Brought to you by Big Fish Games, makers of the highly-seen-before Mahjongg Ripoff, Bejeweled Ripoff and Zuma Ripoff…it’s Diner Dash Ripoff.

Mystic Inn does a search and replace on grease and checkerboard tile, putting potions and pointy wizard hats in their place.

I don’t understand why you’d be working in an independent studio if all you’re going to do is schlub work like this, with a tiny budget to boot. Isn’t the point of being an indie that you tradeoff big publisher support and get to work on something personal, something that would have at least a small measure of your own creativity? A tiny sliver, even.

Bad indie, no link. Instead, check out VH1’s game blog (subtitle: “What’s classic, innovative, and new in games.”) which gives this $2-of-derivative-in-a-$20-bag piece of monkey crap an overenthusiastic fluffing (it’s “scary groovy”), complete with a press release copy and paste job and props to their aforementioned Zuma and Bejeweled clones.

Read - Scary Groovy: Mystic Inn [VH1 Game Break]

Maybe you didn’t know this, because the people who are publishing this Russian game certainly didn’t, but Darwin’s book is actually called The Origin Of Species. Nothing says you’re out of your league quite like aiming for the super-smarty-pants science reference and missing. However it could be worse.

It appears this game used to be called D.1.r.T.. I guess it still is worse, technically, since there are no takebacks for game naming, even if it’s a working title and you don’t speak English. You only announce once, and if the best you can come up with is mixing soil and leet speak, well you’ve just not done enough homework.

If you’re looking for a sexed-up version of Max Payne, though…ew. Anyway, if Max Payne in a thong and pigtails spinning around and shooting giant insects sounds like your kind of thing, there’s a year-old trailer after the jump.
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The Movies, winner of Computer Games Magazine’s award for “Best Utility Program of 2005″, is due to expand the Tuesday after next with Stunts and Effects, a $30 bag of tricks.

• Hot: Customizable camera movement, miniature stompable cities
• Blah: Fiddly tycoon game still not patched out, taking up valuable hard drive space.

More information:

1UP Preview

GameSpot Hands-On