Posts Tagged: ‘Games’

Shikaku – Originally Published August 2015

August 8, 2015 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

Shikaku, the box puzzle game, is one of those games that seems simple to play.  Once you start playing, you soon realize that some thinking is required.  When you first open the game, a simple menu appears (figure 1).  The “Learn the Game” block in the middle is a simple tutorial showing how to play the game.  On the bottom of the screen are links to rate the app in the Google Play Store, information about the game and settings.  The settings are simple. You can enable/disable sounds, enable hints, and vibrate when making mistakes.  The “Game Store” block at the bottom starts in‑app purchases.  More on that later.

The game is easy to play.  Each puzzle contains a box with some numbers (figure 2).  The objective of the game is to place rectangles (boxes) all over the screen such that each box contains a single number and has an area equal to that number.  This is done by sliding your finger or stylus over the screen.  If you make a mistake, tapping on the box clears it.

There are three difficulty levels (figure 3).  The difference is in the size of the puzzle grid.  The larger puzzles include bigger numbers which require more thought in how to place the boxes.  I’ll admit that I’ve had to undo more than once.

With the game you get 68 puzzles.  Additional puzzle packs can be purchased.  Prices are fairly reasonable: 30 puzzles for $0.99, 90 for $1.49 and 1500 for $2.49.

There are two minor things I don’t like.  If you are playing one level of games and want to switch to another, there is no way to get back to the main menu.  You have to exit the game and restart it.  In fairness, I would have probably never noticed that except I was changing screens a lot when writing this review.

Although I haven’t done it yet, my other minor quibble is with the in‑app purchases.  You can only buy puzzle packs that contain an equal amount of easy, medium and hard puzzles.  If I decide to buy, I’d like to have the option of buying only hard puzzles.

Shikaku is a free download from the Google Play Store.  Give it a try.  You might like it.

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Figure 1

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Figure 2

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Figure 3

Thanks for reading.

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Trainyard – Originally Published March 2015

March 15, 2015 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

Trainyard is a fun little puzzle solving game that I originally downloaded because my grandson wanted to play it on one of my devices. That was in September of 2013, before he got his own tablet. I’ve still got the game on my machine and I still play it frequently.
The object of the game is simple. You have to get your trains from their departure points into the correct station. You control your trains by drawing track on a square of grids for them to follow. Trains and stations are colored and the train must go to the correctly colored station. Each square on the grid can have two tracks overlapping at angles, but every time a train runs over that square, the track that is on top switches direction. When timed correctly, multiple trains merge into single ones. Two trains can merge together and change color. I’ve relearned the primary colors chart by playing this game.
The games begin with a tutorial that demonstrates the basics of the game. Initial puzzles are simple tracks from depot to station (see figure 1). As the game progresses, you have to route multiple trains, switch track and combine trains (see figure 2).

    
The puzzles continue to get more complicated. Eventually you will get squares that change your trains color, split them up or block them. This is one of those games that is easy to learn, but requiring thought to master. There is no single answer for any puzzle. In fact, most of the Trainyard puzzles has thousands of solutions. If you find a unique solution, you can upload it to the games online data base. If you get stuck, you can also consult the data base for suggested solutions.
With no time limits for solving each puzzle, Trainyard is the perfect game to play when you get a spare minute or two. I’m addicted. Why don’t you give it a try?
Trainyard Express is the free version of the game. You get more than 60 puzzles. The paid version of Trainyard is $2.99 from the Google Play Store. It features more than 100 additional puzzles. There are also some more advanced functions for the higher levels.
Give the game a try. Thanks for reading.

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Categories: Darkside

Red Herring – Originally Published July 2014

October 1, 2014 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

I like word games.  If you’ve read any of my game reviews, you’ve probably noticed that I start a lot of them with those same four words.  Red Herring is a word association game that is different than most others.

The object of the game is to slide the word tiles into one of the three category columns.  Each puzzle has only one correct solution.  There is no time limit for finishing the game.  The difficulty in the game comes from the fact that many of the words fit in more than one category.  Each puzzle has four extra “red herring” words that also fit into the categories.

To play the game, drag a word tile and drop it on another tile to swap them.  When four categorically matching tiles line up vertically, they’ll lock into place, with the category revealed at the top.  There are three modes of play. In the easy mode, you start with the category headings and the positions of five of the tiles revealed.  In the normal mode, the categories are hidden.  In the hard mode (which I’ve been playing) there is nothing revealed at the start of the game.  If you get stumped on a difficult level, you can always restart the level with an easier difficulty.

