NaNoWriMo

Well, this one was a month in the making... I won NaNoWriMo!

I honestly don't mean this to sound braggy, but this isn't unusual... I've won for years now.

In case you aren't familiar, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Specifically, between 12:01am on November 1 and 11:59pm on November 30. If you finish your word count, you win!

As you can see on my little bar graph up there, I was behind pretty much all month, but I pulled it together and got it done.

Red Herring

Red Herring is a word sorting game. (Two of my favorite things: words and sorting!!!)

There are categories at the top (in the harder mode, you aren't given the categories until you complete the column of all the words that belong in the same category) and there are four "red herring" words that don't belong to any category, there only to throw you off. Which is the meaning of "red herring." Get it?

Barbie (NES)

What a surreal experience this game is. I've been playing it since I was a little kid; it was one of my first NES games.

See, Barbie is going to sleep. She has unusual dreams about the mall. Because she's Barbie and this was made in the late '80s / early '90s so she didn't exactly have a doctorate or anything yet.

So she goes to the sporting goods store in this dream, where she pulls charms off of her bracelet (bottom left of the screen) and pelts a dog with them until it removes the bouncing tennis ball from her path. No really, that's what's happening here:

Later, she goes clothes shopping. Duh, she's Barbie; she's not going to go to the mall (even in her dreams) without clothes shopping.

There seems to be an issue with haunted clothes, though, starting with these floating blouses (though when I was six, I would have sworn up and down to you that these things were plastic bags wafting in the wind, because it made an equal amount of sense):

The "boss" for the clothing store is a bouncing outfit. The shoes come at you (with a vengeance... perhaps Barbie is having a nightmare about buyer's remorse?) but the rest of the clothes just bounce up and down in place as one until you toss some bracelet charms at them and one by one, the articles of clothing disappear.

This is the piece de resistance in this game: the Galleria. Anyone who has ever gone to a shopping mall in America has seen a mall fountain. But the fountains in this mall (yes, I know, it's a dream, but come on now) have FISH in them. Not like, "oh look at the pretty koi in the fake pond." Silver, jumping, FISH. Like, trout or something. I don't know; I don't fish. But these guys don't belong here. Also, Barbie got all dressed up in some '80s prom monstrosity to get doused with fountain water and fish-slapped (instead of her timeless pink crop top and black leggings, above).

Whatever, you walk your way through a mess of fountains, fishless and... fishful... and Barbie wakes up and comments on what a wonderful dream she had (weirdo).

Something Something Soup Something

I actually held onto this one for a while, waiting for the right day to use it. I finally opened it up (you can play online here) and played. It's... odd.

It's a philosophical "game" where you categorize the things presented to you as either "soup" or "not soup." It varies the definitions of the liquid (some have ice, some are non-specific like "foamy liquid" and some are downright irresponsible like battery acid), the stuff in the liquid (meat, random household objects), the bowl (a coconut, a football helmet, a bowl), and the implement served alongside it (straw, fork, spoon, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing something like an axe?).

It's actually really interesting to see the results (your own and, on the website, those of others) to see how you define "soup." (Take note: it never says it actually has to be edible, it just says it has to be "soup" that can be served to the humans upstairs.)

New York Times Crossword

This was a doozy. We went over to my in-laws' for dinner and my sister-in-law was working on the NYT crossword when we got there.

I am proud to say that we finished it (and less proud to say that we did actually look up like two or three of them because we didn't get the shtick for the italicized clues).

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Once it finally downloaded completely, I played this for a bit. It's cute and looks like it will be fun, but I didn't get really far into it. It's really linear but pretends not to be (like dialogue options that aren't really options, like "looks good!" and "that sounds fine" as your two options). But hey, that eagle guy on the right was pretty excited that I walked across the sidewalk and brought him an apple, so that's cool.

The Game

I'm going to have to blame turkey coma or something on this one, but I actually forgot to play a game this day. Which, technically, means that I won The Game!

For the uninitiated, The Game is a game you can only win by not thinking about it. So you've just lost by reading this. But I lost by writing it, so there's that.

Battleship

Happy Thanksgiving! While we waited for dinner to finish being prepared, Sarah (my sister-in-law and fellow games lover) and I played Battleship, old-school.

Super Stickman Golf 2

I actually borrowed Birk's phone for this one. We had gotten into bed, I remembered I needed to play a game, and thought, "Oh, I have a few friends who are enjoying Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp; I should download that and play it for a while." Well, it downloaded quickly but then there was immediately a data update I had to download, and my connection wasn't doing so hot, and I got frustrated with it. Birk offered me his phone, and I found Super Stickman Golf 2. I actually did pretty well, see?

Flow Free

I think I used to have this on my phone... if not, I at least remember seeing ads for it on Facebook or something. It's a pretty simple premise: connect the two same-colored dots with a line that doesn't overlap with any of the other lines.

Hallmark Fantasy Game

If you didn't already know about this, I'm going to change your life.

