On August 9th, Blogging Molly and I had the chance to play the preproduction version of the Desperate Housewives game for the PC. We're both Desperate Housewives fans, so we were as giddy as Susan meeting Mike for the first time!

Developed by Liquid Entertaiment and published by Buena Vista Games, "Desperate Housewives: The Game" can be described as a sexier version of "The Sims". Although you can't be any of the housewives in the game, you can be your own housewife, with the objective of uncovering the scandals and shocking secrets of Wisteria Lane and keeping after your family in 12 episodes.

To begin, select your housewife and the clothes, shoes, and hair type you wish for her to have. You even get to choose what you want your husband and children to look like (imagine that). We called our character "Mollifer" and dressed her in a sexy purple tracksuit with long, dark hair (okay, so we're partial to Gabby's character).

When the game play started, we were presented with a budget in order to purchase furniture, plant a garden, and clothes and even to play Texas Hold'em with the over wives. We planted some flowers in our front yard (boy, those bulbs weren't cheap, either!). Then, we wanted Mollifer to whip up some food in the kitchen, so we pointed the computer mouse to the kitchen. This is our favorite part of the game, because you get to learn recipes, use your mouse to stir batter, and become a novice cook. We prepared some French toast, but unfortunately our food quality was given a "D" grade! Though, we did make the French toast in a timely manner, so we scored an "A"!

You can perform any activities in the DH game as you would in "The Sims", such as take a shower (with your private parts blocked out) and watch TV. But the cool thing is that you can converse with the cast of DH! Mollifer walked through the Wisteria neighborhood over to the Mayer house to talk with Susan. You can choose from three different responses each time a character talks to you, and each response is either mean, polite, or fake. We couldn't help clicking on the "mean" response, because we wanted to see Mollifer get real bitchy! Then Mollifer couldn't help herself by visiting Mike's house to flirt with him a little. You can also visit Edie, Bree, Gabrielle, Lynette, Edie, and Paul's house.

And of course the game wouldn't be the same without Mary Alice Young narrating in each episode! The voices of the other characters weren't finished recording yet when we played the preproduction version. You can also make decisions during game play that will affect the outcome, but you'll have to wait until the game is released to know what those decisions are!

Overall, if you're obsessed with the show, then you'll love the Desperates Housewives PC game. It's an extremely addictive game (we didn't want to stop playing it)! The only unfortunate thing is that you can't play an actual character from the show, but interacting with them is just as fun. We can't wait until the official release, so look for a more detailed review in the next month or so.

Desperate Housewives: The Game will ship sometime in October 2006 (specific day undecided for now) and will sell for $19.99. Designed for operation on Windows XP and the (hopefully) soon-to-be-released Windows Vista.

Gearlog has more screenshots of the DH game!

Updated 8/21 @ 8:13pm to clarify launch date and that you can make decisions during game play that affect the outcome.