USA Today Crossword Puzzle

I've always avoided crossword puzzles, because inevitably, there are always a couple of clues that I just couldn't possible know, and I have to resort to looking them up (if I can even sort out what they're looking for).

But I like this one, partly because it seemed kind of easy (I knew or could guess - with a few letters there from other clues - almost all of the clues) and partly because, if you type in the wrong letter for that box, it shows up red. So if I have narrowed it down to a couple possibilities, I can try one and see if it's right. It's like doing the crossword in the newspaper with pencil... except better.

I win, yay!

Bar Trivia

I LOVE BAR TRIVIA. It's fun to play trivia, it's fun to be with friends, it's fun to go to good restaurants... bar trivia is the absolute best game ever. And tonight, we won!

Winnings!

Hooray for our team, The Secret World of Alex Mack (in honor of us having TWO Alexes this time).

The Idiot Test

Did you ever take the Idiot Test? It's still on Addicting Games. It's dumb, it's cheap Flash animation, it's insulting, and it's kinda fun in a weird way.

It's a series of "tricky" instructions telling you to press certain buttons (or in one notable instance, to NOT press a button, and you pass that stage by waiting long enough for it to decide that you have actively NOT pressed it). I'm irritated by the "click the lightest blue square" but mostly because I got tricked by it.

So this is more on the borderline of "is this actually a game?" but I played it so there you have it.

Candy Crush Saga

Can you believe I've managed to avoid playing Candy Crush for all this time? Well, I can't say that anymore. I installed it last night, played 7 rounds, and uninstalled it this morning. Not that it's bad or anything, I just don't need it around.

If you are somehow not familiar with it, it's like Bejeweled, but with about 500x more sparkle and animation and movement. Not something I should have embarked upon around 11pm after work.

Having tutorial mode on was helpful though, as a first-time player. I remember playing Bejeweled for months before figuring out some of the bonuses and whatnot.

Pokemon Snap (N64)

I have to tell you... it's really hard to take a picture of myself playing this game. Which is funny, since it's a game about taking pictures.

If you can't tell, those are Sandslash, Staryu, and a video of Dratini showing off.

I freely admit that I played from the old saved game (which, I had both of our copies and didn't know which was which, but based on the name, this one was Birk's) so I didn't have to unlock everything myself. (I'm not a huge fan of the River stage, personally).

Exploding Kittens NSFW

If you read The Oatmeal's webcomic, you're probably already familiar with the game Exploding Kittens. We have the NSFW version (I've never played the non-NSFW version, so I don't know how different it is). We also have the Imploding Kittens expansion, but I removed all those cards and we played the original version. (We'll play Imploding Kittens another time as a different day's game.)

And of course Gimli got in on the action because, well, kittens.

I won, and I think it was the first time some strategy actually came into play. Most of the time, this game - as a two-player game, anyway - boils down to who drew the Defuse cards first and held onto them. But I hoarded things like Nopes and Favors and managed to steal Birk's last couple of Defuses, and he wound up with the Exploding Kitten.

Eco Fluxx

We have several of the Fluxx games: Star Fluxx (sci-fi themed), Monty Python, and Eco Fluxx, which is this one. It is definitely the... least entertaining of them. It's not meant to be funny or anything... it's just a bunch of nature-themed stuff.

The rules of Fluxx are simple: Start with four cards, then draw a card and play a card. But some of the cards you play will be New Rule cards, which might mean that now you draw or play a different number of cards, or there's a limit on how many cards you can have in your hand or how many Keepers you can have in front of you. Some Keepers have rules; most don't. Goals tell you how to win the game: for example, if there's a Goal on the table that says you need the Leaves and Seeds Keepers to win, whoever has those two Keepers in front of them wins, unless the Goal gets changed to something else before they have those Keepers in front of them. Creepers must be played immediately and usually mean a certain person can't win, or that nobody can win (unless there's a Goal in play that specifies that you can ONLY win with that Creeper). It sounds complicated, but it's really not.

Anyway, Birk was finally home from an away rotation, so I got to play a two-player game! And I chose... this one.

