Quick games – Page 8 – Random Geek Child

Hawaiian Sudoku

Plenty of people play Sudoku. With its grids for numerals, one of each number per row/column, but also per square, and the many varying difficulties the initial number line-up can provide, the puzzle game is portable, convenient, and engaging. However, I don’t often play it anymore.

This story starts in an airport in Hawaii, with a bored kid and an equally bored mother waiting for a flight. Though I don’t remember the details, I do know that Mom found a book of Hawaiian Sudoku to trade off while we waited, and that when I rediscovered it about a year ago, I addicted to it all over again. Which, I mean, as far as compulsions go, playing number games while listening to my History teacher really wasn’t that bad.

So what is Hawaiian Sudoku? Well, rather than grids, it’s a map of overlapping circles laid out in an image (hibiscus, poi pounders, volcanoes, etc.). Each circle operates like the rows and columns in the original game — there can only be one of each number, 1-6, in each circle. Furthermore, the same rule applies to diagonals — straight lines cut across the image — and parts of the edges, with shading and dots indicating which segments start and end where.

Here lies the problem — I no longer know what to do with a standard Sudoku puzzle. It should be easy, right? It used to be. But now, I’m so used to circular Sudoku, with its fluid, almost hypnotic cascade effect, the grids I grew up with seem foreign, uncompromising, and almost disturbingly blank in their formatting.

So, anyhow, that’s the story of why I have to relearn traditional Sudoku, and hopefully (if I didn’t scare you off with that bit) a recommendation for you to check out the Hawaiian version! Like I said, it’s addictive, but it’s also worth it, at least I think so.

Face the Ramen Fury!

Ah, yes, furious ramen. Or, well, ramen with chili peppers in it. But, like anger, that’s only a bad thing sometimes! Let me explain. Ramen Fury is a surprisingly backstabbing-intensive game of ingredient collecting and meal preparation.

Very basically, each player has three bowls, and each bowl of ramen can have up to five Ingredients (noodles excluded). To be eaten, there has to be a Flavor and at least one additional Ingredient. Flavor determines scoring. For instance, Beef Flavor scores for unique Protein Ingredients, whereas Shrimp Flavor bowls are worth four points per pair of Protein and Vegetable ingredients. There are also special Ingredients: Nori Garnishes and Chili Peppers. These can be played at any time (as a free action) into anyone’s bowl. Nori is a plus one, while Chilis are a minus one. That is, unless they’re in a bowl with Fury Flavor, which scores two points per pepper, and is where Ramen Fury gets the “Fury” part of its name.

You get two actions per turn. There are six of them: Prep, where you place an Ingredient in one of your bowls; Draw, where you take either a face-up card from the Pantry or the top card from the Ingredient Deck; Spoon, a twice per game action where you remove the top Ingredient from any bowl (including your opponents’); Restock, where you replace all four Pantry cards; Eat, where you finish a bowl of ramen, making it untouchable; and Empty, which you perform on your bowl of choice and is largely self-explanatory.

The final round is initiated either when any player has eaten their third bowl of ramen or when the Ingredient Deck is empty. Scoring is directly correlated to ingredients and handily mapped out on the Flavor/special Ingredient cards, making it quick and easy to calculate.

So, sit back, make some ramen, and appreciate the strategic Protein/Vegetable duality advantage of tofu!

Welcome to Jumanji!… Fluxx!

Yep, another Fluxx. Specifically, the Fluxx that ended up in my Christmas stocking this year. (As well as a Doctor Who Fluxx 13th Doctor expansion pack, but that’s sidelining…) Don’t worry, there’ll be no spoilers here for the Jumanji films; I haven’t even seen the new one yet. More importantly, I’m not actually focusing on the plot, because, well… this is Fluxx. Plot? What plot? We make our own plots here, thank you very much.

Anyways, I’m not really here to talk about Fluxx, or the new Keepers and Goals for this version of it, as I am to talk about what’s new and different about the game mechanics in this version. I mean, sure, there are some interesting new cards — I definitely don’t recall having seen “Let’s Keep Doing That” as a New Rule before — but that’s not really big news.

The really big news is that there are Danger cards — cards with a yellow and black border that allow players to be “eliminated.” Elimination is both more and less drastic than it sounds — you lose all your cards, both your Keepers and the ones in hand, but after everyone else has taken a turn, you draw a hand of three cards and play from there. So you’re not out, you’re just kind of… starting over. The conditions for these danger cards are usually based around Keepers, like saying, “If a player has Albino Rhinos in front of them, that player is eliminated.” I may or may not have used a whole slew of Danger cards on Mom. What can I say? I grew up on Munchkin.

