Fairy Godmother Tycoon (Windows)

FAIRY GODMOTHER TYCOON, a PC game from Electronic Arts' Pogo.com, combines Shrek-type humor with the entrepreneurial play of games like Zoo Tycoon or Rollercoaster Tycoon to create a hilarious business simulation. The game stars a fairy godmother who has a potions business in Onceuponia. But shrewd and unprincipled rivals are trying to squeeze her out of business. She hires you to expand her fledgling potions stores into megastore monopolies.

Gameplay is broken into two stages: buying, where you purchase ingredients and invest in marketing; and selling, where you watch the peasants come to your store and see how much they spend. Marketing is a tongue-in-cheek endeavor: While you can purchase flyers and junk mail, you can also hire unique helpers such as flying monkeys and goons.

Fairy Godmother Tycoon earns a high rating because it's an effective business simulation set inside a highly creative world. The fairy tale characters are familiar, but they grab our attention with their wildly unpredictable behavior. You'll find that building a potions empire is a highly entertaining business. The game can be downloaded from Pogo.com or comes in a boxed version at retail.