Escape the Car

Do you remember these games? Flash games where you're basically pixel-hunting, but the game is the same premise as escape rooms... without having to be in the actual escape room.

You click on stuff until you find useful stuff, then you use the useful stuff to do things that help you escape the thing you're stuck in. In this case, it's a car that you're locked into. Don't think about it too hard.

You can zoom in on different areas to try to find things. For example, if I click under the steering wheel, there's a panel that you need a screwdriver to open. If you get the screwdriver, you can open it and fix some of the wires.

Hey look, I did it in under 13 minutes. Look at me go. I am free of the car with no premise.

Pokemon Go

Well, it took less time than I expected, but I had a day where I forgot to specifically set aside time to play a game. Lucky for me, I play Pokemon Go to some degree every day. Even luckier, I actually took a screenshot on this day, because I thought the Abra with 666 CP was kinda funny.

But now I've used my foolproof fallback, so I can't forget again!

Mini-Game Island, Mario Party (N64)

I started playing a game on Mini-Game Island in Mario Party they other day after I finished Mario Party proper, since all of the games are unlocked and I might as well. So I picked that back up and made it a little further.

(Technically, I could have jumped straight to 5-1 after world 2, but... meh. Some of my favorite mini-games are in 3 and 4.)

One of the best parts of Mario Party games is the mini-games... even back when that meant ripping open the skin on your palm to rotate the joystick faster than anyone else. (Which, I'm proud to say, my mad skills persist and my palm is just fine.)

Super Mario Sunshine

In celebration of the solar eclipse today, I selected Super Mario Sunshine for today's game!

What an annoying game. I knew this already. Unskippable cut scenes... seriously, does ANYONE like those? There are a LOT in the beginning of this game.

Also, FLUDD creeps me out. Always has, always will. In the image above, he scans Mario and knows his name and that he's from the Mushroom Kingdom. Why, exactly, does a backpack that squirts water need to be able to do this? I get that it's also an exposition machine, but why did this need to happen?

The primary issue at the beginning of the game is that evil Mario painted pollution all over this island, especially on the gate thing that attracts all the sun sprites, which power the island. To paraphrase FLUDD's awkward exposition, even during the day it's dark out because this stuff is in the way of the shiny thing. Kind of like... AN ECLIPSE. Neat. It fit even better than I realized it would.

Sid Meier's Civilization V

I spent part of my afternoon today as the great and mighty Montezuma, building, expanding, and improving Tenochtitlan. It was okay.

Games like this are simultaneously slow and stressful. I don't know, they aren't really my jam. They're okay though. Nothing close to as bad as something like Lucioball.

I played until I could build a library, then let myself quit.

I only went to war once, and that's only because Stockholm was trying to start something with Sydney while I was busy killing barbarians for Sydney. Cut it out, Stockholm; Sydney has a lot on their plates, okay?

Tri-Ominos

The tagline for Tri-Ominos is literally "The Triangle Game." As Sarah said when she pulled it out, that is how easy it was to sell people on the idea of a board game pre-internet. (I was disappointed to find no copyright date on the box but Wikipedia says it was originally published in 1965.)

If you've never played Tri-Ominos, it's like dominoes but with triangles instead of rectangles. You have to match the numbers on the sides of the triangles in order to put them down next to each other. It's a little bit harder than it sounds, but pretty straightforward.

The second game turned into a bird.
Do you see it?

Klondike Solitaire, Draw 3 (Microsoft Solitaire Collection)

Ahh, the original (at least as far as Windows is concerned... I admittedly don't know the history of solitaire card games). And the last game in the Microsoft Solitaire Collection!

I played it in Draw 3 mode... I haven't yet decided if I'll go back and play Draw 1 as a different mode, or the version where you don't get to click through the draw pile once you hit the end. I feel like it makes it a fairly different game, so it should count. But we'll see.

One thing that makes me really happy is that they don't dictate which Ace goes in which slot. It sounds dumb, but I've always (since I was a little kid) put them in the same order, and when I find versions that predetermine where they go, I hate it, because it's never in the "right" order to me. For anyone who's curious, it's - from left to right - Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, and Clubs.