There are also optional Meta Rules, which we didn’t play with this time around, but as I understand it there are two of them. The first, if used, gets placed next to the Basic Rules in the middle, and indicates that you must shout “Jumanji” when you win the game. The second, “No More Lives,” gets placed at the bottom of the deck, and once it comes up it, elimination is permanent.

I should also probably mention that, like “The Doctor” and “Companions” in Doctor Who Fluxx, Jumanji Fluxx has certain cards marked as “Adventurers” and “Animals,” which for certain card mechanics are interchangeable amongst themselves.

Slither.io

Yep, another .io game. What can I say? They’re addictive. (See my post on Narwhale here.) I’m not entirely sure what to call this one; when I was introduced to it we all called it Slitherio, with various pronunciations thereof, but for the sake of consistency I’ll just call it Slither.

Slither is a slightly less obvious name than Narwhale, but only just so. You are, likely unsurprisingly, snakes. In Slither, the goal isn’t so much to kill as it is to grow, and killing happens to be a convenient way to achieve that goal. To grow, you “eat” glowing dots, by which I mean the snake follows your mouse cursor and if it runs over a dot the dot disappears and your snake gets longer.

You can loop back over yourself just fine, allowing maneuverability accurate to snakes, but if you run into someone else, you die. When a snake dies, they fade into a large pile of super bright glowing dots, which are worth more than the random ones lying around. This is why a lot of players (not including myself) go on the offensive: killing other snakes is the fastest way to grow. Of course, it’s also dangerous, because there is the possibility that while trying to get them to run into you, you ram into them. That’s how I usually get kills; some overzealous little snake tries to corner me and self-destructs. And, I mean, you don’t just leave that perfectly good pile of points lying around, you know?

There is a trick that is, I’ve found, largely only useful to the offensive players, and that’s speeding up. When you left-click and hold, you go at an enhanced rate of speed, allowing you to dart in front of someone or, on the rare occasion I use it, to get out of a coil before it forms. A coil is a trick larger snakes use involving trapping a small snake entirely in a full circle and slowly closing the circle until the snake inside, who has no choice but to keep doing loops inside and will, if the maneuver is executed right, eventually have no room and run into the larger snake, at which point there’s a nice, concentrated pile of super-glowies (yes, I just made that up) that nobody else can get to. Anyhow, back to darting — darting has a price. When you do it, you leave a trail of small glowing dots behind you, which are subtracted from your body mass. Basically, if you’re going to use this move, make sure that what you’re darting for is worth more than the energy you lose to get there.

There are a couple of other things, like being able to choose your skin on the main screen, and the leaderboard in the top left corner, but those aren’t really important. I do suggest paying attention to the mini map in the bottom left corner if you’re having trouble finding enough stray glowing dots. It illustrates the map, where you are, and where the dots are concentrated, which is almost always the center.

Best of luck!

Narwhales!

One of the many games that I play online is called Narwhale. Aww! Sounds nice, kind of sweet, right? Haha, nope. Narwhale is a very simple game where you’re all — surprise! — narwhales, and you’re trying to kill each other by impalement, courtesy of tusks. A good example is this image, where I’m less than 1.5 seconds away from getting skewered by someone who’s about to make a sharp turn into my side.

“Why would you want to kill the other narwhales, though?” Well, that’s a good question. For starters, they’re all trying to kill you. You also get bonuses for each level you get (you advance the number of levels that each narwhale you kill has), like stamina (the little dots by your tusk, those are how many dashes you have left at a given time), stamina regeneration, dash speed, general speed, tusk length, turn rate… that sort of thing. You can see each upgrade for a moment as you get it, and then the words fade so that you can actually, you know, see what you’re doing.

Of course, bonuses that make it easier to kill shouldn’t really be the only reward to killing, should they? Of course not! It’s mostly for the rush of exhilaration when you get out of a tight spot, or see your username on the Leaderboard in the top right corner (if you don’t put one in, you’ll come up as “Lazy Narwhale”) or, if you do really well, get a crown for being the top player. Your tusk also turns into a kebab if you hit max tusk length, so that’s fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots of my crown/kebab combo, since I was a bit busy trying not to die, but I do have one with just a crown.

It should also be noted that digital narwhales seem to be contortionists, and it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether they’re missing the back half of their body, therefore dying and no longer a threat, or whether they’re scrunched up, like the little greige-ish dude near the bottom of that last picture. Unfortunately, that’s an unavoidable result of high speed turning, so just know that it’s something to watch out for.

