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| | June 20, 2007
*singing* “School’s out for SUMMER!”
Ahhhh, it’s that time of year again: schools are emptying out, movie theaters are filling up, and air conditioning repairmen are making time-and-a-half. Did you know that most houses in Seattle don’t have air-conditioning, by the way? It doesn’t get hot enough around here to really need it. Or at least, that’s the theory. The reality is that we all kind of melt in July. But I recently visited family down in Arizona, so I’m not complaining! | |
| Of course, summer also means more time to play games, particularly if you’re a student with three months of pure slack on your schedule. So it’s a good thing that we’ve got enough new ones to last you until September!
Eight… nine… ten… whew, I almost ran out of fingers
The GameSpring folks have been extra-busy this week, adding no less than ten new games to the GameSpring library. Let’s see… there’s Puzzle Detective, Jewel Match, Stand O’ Food (no, I’m not kidding), Xango Tango, Jewel Quest Solitaire, Hide & Secret, Koi Solitaire, Tennis Titans, Word Spiral, and Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom. Whew!
For those who’ve been counting, this brings our GameSpring total up to 120 titles. These are all full-featured download games, and they all have a free trial period, so if you’re not sure that GameSpring is for you, just check out as many as you like before making a decision. We’re big on that whole “never stick somebody with a game they hate” philosophy.
Monkeys, amulets, and card tricks
So I mentioned earlier that I spent some time on the road this past week, visiting family members down in the crazy-hot Phoenix region. Well, I say “on the road”, but it was more of “in the air” followed by “inside the nice, air-conditioned house.” Either way, though, I had the opportunity to try out a whole bunch of our new download games, and three of them really captured my fancy. So of course I have to share!
Monkey Madness
What can I say about this game other than “woohoo!”? Not only is the monkey game a blast to play, but it’s really different from everything else I’ve played lately. Basically, you have one or more monkeys, a series of rooms full of fruit, powerups, and bad guys, and a handful of directional arrows. That’s pretty much it. Slap arrows down on the ground to show the monkeys where to go, try to avoid the bad guys, and get all the way to the exit before the timer counts down. The thing is, just describing the game doesn’t explain why I was laughing out loud on the flight down (and no doubt causing nearby passengers to doubt my sanity). The monkeys are just so absolutely hopeless on their own, and if you miss an arrow, they can really get into trouble. It’s just insanely cute.
Amazonia
The good thing about being a fan of match-three games is that there’s usually something new coming out for the genre. And the bad thing about being a fan of match-three games is that there’s usually something new coming out for the genre. Unless you literally have nothing else to do at all, there’s no way to play every single one of them. So I’m always happy when a match-three game breaks the mold a bit; it really grabs my attention. In Amazonia, the game pieces aren’t arranged on a grid of squares, but of hexagons. Thought it was hard enough to keep track of all the possible matches in four directions? Try six. For extra fun, each set of puzzles has a different condition for winning.
Tic-A-Tac Royale
Okay, I was pretty dubious about this one. A game in which you play assorted card and dice games, all mixed with tic-tac-toe? It just didn’t sound like fun. But hey, I’ve been wrong before (like that time I said nobody would ever want to play a computer bass fishing game… wow, was I wrong about that one), so I figured it was worth a try. And I’m so very glad I did. The only relation this game has to tic-tac-toe is that each card or dice game is laid out on a 3x3 grid, and good hands can be made in any direction. Which lends a definite element of challenge to each round, since you have to think in more than one direction at the same time. It’s absolutely worth a try if you like puzzly card games! | |
