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.

Scribblenauts (DS)

I always thought this was a clever idea for a game, but I never play it for long. I don't know why... it just doesn't grab me.

For the unfamiliar: you work your way through stages, solving problems by writing the names of objects that will help in the scene. For example, in the top right photo, I was told to help the birthday boy break the pinata, so I wrote "bat" and handed him the baseball bat and he swung at the pinata... problem solved! Some aren't so easy.

Side note: I was amazed to turn on the DS and see that its battery was fully charged... I haven't used it in ages. Props to Nintendo for that one!

Baby Shower "Scattergories"

Here's a unique one! I drove out of town to go see my friend Cassy and go to her baby shower, and I knew that there would have to be a game of some kind... and I was not disappointed!

We played a Scattergories-style game (I qualify it like that because we didn't really keep score or anything... it was like Scattergories Lite, or casual Scattergories) where we had a time limit to come up with words that had to do with babies for each letter. It's harder than you might think!

So we had fun, it was great to see some of my friends that I rarely get to see, and congratulations to Cassy and Damian on their upcoming little one! (And my two other pregnant friends who were there, Jessica and Anna!)

Fantasy Hockey

Oops... I forgot to make an active effort to play a game. Lucky for me, I planned for that eventuality, and added a fantasy hockey league to the app I'm playing fantasy football in, so I technically was playing fantasy hockey. Hooray for technicalities!

(Also, I'm doing really poorly, because (1) I don't watch hockey anymore, and (2) I'm not actually putting any effort into it because I have five billion other things going on in my life, but hey... I was technically playing.)

Championship Bowling (NES)

You know how games from your childhood remind you of... well, your childhood? I've owned this game since I was very little and got my NES in the first place, but the only time I really spent any time playing it was with my (now ex-) stepsister, Christina, when I was in 7th/8th/9th grade, so this game reminds me of her.

The way the characters are dressed, the look of the alley, the music... it's all incredibly late '80s / early '90s and it's so great. I played as the only female character (there are only four to choose from) does this crazy, knees-together, feet out to the sides celebratory jump when she gets a strike, which is really funny.

I did okay, for not having played in a long time. I bowled a 108, which is probably about what I'd bowl in real life right now (my average hovered around that for the last couple years that I was in a bowling league; I'd like to think I'd still do about that well now... and real bowling is on my games list, so perhaps we'll find out at some point!).

Mahjong Safari

This game, from Pogo, is less mahjong and more... mahjong-like matching game with a twist. But it was fun enough for me to play five or six levels before realizing it was pretty late and I should go to bed.

All the tiles have animals (except two pairs of Pogo logos, two pairs of stars, and two pairs that are each a half of an animal; when you match those to make the full animal, they show up in those blank spots on the left and when you get them all, there's a site-wide points bonus).

The trick is, you don't just match the pairs (there aren't layers, like in most mahjong solitaire games, so that would be too easy)... you have to be able to connect the pairs across blank space with a line that doesn't have to make more than two turns. For example, in the photo below, the line makes two turns.

Baikoh

I know I've mentioned before that I prefer games to be escapism, not necessarily a challenge... so this one stressed me out a little. But it was still fun.

The letter tiles fall from the top at random, and you tap on them to spell words and make the used letters disappear. The letters you use don't have to be touching or in any kind of order or anything. If you make words that don't exist, though, you get a layer of letters (one on every column) after your third non-word guess.

There are also some traps, which is the really annoying part. I mostly ran across the ice trap. You get a random letter that is icy, and if it sits there too long, it freezes adjacent letters, too. You have to use a frozen letter multiple times before it thaws and disappears, and if you use up letters underneath a letter that has frozen to the one next to it, it won't fall down (because it's attached to the one next to it). Annoying.

It's a really nice looking game though. I wish the letter blocks weren't all different colors (maybe three shades would work best: consonants, vowels, and tricky letters like Q/X/Z) because it makes it harder to tell which ones you've selected.

Battleship (Game Boy)

Another oldie but goodie: Battleship... for the Game Boy.

I love the sound effects, I love the items (the feeling when you use the 2x2 radar and it finds something, and the little scanner bar goes wonky and the little sound goes blip instead of myeeenh, so awesome), and I just like having someone to play Battleship with.

One thing I think was fairly progressive for a game this old is the password... every time you beat a level, it gives you a password that you can save, and on subsequent plays, you can enter the password at the beginning and skip ahead to a higher level. Pretty cool.

I won two rounds before I got tired (I was simultaneously staying up late to watch football).

Blackjack

I didn't realize how many little extra rules there were to Blackjack!

If you aren't familiar, the basic rule is that you want to get as close to 21 without going over, and you're playing against the house, who has the same goal.

So the hand closest to the camera is mine, and the other one is the house (Birk) with one card flipped over, because the idea is that I have to bet that I have a better hand than the house. I can hit and take another card if I think I won't go over 21, or I can stay and keep what I have. Once I'm done, the house does the same thing, but it has to follow simple rules: reveal the hidden card, hit if it's 16 or lower, stay if it's 17 or higher. If we tie, I would keep my bet. (I didn't actually bet anything because there wasn't much of a point.