We Must Survive Surviv!

Yes, you read that right, and no, it isn’t a typo. Surviv is a third person shooter game, meaning you see your character from an overhead view. I’ve been told that it’s the 2-D version of Fortnight, but I can neither confirm nor deny that, seeing as I haven’t played Fortnight.

You destroy crates to get guns, ammo, grenades, melee weapons, outfits, medical supplies, and gear, which can also be found lying around sometimes. You may also find scopes, which increase your field of view. There are different types of ammo for the different types of guns (they’re color-coded), and different guns within each type. Everyone has their own preferences; I like the yellow-ammo weaponry because they tend to have large clips, and I’m not the most accurate shot.

Medical supplies are split into two groups, which I call “healing” and “adrenaline.” Healing supplies are bandages and med kits, which directly restore health. Adrenaline supplies are consumed, and then gradually give you health back until the adrenaline bar runs out. Gear is split into backpacks, helmets, and armor, each of which has three levels of possibility. Obviously, the higher the level, the better. Outfits are mostly useless, but there are a few that provide excellent camouflage.

The game has a “last one standing” premise to it. As the game progresses, the map gradually gets smaller as the “Red Zone” moves inwards. Standing in the Red Zone is possible, but your health decreases. You can see where the Red Zone will be moving to at any given time in the mini map, which is expandable if you hit “M.” How you survive is up to you – some people like to attack anything that comes near them until they’re the only one left, and some like to hide in bushes until they’re one of the last people left, and then they attack the remaining adversaries. It’s up to you!

You can also play “Squad,” either with random other players or with a group of friends. Let me tell you, it is an excellent experience to try and play this game with a group of teenagers in various, spread-out locations in the same room (*cough* passing period *cough*). It’s insane.

Squads are nice because you can communicate with your team to ask for certain supplies or ask them to go somewhere. You also don’t die immediately. Instead, you go to a slow and helpless crawl until one of your teammates revives you or you bleed out, which sounds awful, but it’s nice to get a second chance, and it rewards team members who stay with the rest of the squad by increasing their chances of revival.

It can take a little while to acclimate to the controls, but if you play enough it becomes automatic. Right click is communication/drop this item, left click is attack, , WASD are movement, 1-4 are selections of weapons (gun, gun, melee, grenade), F is to pick something up or open and close doors, and M is the map.

A Series of Snacks

I’m not sure exactly where I was introduced to this series of restaurant-owning games, but I think this is yet another interest of mine that my best friend is to blame for. However I came across it, I picked up an interest in the Papa’s restaurant games, as I found them via Cool Math Games.

Most of the games follow a basic premise – there’s the order station, where you take orders, various stations to assemble and cook the meal, and then perhaps one more for sides, like the soda and fries station in the hot dog place. Each “day” you take orders from customers and complete them to your best ability. One of the interesting things about these dishes is that they’re custom built by the customer, kind of like Subway, so it’s not an “I’ll have the number 4” sort of situation. As you might imagine, I spend a lot of time consulting the orders as I cook, especially since as you progress you get more and more ingredients to use. You get rated for each dish and at the end of the day get points according, as well as tips that you use to buy upgrades. My go-to first purchase is the doorbell. You’d be amazed how much time is saved when you don’t have to keep shifting to the order station to check if there’s someone there.

Tips can also be used to buy decorations. Decorating your lobby increases the waiting score, and, if the poster markets a certain product, gives you a bonus on all dishes with that product in them. If this is one of the newer games, you then get tickets for a minigame, which you can win prizes from, like furniture, posters, and outfits. In these newer versions, after the first couple “weeks,” you will find yourself in some holiday season, and there are corresponding clothes, furniture, posters, wallpapers, and flooring that will give you boosts for that holiday. Each holiday comes with new ingredients special to the holiday. For instance, my sushi rolls took on jalapeños for Cinco de Mayo.

You can also get “specials” from customers with golden envelopes, which give you some bonus, as well as the general bonus of having a memorized dish instead of having to do everything customly.

And now, I suppose, I should tell you what the games actually are. They all start with the word “Papa’s” because they all supposedly belong to Papa Louie, but I’m just going to leave that word out, because I don’t need to be repeating it that many times over again. There’s an ever-expanding list of them (Sushiria, Scooperia – ice cream on cookies – and Bakeria – pies – are new since I started playing), but as of now, they include the above listed and the following: Burgeria, Cheeseria (grilled cheese), Cupcakeria, Donuteria, Freezeria (milkshakes), Hot Doggeria, Pancakeria, Pastaria, Taco Mia, and Wingeria. There’s also the Pizzeria, but I don’t play that one. I tried it once, and quickly realized that it’s probably the oldest of them. I can appreciate it as the source of the games that I do like, but I don’t like the system of it as much as the later ones.