Another thing that's pretty cool and a great time (and patience) saver: the "solve" button. It appears up there next to the draw pile once you've (a) drawn all the cards from the draw pile, AND (b) uncovered every card from below. So instead of having to drag every single card up to the top when you know you've won, you can just click the solve button and be done. It's nice.

Tri-Peaks Solitaire (Microsoft Solitaire Collection)

I was in the mood for some kind of game where I could shoot things, or for torturing some Sims, but alas, I've got a theme going this week and by golly I'm going to stick to it. So here's Tri-Peaks Solitaire.

Yup, my first "repeat," since I did this game in "analog" already (using a real deck of cards). Refer to the rules... it's legit.

Only one type of Solitaire left in the Microsoft Solitaire Collection! This weekend I can switch to something different.

Spider Solitaire (Microsoft Solitaire Collection)

Yup, I'm just gonna do them all this week. (And don't worry, this one is a still shot, not a video. It's not broken.)

I really like Spider Solitaire, as long as I'm playing with two suits. One is usually too easy, and four is usually too hard, so I like the middle ground of two suits.

I learned yet another thing about Microsoft Solitaire Collection tonight, and this one REALLY pisses me off: it requires internet. WHY? I learned this because it was struggling with the connection when I first loaded it. This, in my mind, defeats the purpose of Solitaire. Like, you're playing alone... why do you NEED internet? Connect later for high scores or whatever the hell.

Another thing Microsoft Solitaire Collection does that I actually LIKE is that you can choose random or guaranteed solvable, and if you choose solvable, you can choose a difficulty level. I think I only like it because "hard" is easy for me, and that makes me feel good about myself.

Pyramid Solitaire (Microsoft Solitaire Collection)

To continue this week's emerging theme, I played another selection from the Microsoft Solitaire Collection: Pyramid Solitaire. I used to play this a lot too. It can be pretty mind-numbing, which can be nice.

If you aren't familiar, you pair up cards that equal 13 in face value, and they disappear. So Kings don't need to be paired up, Queens pair with Aces, Jacks with 2s, 10s with 3s, etc. Suits are irrelevant.

I used to play a version, I don't know where from, where you could pair a card with a card underneath it in the pyramid as long as it was exposed on one side. So for example, in the video above, once that 4 in the middle of the bottom row is removed, I'd be able to pair the 2 to the right of it and the J half-exposed by the 4. But you can't do that in this version.

I also learned something that didn't come up last night playing Freecell... Microsoft Solitaire Collection has ads. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But it's annoying. They're unskippable, and they aren't blocked by Ublock or Ghostery or anything, because it's not in the browser; it's its own app.

Freecell (Microsoft Solitaire Collection)

I love Freecell. I used to play for ages. I used to keep track of the numbers of the games that I had won so I wouldn't play duplicates (which is pretty statistically unlikely anyway). I used the keyboard shortcut where you could select and move columns using the numpad instead of clicking (and it was much faster).

Well, that numpad shortcut is gone as far as I can tell, and that's extremely frustrating to me.

The win animation varies randomly, too. In the video above, they turn into fireworks. The first time I won, they turned into butterflies. Another time, they did the nostalgic jumping and bouncing thing. But none of the animations go until the end... it cuts itself off to offer you another round.

So, it has its problems, but it's still Freecell. And I'm still really good at it, which makes me feel good.

Lucioball (Overwatch Summer Games)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I might as well take Overwatch off the list now, because I never want to do anything like that ever again.

I should probably start by apologizing to the two people who actually knew what they were doing and got stuck with me as their third Lucio. Somehow, we won, because they're amazing and I... let's be nice about it and just say that I did not contribute to our success.

As in, I'm really proud of the fact that I didn't score AGAINST us. That was my contribution... not hitting the ball into our own goal.

For those who aren't familiar, Overwatch is doing the Summer Games again this year (it was during the Olympics last year) and brought back the crowd favorite, Lucioball. Everyone plays as the character pictured below (Lucio) and it's 3v3 soccer with a giant ball, basically.

