Scarecrow Defender
This is a really cool Mission Command style game where you have to defend your scarecrows from the incoming raven invasion. Shoot seeds at your scarecrows to make them swing at the ravens. Repeat until the invasion is defeated or your scarecrows are picked apart. It's easy to learn, difficult to master, but I'm sure that you have nothing better to do, so get your scarecrow on.
A Murder of Scarecrows. My best score is 293, but I'm sure I can do better.
Embrace the '80s
Daily refill has a great post about 55 things you'll definitely remember if you grew up in the '80s. It's definitely worth a trip down memory lane:
embrace the decade. Some of my favorites:
3. You can sing the rap to the "Fresh Prince of Belair"
11. You can sing the entire theme song to "Duck Tales".
12. When it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.
15. You got super-excited when it was Oregon Trail day in computer class at school.
28. You remember the CRAZE, then the BANNING of slap bracelets.
36. You remember "I've fallen and I can't get up"
54. You knew all the characters names and their life stories on Saved By the Bell", the ORIGINAL class.
The list is a little biased for the ladies, so I have a few adjustments for the boys:
4. You know exactly what "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A" means and wouldn't have survived without it.
5. You tuned in every day because "Knowing is half the battle."
6. You paid $150 for shoes that pumped up six times and then broke.
10. You planned on moving to California to become a member of the CHiPs team.
13. You had either a He-Man, Knight Rider, or G.I. Joe Big Wheel.
16. You ever played Atari.
18. You know that a Physical Challenge is only an option after a Double Dare.
20. You had the coolest Trapper Keeper in school.
31. You believed in Bigfoot because of
Harry and the Hendersons.
34. You ever had superheros on your underwear.
44. You had a school photo taken with the laser background.
46. You know the difference between Autobots and Decepticons.
50. You know the special powers of each of the Thundercats (except for Snarf).
So, those are my adjustments for the fellas. But in any case,
check out the original, and leave me some feedback if I left anything off, which I know I did.
In the spirit of weird Web games
Here's on in the spirit of weird adventure games:
Where's my head at? Okay, so that's not really the name of it, but that's the idea. The whole game is in an Asian Language I'm assuming is Chinese, but what do I know. The language is not important. You see things, you click on them, things happen. Get the right things to happen and you move on. The idea is to find your lost head. Sounds weird and it is, but it's a good puzzle/adventure game. So get it on.
Bigfoot alive and well in southern Oklahoma
Just because you haven't seen it on CNN or U.S. News doesn't mean the folks at News Channel 4, KFOR in Oklahoma don't have the latest scoop on Bigfoot. Apparently a "researcher" claims he has undeniable proof of Bigfoot: a greasy fingerprint. He also has some damn fine quotations in the article:
"No muzzle, no tail. Just boing, boing, boing," Hallmark said. "My first impression was to get out there and chase him through the woods to get a better view of him and then I thought, that's a juvenile. That means mamma is not far away and I'd hate to get in an arm wrestling match with a female monkey that weighs 600 pounds because I don't think I would win."
Need I say more?
Read the article.
How Fast Do You Read?
You might be able to type at 35 words per minute, but how was can you read them? Well, the geniuses at
Mind Bluff came up with a nifty Web test that will tell you how many words per minute you read. Click the start button and start reading. An alert will tell you when to stop. Click the paragraph you're on and see how fast you read. I read between 250-300 words per minute, which I don't think is very fast, but apparently I'm above average. But you already knew that. Anyway,
take the reading test.
Designing Games for the Wage Slave
More on video games for the day.
GameDev.net has a decent article up titled
Designing Games for the Wage Slave. It's about what's wrong with video games these days now that we're all grown up and don't have hours and hours to sit in front of the TV. It talks about how games need to adapt to the 20-30 something working class stiffs with jobs, families, and responsibilities, and all that jazz. Anyway, it's interesting and it discusses a lot of things that bug me too. For instance,
Don't Waste My Time
Make every moment count. I don't play games to punish myself. I play them to be entertained, rewarded, and challenged. I have better things to do than:
- Attempt the same mis-timed jump again and again: Why oh why have jumping "puzzles" not died the death they richly deserve? There's nothing that quite kills pacing like reloading the same quicksave (or better yet, being returned to your last save point) until you beat a tedious activity through sheer trial and error.
What, exactly, is my incentive for continuing to waste my precious time in this situation?
- Replay parts of the game I've already finished: Let me save anywhere, any time, or better yet, do it for me. I might only be able to manage minutes of gameplay at a time. Make them count.
- Stumble blindly in the dark: Being lost is *not* fun. Pixel hunting is *not* fun. Wandering around a level looking for an obscurely hidden key is *not* fun. Not even knowing what they key *looks* like is *not* fun. Keep me aware of my objectives, and provide a decent method of pointing me towards them. The glowing aura in "Bloodrayne" and three-dimensional pointers in "Grand Theft Auto III", while contrived, certainly kept the player heading in the right direction.
- Endure obvious filler: My time is precious. I don't want to spend that time enduring mediocre, mundane, or tedious padding that only serve to meet the promise of gameplay hours on the back of the game box.. Make it short if you have to, but make it an adrenaline-pumping, high quality wild ride (nod to "Max Payne") that's worthy of my time.
When placing a sequence in a level, ask yourself: "Am I challenging the player and giving him a compelling experience, or just trying to slow him down?" If the answer is the latter, cut it out like the cancer it is.
So, take this little diddy for a read and see what you think.