There are also the spinoff games, which are more of a food-based action, fighting, quests style game, When Burgers Attack and When Sundaes Attack. Also fun games, of a completely different variety while still being connected by the characters, who are customers from the other games.

Escape Rooms! …Digitally?

Yeah, you read that right. So, as far as I know, I’ve never done a real escape room. I have, however, done plenty of these online ones! A while back I stumbled upon HoodaMath (probably thanks to school friends, but no guarantees on that) and consecutively their entire Escape Games page. My cousins and I obsessed a bit, all three of us hovering around the screen and binge playing them together.

I’m not really going to be comparing this to real escape rooms, since, as I already mentioned, I haven’t really done those. Hence, these will be judged by their own merit and someone else can do a comparison.

There’s always a little bit of plot. Let me start there, because… well, the game starts there. They aren’t just throwing you into the situation; they have a blurb at the beginning explaining why you are where you are and usually some reason for why you can’t get out. You got lost, you stayed too late and the gates are now closed, etc. Not always realistic, but not all of the games are either. Hence, Escape with Hansel and Gretel.

The rest of the game is running around using the green room movement arrows and clicking on things to find clues, helpful objects, and locks of various types that need opening with your smarts and the clues you’ve found (or haven’t yet). They have an impressive variety of things to do and find, and despite the kids’ game animations they’re still difficult for me. In other words, fun!

Eat This!!!

Or, really, please, please don’t. We need that. You know, for the rest of the game. And hopefully the many to come after. Because throwing burritos at your friends is too much fun to pass up.

Throw Throw Burrito items - 2 squishy burritos, a stack of Burrito Bruises, and a Fear Me token

Yes, you read that right. Throwing burritos. Yes, I’m serious. No, are you crazy? Of course they’re not real burritos! Do you know how much of a mess that would make?

Throw Throw Burrito is a fun speed game that involves collecting sets of crazy cards, and sometimes throwing fake burritos at your friends, in a variety of ways. You can duel with one other (like a good old Western back-to-back, walk, turn and draw), battle between just two, or have an all-out war, giving someone else (hopefully) a Burrito Bruise!

But that’s only if you get three cards of that type and color. Otherwise, you’re collecting other types of cards in groups of three, looking to gain points to become the Burrito Master, to be feared by all. There are no turns, just drawing from your deck and discarding on top of someone else’s, and occasionally drawing from the pool decks. So, you know, points for points and burritos because… throwing stress burritos at people is lots of fun? I mean look at those! They’re adorable and squishy and so much fun to peg Mom with. Repeatedly.

Fire Boy and Water Girl

“Don’t die. No! No, green mud, jump jump jump…” Game over. This is about how games of Fire Boy and Water Girl go when I’m playing with my best friend. Technically, I’m not sure that it’s supposed to be a two-player game, but that’s how we always played it within our friend group. After all, there are two characters, and it’s easier to each take one than to play two characters doing completely different things at the same time. Then again, sometimes you really don’t want to have to share the controls, especially when it’s your seventh time running that map because someone keeps missing the jump (though realistically, who that someone is varies. It’s been you, too).

See, in this game, Fire Boy is controlled by the arrow keys, and Water Girl is controlled by WASD (try keeping those straight in your head as you try to avoid jumping to your death with two characters at once) and each can only traverse their own elements. If either of them steps in the other’s element, they die. This means that sometimes only one can go in a certain direction. There are also colored gems that only the matching character can retrieve, also suggesting that they should be the one to go in that direction. Green mud kills both, and is the bane of absolutely anyone trying to coordinate a jump on a swinging log so that they both make it across the pit.

You are scored (well, graded, it’s a letter grade) based on how long the round took you, and once you succeed the branching levels from it open up for attempts. I say branching because not all of them have only one track; some have three or more options from which to choose. You can always go back and play the other tracks as well.

Each version of Fire Boy and Water Girl has different systems special to it, like the Light Temple’s mirrors and portals and stuff, but I’ll leave those for you to discover on their own. I usually play it on Cool Math Games (1, 2, 3, 4). There is an official Fire Boy and Water Girl site as well, which is the one I’ll link to hereafter. This one has five versions, in order: The Forest Temple, The Light Temple, The Ice Temple, The Crystal Temple, The Element Temple.

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