Richy's Random Ramblings » Net: Games

Game: Zilch – Don’t get nothing!

Richy C. — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:21:29 +0000

Just my luck, just when I think I’ll spend a weekend doing work, I find another addictive Flash game online! Zilch is a basic game where you score points by rolling dice (very similar to Yahtzee), with the aim of getting 10,000 points. However, if you fail to score 3 times in a row (scoring nothing means you get “Zilch”), you lose another 500 points.

Quite a fun game trying to decide whether to “Bank” (which you can only do once you have 300 points) or rolling again and risk losing everything (but standing to gain a few more hundred or even thousand points).

Net: Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation’s reviews

Richy C. — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:00:20 +0000

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw has, for around the last year or so, been busy reviewing games under the “Zero Punctuation” monkier for The Escapist. Why that name? Well, he’s a Brit living in Oz and his video reviews have, erm, not a lot of punctuation in them. They are funny, not kid safe, good animation style and they give you a good insight into the games and and…. Meh – it’s nearly 3am in the morning and I just wanted to make a note of the URL so I didn’t have to ask ickle Google every time. It’s http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation. There. Job Done. That was nice and simple! [And, yes, I just managed to stop myself writing this post in his manner of speaking: it was bad enough when I was reading a review of Mirrors Edge and I read it as he reviewed it]

Games: Grow Island

Richy C. — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:46:58 +0000

Yippeee! I’ve just tripped over another of the “Grow” family of games. Grow Island is basically a game where you’ve got to grow an island (simple eh! ), by selecting what items to concentrate on improving first. Sort of like a simple sim-city.

It took me a dozen games to work out the winning combination which was:

Mechanical
Civil
Architectural
Aeronautics
Environmental
Computer
Chemistry

Have fun!

Games: At Long Last!

Richy C. — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 16:33:59 +0000

At long last, I’ve finally completed the “Medium/Normal” level of Desktop Tower Defense – scoring 5778 points, all 50 levels cleared and 18 (out of 20) lives remaining (only the two flying bosses got away – and one of those only just: he had less than 20 health left).

5778 still keeps me out the top 100 though (7406 is the 100th highest score), but I’ve spent waaay too much time it now so now I’m going to try to forget about this addictive game.

Desktop Tower Defense Continued

Richy C. — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:22:24 +0000

I may just need to edit my “hosts” file on my computer to stop myself play Desktop Tower Defense – it’s proven very very addictive! No wonder the author is earning nearly $8,000 a month. Some people will resent him for that, but I think good on him: he’s come up with a fairly unique idea of a good simple game and given it away free – he deserves to get rewarded….

(added: It appears the developer has even set up a new blog about it – so keep an eye out for other variants of the game).

Now back to those towers….

Game: Desktop Tower Defense

Richy C. — Tue, 22 May 2007 20:04:15 +0000

When Jeremy Zawodny issues a warning about a game, then it is advisable to listen to him as he knows what he is talking about….

Desktop Tower Defense is an annoyingly good game! I’ve only reached sub-3000 scores so far so just one more game….

Mapping without Landmarks

Richy C. — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 18:58:38 +0000

After the previous post on Wikimapia, it was coincidence that I came across the BBC News’ “Landmarks Quiz”. Can you recognise 10 photographs of areas of the UK – but without the distinctive landmarks?

I did quite well scoring 7 out of 10 – I would have probably scored higher if: a) I didn’t stop disbelieving my score after the 5th round (perfect score up to then) and b) if I had actually seen some of the places with or without the landmarks!

How well can you do?

Games: Grow

Richy C. — Mon, 17 May 2004 14:24:50 +0000

Ok, by looks of things in Grow from Eyezmaze you are meant to “grow” your own little planet by adding certain items in a certain order so they trigger events…

Easy? Except you’ve got to work out the order that things trigger other things and if you don’t have an item at a certain level then things go wrong… I’ve managed to get a score of 12,300 (that’s everything at ‘Max Level’ apart from the ladder – level 1 – and the cube – level 9). Can anybody do better?

A few clues follow:

The propeller is powered by the tornado, but the propeller can blow away the clouds (from the pipe) that need to settle above the hills (otherwise you get a volcano).

I’ll add more once I work them out – but feel free to contribute!

Games: Lemmings (Web Based)

Richy C. — Sun, 17 Aug 2003 20:29:38 +0000

I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t played it with my own hands – but “crisp” has made a DHTML version of the popular Lemmings game which means you can now play Lemmings Online (ok, you need a reasonably up to date Javascript and DHTML browser – but IE5.5 and later, Mozilla 1.3 and later and most version of Opera should support it).

It’s even got in game animations, pass codes and music (although no proper sound effects – so you’ll have to make your own “Oh no!” and “Yippee!” sound effects yourself). It’s absolutely brilliant and I just hope crisp continues to develop it as it’s amazing but still a bit short on levels (he’s converting the “real Lemmings levels” to Javascript versions so it could take a while – but he’s got 9 of the “Fun” levels, and 2 of the “Tricky” levels done).

Oh – it’s also open source (under the GPL) so if you want to see how it works, you can: you can even make your own “forked” version if you so wish!

(Link courtesy of Stupid Evil Bastard)

Lemmings Passcodes
Fun

Just dig: BAJHLDHBCL
Only floaters can survive this: IJJLDLCCCL
Tailor made for blockers: NJLDLCADCY
Now use miners and climbers: HNLHCIOECW
You need bashers this time: LDLCAJNFCK
A task for blockers and bombers: DLCIJNLGCT
Builders will help you here: HCAONNLHCX
Not as complicated as it looks: CINNLDLICJ
As long as you try your best: CEJHMDLJCN

Tricky

This should be a doddle!: HCENNONPDW
We all fall down: CIOLMFLQDU

Games: Candy Train

Richy C. — Mon, 07 Apr 2003 08:29:12 +0000

Ever had a compulsion to be a train driver? How about a driver of a sweetie train (oh, if you are American, a Candy Train)? Yep, well, here’s your chance!. In a style reminiscent of the old Pipemania game, you have just got to flick the squares to join up pieces of the train track to help navigate the little choo-choo around to collect the chew-chews.

Easy? Well, sort of. The tiles/squares do “change” on their own after a while, and sometime it isn’t easy to get the pieces pointing in exactly the right direction you want – and if you crash into the edge of the playzone or don’t run on the tracks the game ends… I’ve managed to get a score of 21,270 so far (it took me 27:54 minutes in “game time” and consisted of me delivering 15 train cars on 3 levels) which equals a “ticket level” of “Business Class”. Now, if only I didn’t have to get all the train cars into that d–n station… I’ll have another go and see if I can do any better…