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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.)

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Polyforge

So there's a shape, and it's spinning, and there's also a little white arrow (see on the right, up there?) and it is spinning counter to the shape. When you tap on the screen, the arrow stabs itself at the shape and highlights the side that it touches. You have to do that until every side is highlighted, and you can't hit the same side twice.

Sounds easy, but the spinning is pretty fast.

It's not bad, but I uninstalled it.