The Hallmark Channel has a fantasy game (like fantasy football) for their Christmas movies. Every week, you choose the ones you think will do the best that week (I guess in viewership?) and there are also trivia questions associated with it to give you bonus points.

Edit: I'm actually catching up on posts a week later right now, so as of 11/26, I'm beating Garrison but not by much. We'll see if I keep the lead!

Snake Vs Block

I saw an ad for this on Instagram and it looked like fun.

It's kind of like Centipede (you direct where the line of little yellow dots in the middle goes side-to-side while the screen automatically scrolls) but you want to build up dots (by picking up the individual little yellow dots with the numbers over them) so that when you inevitably hit a numbered block, you lose that number of dots but as long as you still have at least one dot in your line, you can keep going.

It sounds really simple but it scrolls really fast so it takes some practice.

Cuphead

So for sticking with me through two weeks of the same game (sort of) the prize is... I played Cuphead!

The first thing I was told about Cuphead when it came out was that it's all hand-drawn animation and in like a 1930s style. The second thing I heard about it was that it is REALLY difficult. Both of these things are true.

It's easy for me to get frustrated with a difficult game and say screw it, I'm going to go do something else. But I stuck with Cuphead longer in one sitting than I expected to. Yes, it's difficult, and yes, it's pretty frustrating, but it's also really fun.

Brain Age 2 (week 2)

And here are the rest of the trainings from Brain Age 2 on Nintendo DS. I really needed this mental break these past two weeks, so even though it probably wasn't very interesting to see on Instagram, I'm glad I did this.

Word Blend (Monday 11/13)
My least favorite of all of them

Calendar Count (Tuesday 11/14)

Math Recall (Wednesday 11/15)

Clock Spin (Thursday 11/16)

Block Count (Friday 11/17)

7 Little Words

This is a fun little word game that I used to have on my old phone and had totally forgotten about. You get tiles (at the bottom) with two or three letters on them, and clues (at the top) and you have to put the tiles together to make the words you're looking for at the top. It can get pretty tricky.

Step 2 Study Questions

This isn't really a game, per se, but we play it at home a lot lately. See, Birk is studying for the Step 2 exam and sometimes he needs a break from reading the questions off the screen all day long. So I take his phone and read the questions for him. Every once in a while, I know the answer to one myself (usually the ones that have to do with psychology, or the parameters of a new drug test - "The mean will increase, the mode will increase, the median will increase," etc.) so I kept score this time.

(This is one that I got right completely by guessing. I don't know what Lewy bodies are.)

I got something like 30% correct on this set of questions (which is pretty good... we did a set of 20 questions so that means I got six right! Most of them by actual reasoning, but one or two by blind guessing).

Brain Age 2 (week one)

So to alleviate some of the time and energy cost I've been putting into this lately, as I need a little bit of a break, I'm going to do two themed weeks. There are ten trainings in Brain Age 2 for DS, so I'm going to do one each weekday for the next two weeks (with something different over the weekend in between to mix things up). The whole first week is going into this post, then I'll do one post for the whole second week.

Sign Finder (Monday 11/6)

Piano Player (Tuesday 11/7)

Word Scramble (Wednesday 11/8)

Memory Sprint (Thursday 11/9)

Change Maker (Friday 11/10)

Memory

Do you get it? I played Memory for Guy Fawkes Day? As in, remember, remember, the fifth of November. Well, I think I'm clever.

I don't have any decks specifically made for playing Memory, so I used a full 52-card deck. That, um... took a while.

Bad Chess

I love the concept of this game. I love playing it, too.

Bad Chess is exactly the same as chess EXCEPT that the types of pieces you get and their locations (within your two starting rows) are totally randomized. As you can see above, I got several kings, I'm short a knight and a rook, one of my bishops is in what is literally an impossible location for it in a regular game. All the pieces still work the same as usual, though.

This is a fun challenge that partially levels the playing field between novice/intermediate/expert players. I know how to play chess, but I don't know much about good strategy, so this shakes that up a little bit, and is really fun.

Number of Words

(Hey, there are some games it's just hard to take a picture of.)

This is a game derived from Whose Line Is It Anyway? Much like the Questions game I've played with Garrison before. In this game, each person is assigned a number of words, and every sentence they say has to be exactly that number of words: no more, no less. I did four, and Garrison did five.

We agreed that it wasn't quite as fun as the Questions game, but still some good wholesome fun for a Friday afternoon at work.

Word Sprints

This one's a little bit different.

It's NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which means I - along with LOTS of other people in the world - will be spending a large chunk of time this month trying to bang out a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. It's not supposed to be good; it's supposed to be WRITTEN. Editing can come later, if you like any of what you came up with.

Anyway, a long-held tradition in NaNoWriMo is word sprints. You set a timer for a certain amount of time (frequently 1, 2, or 5 minutes) and write as many words as you possibly can during that time. Then you reset the timer and try again, in an attempt to do better than you did the first round. You can also do word sprints against another person or a group of NaNo-ers, to see who can write the most during the time period.

