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| | December 28, 2006
Happy holidays!
I know, I said I’d be back in the new year, but I’m just having a great week, and couldn’t help but scribble out a little Coffee Break. It’s been a wonderful holiday season so far, with altogether too many homemade cookies and candies (I refuse to count any more calories this year). Best of all, though, I have the office practically to myself! | |
| ‘Tis the migration season, of course, when everyone flies hither and yon to see family and friends. I usually do the same, but opted to stay home this year, and wow, it’s like a ghost town here in the MSN Games offices. “Not a creature was stirring, except for a handful of writers and the guys who keep the servers running.” With so little to do and so much free time, I’ve finally had a chance to catch up on more badges and download games!
Big surprise, huh? Perhaps I’ll resolve to be a little less predictable next year.
Moxie’s playlist
My biggest squeal this week was definitely over Virtual Villagers. I’d peeked at it in the past, but didn’t have any real time for hands-on play until a few days ago. My first thought was, oh, this must be by the same people who made Fish Tycoon. And yep, I was right. Virtual Villagers has the same real-time element: even when you’re not playing the game, your villagers are still working on their home, gathering food, raising children, and researching new technologies. There’s just something particularly spiffy about logging in every few hours to see what might have changed, and what the little guys need from you. It’s very cute!
I’ve also had Big Kahuna Words on my “to try” list for a while. I loved Big Kahuna Reef (you may remember my earlier rants on the subject), so I was intrigued to see what the developers would do with a word game. The result is remarkably similar to Big Kahuna Reef, with letters replacing the shells and sea life of that earler game. So instead of matching icons to break boxes, you spell words over stone tiles to bust them. And despite the added mental effort of fishing for the longest possible words, the gameplay on Big Kahuna Words is every bit as addictive as its predecessor. I’ll be going back to this one again every so often until I finish all the levels.
Last but never least, I finally finished Bookworm Adventures this week – yay, me! Not only was it a lot of fun and a major brain-stretcher, but as one co-worker put it, there just aren’t many games where you can say, “I just slapped down Dracula with a wallaby!” I was sure sad to see this one end.
Cookie cuteness!
Okay, so I’m probably one of the world’s worst photographers, but I just had to snap a picture of the game-related cookies that showed up in our office this week! I’m assuming they were sent by the developers of Diner Dash and Plantasia (two of my all-time favorite download games, by the way), but the only real certainties in this case is that they were A) adorable, and B) delicious.
So they may not be quite as cool as the Gamecube-on-an-Xbox-on-a-Playstation-2-on-an-Xbox-360 wedding cake that one serious game girl recently unveiled, but hey, at least I didn’t have to pony up a wedding present in order to try one.
Tech time!
No big technical issue this week, so instead I shall offer a bit of timely wisdom from a dear friend: “Any holiday season in which you don't drink too much at the office holiday party, snog a co-worker under the mistletoe, photocopy your own bottom and email it around the world is a GOOD holiday season.”
Have a safe and embarrassment-free New Year’s weekend, and I’ll see you in 2007 (for real, this time)! | |
