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Some folks brought their kids, even babies, dressed as cute little zombies. Many had dogs on leashes (although few of the dogs were dressed as anything but dogs). People showed up in torn jeans or lab coats, wedding dresses, spangled Elvis outfits, overalls, prison uniforms or three-piece suits… just about anything looks good on a zombie. And then, in a vast and shambling horde, we followed the event organizers (who carried a rubber brain on a string, dangling from the end of a long pole) on a mile-long loop of the Fremont district. The man with the bullhorn cried out: “What do we want?” and the crowd answered, “Braaaains!” “When do we want them?” “Braaaaaains!”
It was awesome. But I do wonder why the folks from PopCap weren’t there, handing out demos of their game. They’re local, after all!
Some truisms aren’t true
You know, just because a saying is old, that doesn’t make it accurate. Take, for example, “a watched pot never boils.” Seems to me, that one only works if you fail to turn on the stove. Then there’s “you get what you pay for.” Equally bogus! We’ve got four new web games on the site right now, and they’re a lot of fun, and they won’t cost you a cent.
Let’s start with Slingo Supreme. For those who haven’t played the original Slingo, imagine that a mad scientist woke up one morning with the urge to combine bingo and a slot machine into a single genius creation. I first played it a decade and a half ago on AOL, when the World Wide Web was in its infancy, and it’s still just as much fun today. Slingo Supreme takes the basic gameplay of Slingo and adds some interesting new twists: first, you can unlock handy powerups such as bonus multipliers and non-linear slingos, and choose which ones – if any! – you want to use. Second, a devil on the reel is no longer an automatic “d’oh!” Instead of just taking away money, now he challenges you to a game of chance, and if you’re lucky, you can as much as double your pot with every win.
Honestly, though, my favorite part of Slingo Supreme isn’t the new stuff, it’s the fact that they didn’t change anything that didn’t need changing. For old-time Slingo fans, this is more of a fun variation than a whole new game, and that’s nice. Even the sound effects are the same, from the classic dings of matched numbers to the devil’s cheesy laugh. Kudos to the developers for holding to one truism that actually is worthwhile: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Another game that follows the same principle is Luxor: Quest for the Afterlife. If you’re familiar with the Luxor series, you already know just how to play this new version. Just move your winged shooter from side to side, and launch colored balls into an oncoming line to make sets of three or more. The coolness of this update is in the extras: a new Battle Mode, in which you compete against virtual thieves to claim fragments of ancient, broken relics, and a between-level store that sells powerups to help you in your quest. Some of the level layouts are particularly devious this time around, so even if you’re a Luxor veteran, they may take a bit more effort to master!
Words, words, words
The other two new web games are… well, they’re like a digital version of opening the morning newspaper to the one section that’s always worth reading: the word games. As you probably know, we already have a daily free crossword puzzle, so now we’re completing the set with a word-search puzzle and a jumble!
Word Roundup is actually one of the most clever takes I’ve seen yet on the traditional “horizontal, vertical, diagonal” word-search puzzle. Instead of a list of words to be located in the grid, or a single theme, it offers several topics and a number of words that can be found for each topic. For instance, it may ask for five words that begin and end with C, or three six-letter country names, or an egg-laying mammal. Not only do you have to find the words, but you have to figure out what they are first. It’s an extra layer of challenge, perfect for the true word junkie. And best of all – of course – there’s a new puzzle every day.
Daily Jumble, the other new word game, is exactly how you’d see it in your morning paper: a cute cartoon poses a question, and you must unscramble a series of jumbled words to find the letters necessary to spell the answer. Of course, this digital version of the game offers just a wee bit more pressure, since a timer keeps track of your progress. The longer you take to unlock and solve the final word, the lower your score multiplier will be! One of my favorite things about this particular puzzle is that it pulls no lexical punches, so to speak: the first time I played, I lost a ton of points, first by staring at the same jumbled word for nearly five minutes, and then by using hints to finally get the answer. It turned out to be a word I’d never even seen before, and I’m a writer! So that was a double-prizes day for me: a fun, free game and a new word.
So there you have it: four brand-new games, all with plenty of replay value, and you don’t have to pay a cent for them. Take that, truism!
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