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.