I definitely didn't get a chance to screenshot during the game or anything (I was too busy apologizing to people who couldn't hear me) so that's the photo you get for today. You can, however, see the chat log over on the left... they weren't too happy about being paired up with me (and I can't blame them) but they also weren't unreasonably mean about it.

I'm going to go play some Guitar Hero as a palate cleanser before Game of Thrones comes on.

Minesweeper

After the disheartening encounter with Beseige, I wanted a bit of a pick-me-up, so I fell back on a comfortable, familiar old favorite: Minesweeper.

Since it's no longer a part of the Windows package, I found it online and played there (thus the weird high scores section at the bottom full of religious declarations instead of names).

I started off playing on my laptop because I didn't much feel like getting up off the couch, but I quickly realized that I couldn't do that thing where you click both mouse buttons to clear adjacent squares of an uncovered number whose mines have been flagged. So I had to switch to the desktop, and that was SO much better.

Beseige

I hated this game. I really wanted to like this game but I'm so terrible at it, I hate it.

If you aren't familiar, Beseige is a game where you use engineering skills (of which I am apparently severely lacking) to build something to meet the objectives set before you, usually attacking some sort of establishment.

I nailed the first two (a tiny little cottage and a little wooden... lighthouse? something like that) but the third one had to do with navigating around land mines (and suicidal sheep) and I could NOT figure out how to build something that steered properly. There isn't any tutorial or anything, which I kind of like, because you have to use trial and error to figure out what you can and can't do with the pieces given to you, but at some point I have to wonder if I actually did pass physics in college. (The answer is yes, but not easily.)

Here is the most entertaining thing I managed to do in the game:

Pre-Movie Trivia

Call it a cop-out if you want, but I was sitting in the theater waiting for DCI Prelims (Big, Loud, & Live 14) to start, and realized that it was 6:30, I was going to get out of the theater around 11:30, and I would only have half an hour to play a game before the day was over. Then these trivia questions were rolling between the stills of different shows of the season, and I was inspired.

I didn't do very well, if I'm being honest. I did guess the question in the photo above correctly (spoiler alert: it's C) and I knew the highest score ever achieved (it was 99.65, Blue Devils' "Felliniesque" in 2014). If I remember correctly, I didn't get any of the others right.

Buster Bros. (Game Boy)

I had completely forgotten about this game. I love this game. I'm terrible at it but I love it anyway.

To be entirely honest, the premise is, at best, silly. There's some sort of war motif going on... I get strong Vietnam War vibes from the aesthetic. But what you do is shoot things at the ceiling in an attempt to break large bubbles into smaller bubbles and smaller bubbles into nothing. If the bubbles touch you, you lose a life. There are different types of guns (one has a suction cup so it trails a line and sticks to the ceiling and stays there for a second, and if the bubble touches the line, it breaks) and one is more of a machine gun so you can shoot more frequently but no line... etc. etc.

I don't think I've ever made it very far in the game, but it is still really fun.

Tamagotchi (Game Boy)

Yeah, they made a Tamagotchi game for the Game Boy. And I've owned it all these years. It's... not very good. But I played it anyway.

The shiny black egg was always my favorite.

Look at little Rafael, jumping around so happy!
Well, until the last, like, half-second.

They grow up so quickly, don't they?

So, it's a lot like a real Tamagotchi... you feed them to boost Life, you play with them to boost Fun, one of the games is math-based so that boosts IQ, one of the games is sports-based so that boosts Body. When it poops, you wash it away, when it's sick, you can give it a shot or a pill (I honestly don't know the difference in-game), and when it's sleepy, you turn off the lights.

It's all really straightforward, except the games suuuck. The Smile Game, I think, is based on one from the actual Tamagotchis? (Forgive me, it's been about 17 years since I carried mine around.) But you guess whether it's going to look left or right, and you get five tries in a round, so you want to get at least three right so it's happy. There is a little skill to it (it wiggles back and forth until you choose, so once you figure out the rhythm, it SHOULD be a little easier) but sometimes it's off. It's really frustrating.

