Fashion designer Marc Ecko is a business man. His name can sell just about anything, and he has slapped it on many curious products in the last 20 years. What might surprise you to learn is that his foray into game publishing did not end with 2006's Marc Ecko's Getting Up.

Ecko founded Marc Ecko Entertainment (spelled Intertainment in the logo) in 2007 and has since published the Dexter iPhone game and a completely unexpected DS title called I Heart Geeks. 

Despite the context clues in the name and the box art, I Heart Geeks is not a nerdy high-school boy's romantic adventure. In reality, it's more like Marc Ecko's The Incredible Machine.

I Heart Geeks has actually been in production for the better part of five years. Mark Ecko Entertainment acquired it in 2008, the same year the DS exploded with an endless stream of half-assed and downright unplayable shovelware: Sally's Salon, Smart Girl's Party Games, Undercover: Dual Motives....

Releasing an inoffensive puzzle game in that climate is a sound business decision and likely what motivated Ecko to pick it up in the first place. Unfortunately, I Heart Geeks launched mid-December 2011 -- the year Nintendo rolled out a whole new handheld to ultimately replace the DS.

This video from 2009 sheds some light on the project in its early stages.

I don't mean to pick on I Heart Geeks, but it reeks of missed opportunity. It is a competent (yet uninspired) puzzle game that might appeal to someone who has never played The Incredible Machine. 

That this game not only exists but is a full retail product rather than a downloadable or iOS release just amazes me.