Archive for the ‘Game Night’ Category

7
Oct

Casually Speaking

   Posted by: Rachel Ross Tags: , , ,

I like me a big old-school, gigantic, level-grinding, random-monster-encounter-every-three-steps dungeon crawler of a computer game (Final Fantasy #, Morrowind, Sacred, WoW…).

But sometimes I don’t have time for that.  (Actually WoW is another story – too cheap to play it, and also it’s one of those games that will eat your entire brain if you let it, and lead to addiction, for some.)

So here are a few of my favorite casual games, for PC.
Note, most of these are on Steam, but some are also available in other venues too (notably PuzzleQuest & Peggle are also on Nintendo DS, which is the only other platform I currently own).

1 ) PuzzleQuest – it’s Bejeweled, but every time you make a match, you get mana of that color, to use for spells! It even has a (standard, adventure) plot. This has a Space spin-off game, too. There were allegations of the computer being a cheater in this game, but the game designers said they didn’t have spare resources to program the computer to cheat!

2 ) Peggle – Cross pinball with pachinko, and add special powers. Insane fun, and lots of replay value! There is a sequel called Peggle Nights, but I haven’t tried it.

3 ) Plants vs. Zombies – Super cute Tower Defense without towers. Add in sunflowers, zombies, and catchy music. I cannot explain how fun this is. Go at least try the demo.

4 ) Spectromancer - Card-based mage vs. mage battle in tiny bite-sized chunks, with typos. Has online play too!  This game makes me trash-talk the computer due to the high random factor in your card deck. The computer HAS to be cheating. Grr…!

5 ) Wonderful End of the World – Strange Katamari Damacy clone with catchy music.

6 ) Osmos – Eat everything. Grow. Simple. Beautiful. Relaxing.

7 ) Cogs – Actually I find this insanely frustrating, but it’s so gorgeous! 3D tile-sliding puzzler with a strongly Steampunk theme. Shiny shiny brass.

8 ) AudioSurf – Automatically generates a race track based on the music you decide to play. Fun because you can see how well other people have done when playing the game using the same song you did. You can use ANY song – or even a podcast, but I’m not sure how that would work. This Week in Audiosurf would be a long game!

9 ) GemCraft - I LOVE this game, and it’s a free browser-based game. Tower Defense, there are at least 3 versions/expansions of this online (GemCraft, GemCraft 0, GemCraft 2) and they are all great, though I noticed some caused lag when I tried to play using wifi.

10 ) Scribblenauts! – This is the only non-PC game, but I just HAD to include it. This Nintendo DS game is mind-blowing. Solve the puzzles with ANY method you can imagine. Just type in the object you want to create! I solved one by gluing a rope to the back of a pterodactyl. Over 220 levels. Controls are clunky, but there are no other games where you can summon Cthulhu and have it battle a Kraken. Or a kitten.

11 ) What’s your favorite casual game? Let me know!

Now if you say “I don’t want to spend $10 on a game I don’t need.” I understand that too. So check out http://www.oldschoolapps.com – home for nifty, nifty old abandonware that has no license.

Ok one more free game link: Pixelships !

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18
Aug

Work in Progress: Dragon edition

   Posted by: Rachel Ross Tags: , , , , , , ,

Right now I am working on scuplting two dragons – one is a commissioned piece, and one is just for fun.

This baby is just for fun, but I really like the way he is turning out. I tried a texturing technique (tingue twuster!) that I found on the Dan Perez site.

If you want more “step-by-step” information on how I do this, let me know – but mostly it’s “wad tinfoil and wire in the middle, then cover with clay until it looks right”. I have actually taken many progress shots of  the dragon below (the one below the baby). Maybe I’ll do a step-by-step sort of post, but it would be picture intensive and I don’t know that anyone really wants it. Just ask questions if you have questions – I’d be thrilled to find out that anyone is reading the blog, hint. [Edit: Yes I know you are reading the blog, because I received some nice feedback when I asked for ways to keep my milk safe in the fridge! And thank you!]