But there are little extras, like getting five cards without going over 21, or how i could split the above hand into two and hit them separately.

I can't remember, but I think I won more than I lost.

Five Minutes to Kill (Yourself)

I think this one has been sitting at the back of my mind since I played Robot Unicorn Attack, because they were advertised on Adult Swim around the same time.

In this one, you have five minutes in an office setting to do enough damage to yourself to die. There are little things like staplers and scissors, bigger things like the microwave and copy machines, and you can talk to coworkers and use dialogue options to get them to do harm to you, too.

The controls were annoyingly bad when I played this time; I don't know if the blame lies with my laptop, the Wi-Fi connection, or the game, but it was pretty frustrating. I only managed to get 71% of the way to dead. (If you lose, you have to attend a staff meeting at the end.)

I Love Hue

Another decent find from the Google Play store.

In this one, you get blocks of color that vary slightly in hue (in order) and then some get removed and scrambled up, and you have to put them back where they belong.

Given my background in design, I'm very familiar with my specific shortcomings in recognizing color differences. My weakness is purple/blues, and my strength is yellow/greens. I'm halfway decent at pinks/oranges. (This game confirmed that, too.)

(Pop-O-Matic) Trouble

Ah, nothing like playing a board game with my husband... I don't have to wonder who will win, because it will be him!

Luckily, I'm a good loser.

I haven't played this game in AGES but it's really a lot of fun. Even when you can't roll pop a 6 to save your life.

Tetris 2 (NES)

My favorite game ever, of any kind, is Dr. Mario. I think the vast amount of time I have dedicated to that game has made me mildly worse at this one.

Instead of how normal Tetris works, where you want to build solid horizontal lines of blocks at the bottom to make them disappear, in this one, you get blocks (yellow, blue, and red) with black circles in the middle to begin with (randomly arranged) and you get Tetris blocks made of different colored blocks (also yellow, blue, and red) to drop on them. You want to match three blocks in the same color in a row to make them disappear. The goal is to make all the original blocks with the black circles in them disappear to move on to the next level.

Dr. Mario has made me worse at this one because of the very slight differences. Both games use the same mechanic, goal, and three colors (and both have good music!), but Dr. Mario has pills of two "blocks" each while Tetris 2 has shapes of four blocks each, and Dr. Mario calls for four in a row to make them disappear and Tetris 2 calls for three in a row.

Tents

This is Tents, from Brain Bashers. The trees and numbers around the edges are what you're given at the beginning. There will be one tent associated with each tree. A tree's tent must share a side with it (not a corner). A tree can have more than one tent sharing sides with it, but only one tent will be that tree's tent. The numbers around the edges tell you how many tents will be in each row/column. You click on the blank (white) squares to change them between blank, grass (no tent), and tent.

It's kind of like a mix of minesweeper and the ABC Path game I played a while back, also from Brain Bashers.

Flood

Another surprisingly fun game found by randomly browsing the Google Play store.

Pictured above is the "Zen" mode, but there is a "Levels" mode too where you can progress to more difficult levels.

You start with the block in the top left. So, for example, in the first photo, that's the dark blue. You choose the colors from the bottom (where you see red/green/dark blue/yellow/light blue and two empty, gray boxes... you can also add pink and orange if you want). So if I choose green, it turns those two dark blue squares into green and hooks them up with all the green surrounding it. You choose colors, making your flood absorb more blocks until you've covered the whole space in one color. The goal is to do it in as few moves as possible.

I like playing games for escapism, and this is a nice way to refocus for a few minutes.

Kerbal Space Program

I was waiting for Birk to be available to help me with this one, because it looks entertaining, but only if you know what you're doing. After failing utterly at Beseige, I knew this game would not be fun if I attempted it on my own.

Hey look, I made a rocket! I sent Jebediah to space and back down, and had him evac once he hit the ground so he could walk around for no reason. That was pretty cool but then I found out they could go to the Moon... I mean, the Mun.

So (with a lot of help from Birk) I built a new rocket with a lunar lander, sent Jebediah, Bill, and Bob into space, learned (again, with a LOT of help from Birk) how the navigation works, then... well, Birk joked that I could evac a crew member before they hit the Mun, and how tragic that would be. So I did it, because I'm a terrible person.

I had taken a shining to Bob (he was my scientist, after all, and I was very insistent that there be science elements on my rockets) and Jebediah was my pilot so I felt like maybe he was necessary to the process of landing, so Bill jumped out of the pod a few hundred thousand meters above the surface of the Mun. He was never recovered.

But there's Jebediah and Bob on the Mun, getting ready to do the highly complex science experiment of "observe the mystery goo." (Turns out, it's less dense on the Mun. Who knew?)

The World's Easy-est Game

Note to self: Don't get drunk before playing a game for the day. You'll wind up finding a cop-out like this one.