The base game comes with one puzzle pack of 50 grids for free (as well as ten free hints).  You can purchase additional puzzle packs and unlimited hints with in app purchases.  You can view a 47 second video on the official website.

Red Herring was developed by Blue Ox Technologies Ltd.  They also have produced one of my favorite word games, 7 Little Words, which I reviewed in the April Newsletter.  Although I like this game a lot, I doubt if I will keep it after I finish the 50 free puzzles.  After a while it gets a little repetitive.  When you get stumped, it is just too tempting to restart in an easier mode and finish the puzzle.

You can download Red Herring from the Google Play Store.

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7 Little Words – Originally Published April 2014

September 15, 2014 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

I like word games.  When I reviewed the game Wordiest, one of our club members suggested that I try another word game.  It was another free game called 7 Little Words.  This is one of those games that is doing what seems to be the new gaming trend: In application purchases.  I guess I must like the game a little bit.  I’ve spent money on it.

Like many other excellent games, 7 Little Words is simple to play and difficult to win.  The game reminds me of both anagrams and crossword puzzles.  Each puzzle consists of seven clues for seven different words.  There are twenty letter combinations for you to put together that fit the clues.  The goal of the game is to use all of the letters to solve the clues.

When you download the game, you get three daily puzzles and a puzzle pack of fifty free puzzles.  A new daily puzzle is added each day.  Additional puzzle packs can be purchased.  I’ve purchased an “impossible” to solve puzzle pack.  It hasn’t been impossible, but it’s pretty hard.

A limited number of free hints come with the game.  Unlimited hints can be purchased. I have been sorely tempted to buy the hints but have avoided having to so far.  The game relies on elimination.  If you solve most of the words you can experiment with the remaining letters and usually guess the answer.  I’ll admit that I have searched the web a few times for answers.  For example, I didn’t know that a cherimoya is a Peruvian fruit.  As with many other games, there are cheat web sites with all of the answers.  I haven’t had to use them.

The game has a 4.8 rating in the Google Play Store.  You can Download 7 Little Words by clicking the link.  Give it a try.  I think you’ll like it.

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Things I Miss About Gaming – Originally Published October 2013

August 24, 2014 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

I’ve been thinking about buying a Minecraft gaming account.  The grandson has been playing the demo and it looks like a game that I might enjoy.  I mentioned to him that I might do that and of course he is in favor of me doing it.  I told him that it wouldn’t make a difference because I couldn’t download it to his tablet.

That got to reminiscing  about one of the things I miss about playing computer games in the old days.  I miss software that didn’t have to be installed and could be run off the disk.  You didn’t have to worry about how much hard drive space was available or about memory conflicts.  If you went to a friends house, you just had to pop the disk in the drive and play on their computer.  To some extent, we can still do that with portable programs that run off a flash drive.

I’m not much of a game player these days, but I sure miss the old Infocom games.  Their advertising line was, “We put our graphics where the sun don’t shine.”  That was because there was no graphics.  The games were all text adventures.  The puzzles were all difficult.  You had to both think and imagine to play.  Maybe someday I’ll make a monthly Mindbender with questions about old games.

When was the last time you plugged a joystick into your computer?  It used to be that you needed a good one to play any games.  Wolfenstein, Space Invaders, Pacman and the many flight simulators needed one to be playable.  I still remember the last time I saw my old joystick.  It was the night I blew the dust off it and brought it to the club meeting to put on the giveaway table.

Some of the best games were free from many computer magazines.  They printed the code and you had to type it in for the program to run.  I remember sitting for hours with my six inch ruler marking the line, tediously typing in numbers and the letters a through f.  If just one digit was wrong, the software wouldn’t run and you had to spend hours troubleshooting.  I used to get a lot of good games from a company called Softdisk.  They were based in Shreveport and published several “Disk Magazines”.  Each month, I would eagerly wait for my Loadstar disk for the Commodore 64.

With the use of emulators, you can still download and play a lot of the old games on your modern computer.  If you’re interested, check out My Abandonware or The Internet Archive.  The games are free, but they don’t seem quite as good as I remember them.

I still haven’t decided if I’ll try Minecraft.

Thanks for reading.

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