitting Mania brings the challenge 'home' so players can develop their ability to multi-task and maintain order despite the rigors of running a modern family."
The game features over 100 levels of fast-paced chaos as you balance feeding, entertaining and cleaning up after a small army of children. 'Timeouts' can be strategically triggered – presumably for those moments when one kid is about to jump out of a top floor window while the others try to catch him with a bed sheet – and there are bonus birthday party levels to oversee as well.
The children themselves progress from babies to toddlers to teens, each stage of their life offering new challenges.
It might not exactly offer the sort of escapism we normally look for in our games, but the chore-juggling, reaction-based tasks do sound like they could prove an entertaining challenge. There's no firm release date planned for Babysitting Mania just yet but it's expected in late 2008.