Also, the second night is SUPER long. There are three slots so you can be raising three Tamagotchi at once, but if you stick to one, you will be sitting there probably 15 minutes or so while you wait for your now-older Tamagotchi to wake up. I guess it's supposed to be like, a commentary on teenagers and how they can sleep in a lot? I don't know.

At any rate, I lost patience and Rafael is going to be stuck in adolescence for a long, long time, because I'm not coming back to this game anytime soon.

Bookworm

Speaking of games I spent hours on in the early '00s... Bookworm! I played on the old Popcap website (does anyone else remember Psychobabble? I miss that game) but this time I found it through Mousebreaker because it wasn't working on Popcap. I think you can also get it as a phone app? I'm not sure.

Moving right along in level 5

I made it to level 25 before setting it all on fire!

Tri-Peaks Solitaire

I love this game! I used to play it for hours on the computer in the early '00s. Today, I played it with a real-life deck of cards.

This was my first round, which I lost. But I played again, planning to play until I (a) won or (b) had to leave for dinner. And I won the second round. What luck!

Scrawl

I had never heard of this game, and so it obviously was not originally on the list, but this was super fun. Scrawl is basically what would happen if you combined Pictionary, Telephone, and Cards Against Humanity into one game.

Here's how it works: Everyone has a little dry erase board and marker. Everyone draws a card with a word or phrase on it (many are naughty... very NSFW and not family-friendly). You draw your card's concept on your little dry erase board, which also has a little clip on it. Everyone passes their board to the next person, who clips a little dry erase sheet over your drawing and writes what they think your drawing is trying to say. Then everyone passes again, and draws what the last person wrote. Continue until you get your original board back. Then you take turns laying out all the cards and reading/showing them, and each person chooses their favorite (like how you choose a card in Cards Against Humanity) and the person who drew/wrote it gets a point.

Here are a few samples of how we did:

There was a lot of discussion about what "burger nips" are.

I definitely picked "the fall of the Muslim nation" as my favorite
for this one, where I drew "Burka breakdancing."

Finally, one of my proudest moments:
What started as "Pinocchio porn" was interpreted as "anteater porn,"
which someone else drew, which I then AGREED WAS "ANTEATER PORN"
which was then drawn again. Amazing. I'd like to thank all my
library patrons for asking vague questions and being unable to
satisfactorily describe their information needs, thus giving me
the practice with this sort of thing that I needed to make this happen.

The Quiet Game

If you've ever watched kids for more than ten minutes, you know The Quiet Game. It's the game where the first person to talk loses.

Only three of us played: Heather bailed quickly. I lasted an hour but I had to go to the reference desk, and the phone rang. (I had already decided that my customer service was not going to suffer, so anyone who approached the desk was going to lose the game for me.) So Garrison is the champion!

Followup: We also tried to play the "no laughing game" (which, by itself, would not count as a game of the day)... I lasted three minutes. This is not my genre, apparently.

Flash Flash Revolution

You know DDR? Well this is FFR. You play it in Flash Player instead of like... with your legs.

Also, super hard to play well while taking a photo of yourself playing it.

I only did about five songs, nothing over "easy" but hey, it counts.

CounterSpell (card) (playtest)

I can't say much about CounterSpell because I'm a playtester, so (1) I'm not supposed to say much about it, and (2) it isn't really a finished game yet. I expect to receive a full copy of the game before this year of games is over, so if I do, I plan to use it for another day, since it will - likely - be a different game once they've made changes to it.

So this is all I'm going to show: the score. Heather and I played my first two-player test game before bar trivia, so big thank you to Heather!

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

I decided to start the One Year of Games with the first video game I ever remember playing: Super Mario Bros. I've also never won the game, so I went into this with the goal of finishing it.

Of course, several hours and 30 attempts later, I feel like getting myself to 8-4 is enough of an accomplishment.

Props to Garrison, who offered up "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce as an alternative to listening to that mind-numbing Mario music somewhere around attempt #15. You have not truly lived until you have speed-run world 4-1 (you know, the Lakitu one) to "Through the Fire and Flames."