 

He only has a partial wing, so far

He only has a partial wing, so far

This is the one that is “an actual commission that I should be working faster on” whoops. Sunday I started on a wing, then picked it up yesterday and discovered that the Apoxie never set! Perhaps I mixed the batch badly. This is why I would fear for everyone’s safety if I was a mad scientist.

 

Not very complete yet.

Not very complete yet.

On an EVEN BETTER note, my dad’s company just got some work in today – praise the Lord!

That was a huge answer to prayer.

I hope your day is going well, too!

 

And it’s Game Night. I bought a new card game called “Illusio”, that I haven’t tried yet. I don’t know that I’ll have time tonight, but I loved the “rival magicians” theme.

6 Comments
8
Apr

(Pseudo) Mad (Botanical) Science

   Posted by: Rachel Ross Tags: , , , , , ,

I am playing a “Mad Botanist” in the Spirit of the Century game at International House of Johnson. So, since I had some Miracle Fruit tablets hanging around, waiting for me to try them, I decided I would bring them to Game Night Certainly “flavor tripping” ranks fairly high on the mad science scale.
Miracle fruit is a small bland red berry that is incredibly perishable and therefore hardly ever seen around here. It contains a chemical aptly named “miraculin” that, when eaten, alters taste perceptions (for about a half hour), making anything sour seem sweet. Since the berry is so perishable and unavailable, I bought tablets of freeze-dried fruit instead. Available at your friendly neighborhood ThinkGeek.com
I searched the internet for some sour foods other people had enjoyed with the berry, and came up with this list: lemons, limes, grapefruit, sour cream, and hot sauce. Kris added apple cider vinegar to the list. To up the mad science quotient, I displayed the cut fruits in my “Radioactive” plastic food containers. (Playing a mad plant scientist wasn’t that far a stretch.)

Miracle Fruit & etc.

Miracle Fruit & etc.

Laura, Gunnar and I each ate a chunk of lemon as the control, then began letting a miracle fruit tablet dissolve in our mouth. The miracle fruit tablet wasn’t that great, but you had to hold it in your mouth and allow it to dissolve completely, and covering as much of your tongue (taste buds) as possible, to get the maximum result. Gunnar pointed out that they tasted a bit like haw flakes (and I agree. It also left a little lingering sweet sensation, like stevia.). Laura was the first to finish her tablet, and took a chunk of lemon. To her (and my) delight, it was now as sweet as an orange – just as advertised!
We stood around eating lemons and grapefruit (the lime was not as popular, though I found it ok; the lemon was better to me, and the grapefruit was better to Laura). Kris and Gus both joined in at this point. I opened the sour cream. A spoonful of sour cream tasted like cream cheese – so then we ate some sour cream, along with the fruit, which was a great dessert combination. Gunnar broke out the vinegar, which was somewhat mild, but still not extremely pleasant. I tried the hot sauce, but didn’t notice any obvious flavor difference.
Dave wouldn’t try the tablet, due to the mysterious Chinese packaging – not even when I pointed out to him that the label reassuringly said “no known adverse side effects“. No I was not cackling maniacally at the time, either, I might add. Your loss, Dave!

The flavor alteration did last about a half an hour, I think. It was best if you put the food in the same area of your tongue that had held the berry the longest (the front of the tongue, more or less). By the time the spoonful of vinegar, etc. got to the back of the palate it returned to being unaltered and astringent.

All in all it was very fun! Some of the online reports I read of people ravaging through cupboards to test random things and decreeing that the miracle berry had changed their life… well it was nothing like that, but it was fun, hey!

I definitely plan to do it again. I read somewhere that in Japan someone had added a gene to lettuce so that lettuce would express miraculin (actually that’s in the wikipedia article if you read it). So maybe when that hits the market…

After all of that we had cupcakes, candy Dave brought back from the UK, and went on to encounter some Samurai warriors in 192- New York. It was, all in all, a very good evening. (Not counting the injuries sustained by Someone who was attempting to bound from the tops of train car to train car, on a moving train, without having taken any points in athletics.)

 

 

 

 

 

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