It's from Addicting Games, it lives up to its name, and it's kind of like I Don't Even Know, or a very forgiving version of The Idiot Test.

Alphabet Game (Sentences)

"Alphabet Game" can apply to a lot of different games, so I'm clarifying this one as being about sentences.

But what does that mean?

Can you and a friend (or a group if you dare) start every sentence with the next letter of the alphabet?

Did you notice that that's what I'm doing in this post?

Every letter gets used once, then you can come back around and start again, or end it there.

Frankly, it feels more successful if you just make it all the way through once.

Garrison and I played a couple of times, starting at different letters as a bit of a challenge.

Haha... what fun!

I don't have 26 sentences' worth of things to say about this game, so I'm going to stop here.

98 Cards

To be totally honest - and I don't think I'm alone here - I usually don't really enjoy games that I'm not very good at. I don't like having to work at a game, for the most part.

I'm not particularly good at this game... but I like it.

You get eight cards at the bottom. You put the cards into the four piles up at the top. In the piles with the up arrow, you have to put down a card that is a higher number than the previous one. In the piles with the down arrow, you have to put down a card that is a lower number than the previous one. The exception is, in the up arrow piles you can put down a card that is exactly 10 less than the previous one, and in the down arrow piles you can put down a card that is exactly 10 more than the previous one. Every time you've put down two cards, you're dealt two more. You want to put down as many cards as you can.

It's more difficult than it sounds, but it's fun to try it out. I'm leaving this one on my phone for a while.

Fingertip Bingo

Yes, I'm going to make a distinction between this kind of Bingo and "real" Bingo, with a dedicated building, and daubers that get ink up to your elbows somehow, and being surrounded by ladies with a wide variety of religious and superstitious paraphernalia arranged JUST SO to ensure their victory, and playing twelve boards at once. Because they are very different experiences... but both SUPER FUN!

So, to mix things up, and because all of us have been having a pretty stressful time, we decided to skip trivia and just go to dinner. Well, we thought Wasserhund (local brewery that makes not only AMAZING beer, but amazing pizza as well) sounded good, then realized it was their monthly bingo night!!!

So here's a fun story... They give out different prizes for each round, and I won the round where the prize was to choose what game we played next. (Btw, in bingo, "game" is what the goal is... so things like single bingo (one line of five), double bingo (two lines of five), coverall/blackout (get ALL the numbers on your board), and there are a bunch of cute shapes with names too.) So at the outset, Garrison said that Liberty Bell is what he would pick if he won this round. Birk and I gave him a hard time because the Liberty Bell looks more like a Christmas tree than the one they call Christmas tree. So I get close to winning, and Garrison said I'd have to pick Liberty Bell for him... then I did win! Anthony (not only the Bingo guy but also their trivia guy, and he's great at both) asked my name so he could tell everyone that if they didn't like it, he wasn't to blame... I was! (Of course I protest this, because it's Garrison's fault.) But here's the kicker... GARRISON WON THE LIBERTY BELL ROUND.

Conspiracy, right? It gets even better... I won the previous round with O72... Garrison won the Liberty Bell round WITH O72. Here are both our cards (his is on the right, with the Liberty Bell still ticked:

Since all of Birk's/my experience with Bingo is from the type of place I described way up there in the first paragraph, we didn't know that, in more casual environments, there is a tradition... it reminds me of Rocky Horror, actually. Certain numbers have nicknames or phrases that people shout out when the number is called (for example, B11 = "Skinny legs!" and O75 = "Big Daddy" because it's the last number on the board). We got... SUPER into that.

Go Fish

I know I had, at some point in my childhood, a deck of cards specifically made for playing Go Fish. I think each suit had a different color so it was easier to see when you had all four?

Anyway, if you aren't familiar with Go Fish, this is how it works: Each player gets 5 cards. You ask the other player(s) if they have any of a certain card. (You must have at least one of that card in your hand.) If they have that card, they have to give you one. If they don't, they tell you to "go fish" and you draw a card from the pile (called the "ocean" or the "pool"). Then it's their turn, and so on. The goal is to get all four of any given card, then you lay them face-up (this pile of four like cards is called a "book," which doesn't at all fit the theme of fishing) and work on getting the rest of your cards. Ultimately, you want to get rid of all your cards and have the most "books."

Birk won, but just barely.

Also, I learned that there's a hashtag for #cardsinbed on Instagram.

Donkey Kong (Game Boy)

This was one of the first Game Boy games I owned. I probably got it at the same time as my Game Boy. I don't remember; it has just always been in my collection, as far as I can tell.

And I do not like it. At all.

It is frustrating, the sound effects are annoying, and maybe I've just been a little hipstery my whole life and didn't like it because EVERYONE likes Donkey Kong, I don't know.

My mom would play my Game Boy from time to time, and I know she liked Tetris (possibly more than me, which is saying something) and I think I recall her liking Donkey Kong, too. It certainly explains why I didn't just get rid of it 25 years ago.