I did a two-round, two-minute word sprint with myself. I don't remember my word counts, unfortunately, but I do remember that I did better during the second one by about twenty words, so go me!

Fight List

You know Family Feud, right? This is kind of like that. You're given a category, and you have to guess as many things that fall in that category as you can within the time limit. You get points based on how common/uncommon your guesses are, and you're playing against another individual somewhere in the world.

I think I did okay for being half-asleep because I nearly forgot to play a game today.

Mysterium

We actually played this game a little over a week ago, but while I was checking the rules for something, I was reminded that the plot of the game takes place on Halloween, so I needed to save it for today to be the game of the day!

Mysterium is a really beautiful game that is best played with more than two players, but we worked with what we've got. Which is two players.

One player is the ghost. They were murdered, and can't QUITE remember by whom, in what room of the mansion, or with what murder weapon. The other players are psychics trying to solve the murder so the ghost can rest peacefully.

The ghost assigns a set of three answers (one culprit, one room, and one weapon) to each psychic, secretly, then uses vision cards to give the psychics hints as to what they're trying to convey to the psychic. The vision cards are really gorgeous, like weird, surreal little artworks with lots of different possible interpretations. For example, the ghost might give me a card with a red background with some swords and clouds and some animals floating in the sky... am I supposed to guess the hunter (who kills animals), the magician (with a red background), the chef (with knives), or the aviator (who flies in the clouds)? Maybe there's something round on that card and the ghost wanted me to see a round object on one of the culprit's cards? The ghost can give out multiple cards to the same psychic to try to establish a pattern of similarities to point out which thing the psychic is supposed to see.

In this manner, the psychics try to guess the culprit first, then if they succeed at that, the room, then the weapon, before the number of rounds is up. Each psychic is trying to guess a different set, remember. At the end, if all the psychics managed to guess their set of clues, the ghost gives the whole group a set of clues to help them pick the right set, which tells them who actually did murder the ghost (and where, and how).

It sounds complicated but it's really not (and there are actually some elements I didn't outline here but it still isn't that bad) and I enjoy it a lot, when I play with the right people. (I played once with people who I love, but really didn't like the game, which makes it... not so great.)

Virus Buster

This is a game hidden inside of Brain Age 2 for the Nintendo DS that would be a total knockoff of Dr. Mario if it wasn't made by the same company.

You can only play Virus Buster once you've done your Daily Training for the day (but you only have to do one exercise to unlock it for the day). You're told before it starts that it isn't training, but it's for relaxation.

The music is the same as one of the modes in Dr. Mario for NES, but like a soothing, lullaby-style remix of it. It's nice. And a little weird.

You can only rotate the pills in one direction, by tapping on them, but - at least in Easy mode - they fall really slowly so it's not really an issue.

Also, if you have "remainder" pill pieces after you get four in a row that disappear, they also fall slowly and you can actually grab those and move them around if you want to, which I think is pretty cool.

I am pleased to announce that I'm just as good at this game as I am at regular Dr. Mario.

2048

A modern classic! I remember Beth telling me about this game ages ago when it was new, but I never downloaded it until recently.

You swipe the numbers left, right, up, or down (all at once, not as individual blocks) in an effort to bring like numbers together (2+2=4, 4+4=8, but for example, 2+4 makes nothing) and try to get to 2048. I think the highest I've gotten so far is 256 in two different blocks.

Interlocked

This was a fun little find in the Google Play Store. Each stage is like one of those interlocking wooden puzzles where you have to figure out how to configure the pieces to each other in such a way that you can pull them apart. They were a lot of fun!

Ring Toss

Something a little different today! We went to Busch Gardens for Howl-O-Scream, and stopped by the carnival games in Oktoberfest so I could play the Ring Toss!

Out of that whole bucket in front of me, Birk and I didn't get a single ring on a single bottle, so no prizes for us to lug around the park... but it was fun anyway!

Between the Lines

Between the Lines is really similar to yesterday's Symbology, but the clues are more like Rebus puzzles instead of just symbols, and there are no category hints. In this example, the answer was "pie in the sky."

Symbology

Symbology is a phone app game where you are given three clues (a category, some symbols, and a number of letters for the word/phrase you're supposed to guess) and then you use the letters you're given to spell out what you're supposed to guess.

For example, on the top, the left answer is "right" and the right one is "Canada."

And of course, I was very happy to get this one!

Futoshiki

Futoshiki is one of the many games that's "kind of like Sudoku" in that you have to put numbers into a grid in a particular order to get it right.

In this one, you have > and < symbols to tell you that some of the numbers immediately next to each other are greater than or less than the other.

If you're curious, here's the solution for this one:

Piano Tiles 2

(Not great photos, but it's impossible to take a screenshot while playing this game.)

It's kind of like Guitar Hero, but it's piano. It's not nearly sensitive enough (or maybe my phone isn't, but I don't have that problem with other apps), it has no relevance between notes and key location, and the rhythm is off by a bit. It's also pretty annoying that one missed note ends the round.