| So anyway, the power goes out, and there I am in my (thankfully dry) basement, sitting in the dark, surrounded by the quiet beeping of six or seven power filters informing me that there’s a problem. (Really, guys? No kidding… I hadn’t noticed.) And there’s my laptop, still glowing quietly in the gloom. The thought immediately occurs: I have two choices here. A) I can do the responsible thing, shut it down to conserve battery life, and use the USB ports later to charge my cell phone or radio if necessary. Or B) I can finish the current level of Bookworm Adventures.
I am so predictable.
Prepare to squint
Okay, we’ve released a lot of downloadable games in the past few months. So many, in fact, that I’m way behind on checking them all out. But better late than never! In addition to the aforementioned fantabulous time-eater Bookworm Adventures, I’ve found myself playing two other games lately, Hidden Expedition: Titanic and Jurassic Realm. The latter is of the cascading, object-matching style of game, but has the distinction of some diabolically designed puzzles in the later levels. I think one of them took me more than 20 tries to solve, and despite all my swearing, I loved every minute of it. Twice, I was this close to completing that level when the timer ran out. I’m pretty sure my howl of defeat was audible on the other side of the building.
Hidden Expedition, on the other hand, is a hide-and-seek game, where you are presented with a cluttered, intricate landscape and a list of items, and asked to find each one of them among the visual jumble. And let me tell you, while it might not be too difficult to find something the size of a ship’s wheel or a lady’s hat in the library of a sunken ship, you will be squinting like crazy when the list contains something like a wing nut or a postage stamp. Whoever designed those landscapes is obviously a mad genius.
Anyway, if you’re looking for something fun to play over the holiday weekend, you can’t really go wrong with either of these games. (As for me, there’s fresh powder up at Steven’s Pass, and the siren song of snowboarding hangs heavy in the air. After all, a girl can’t live by videogames alone! Well, that’s if I manage to finish my holiday shopping. I’ll admit I waited until the last minute again this year.)
Can’t… resist…
I still have some space here, and free time, so I’m afraid I just can’t help rambling on a bit more about Bookworm Adventures. If you haven’t tried it yet (and why not?), you’re missing out on the coolest hybrid word-based game since Typing of the Dead. You know those games where you have a set of letters and you need to spell the longest word possible out of them? Yeah, it’s one of those. And you know those games where you’re a hero battling monsters, collecting artifacts, improving your fighting skills, and defeating epic bosses? Yeah, it’s one of those, too.
Just yesterday, I was fighting my way through a whole ship of pirates, and got a very geeky kick out of the fact that I vanquished one of them by managing to cobble the word “BUCCANEER” out of the available letters. That was like a sweet, sweet gift from the forces of textual synchronicity. Better still, at the end of the level, I acquired my favorite artifact so far: the wooden parrot. “What does it do?”, I hear you ask. Why, that’s obvious: it increases the damage of any word containing the letter “R”. Get it? Pirates! “ARRRRRRRRRH.”
Okay, I guess you had to be there. Honestly, though, I’m really loving this game!
Tech time!
I suppose this one shouldn’t be too surprising: we’ve seen a lot of one error message this past week. It usually occurs in multiplayer games such as Texas Hold’Em, and it reads “General error: try re-launching your game.”
This is entirely on our end; we’re still recovering from the storm, and that means some of our servers are periodically offline. If you see that error, just wait about 10-20 minutes and try playing again. We’re sorry for the inconvenience!
Until next time, have a fantastic holiday season, and I’ll see you in 2007! | |
