Solo play – Page 3 – Random Geek Child

Chrononauts — But Bigger

I’ve already written about Chrononauts — a fun game of time travel, artifact collection, and screwing with timelines. But now, I’d like to introduce you to ÜberChrononauts: the ambitious combination of original Chrononauts with its prequel, Early American Chrononauts. In other words, twice the timeline, twice the cards, twice the chaos!

So what’s different? Well, besides having mixed both decks for fun variety, the end of the game is a bit different. In either game on its own, you win by completing your (one) mission, returning to the timeline of your (one) ID, or getting ten cards in hand. In ÜberChrononauts, you need to complete one of your (two) missions, one of your (two) IDs, and get ten cards in hand. Not all at once, of course, once you’ve completed one of those objectives you mark it as complete, without worrying about keeping the criteria for it intact. That would be even more confusing. Yikes. Also, rather than 13 paradoxes blowing up the universe, those 13 have to be in four consecutive rows.

Worried about sorting the two decks back out once it’s over? Don’t be! While the backs of the cards are the same, all of the Early American cards (except the timeline) have a little star in one of the top corners. The timeline is set off by, rather than the original’s coordinates of A-D, having designations of W, X, Y, and Z, allowing the few intermixed dates in the middle of the map to be returned to their own decks with no hassle.

All in all, it’s a longer, more complicated version of a brilliantly fun game. So, if you’ve got the time and the dedication to your many missions, play some ÜberChrononauts for some ÜberChaos!

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!

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.

2048

No, not the year, the game. What game, you ask? Well, that’s why I’m here to talk about it. 2048 is an online game that I was first introduced to as a Chrome extension on the school Chromebooks. Somewhat like fidget spinners (see previous post), I was hesitant to try it. After all, it was just a fad, and how interesting could a bunch of numbers on the screen be? But I caved, and, the fad long passed, I am one of the people who still plays it regularly.

2048 is a math game that uses incessant doubling. How does it work? You start with two numbers somewhere in the grid (which is four by four). These first numbers are either two or four. You use the arrow keys to move all pieces in the grid as far in one direction as they can possibly go (obstructions being the edge or other numbers). If they hit another piece of the same number value they join to become double their value. With each move, either a two or a four is added to the grid in some random open space. Each time you combine numbers, your score goes up by the value of the number they turned into (an eight plus an eight equals a sixteen plus sixteen points). The game ends when you fill up every space on the board and cannot combine anything.

Officially, the goal of the game is to reach 2048. At first this confused me. I’d already reached 2048. Heck, my record is seven thousand something. Finally, a friend of mine realized that I was confused and explained to me that the goal wasn’t the score, it was the actual number tile 2048, which I had and have not reached, but he had. Void of this, I look at the goal as attempting to beat my high score, which the extension saves so that whenever I pull it up at school I can continue attempting to reach it.

There are alternate versions of 2048, enough so to have an entire website of variations. These use images to represent the numbers. There’s an Infinity War version, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Harry Potter… and that’s just scratching the surface (there are multiple of these, so I just chose one of each to put up here). Especially considering that I don’t like math games, 2048 is lots of fun and something I can safely say I am glad to have tried.

Fleeing the Complex

Well, I’m not just talking about Fleeing the Complex. I’m also talking about Infiltrating the Airship, Stealing the Diamond, Escaping the Prison, and Breaking the Bank. But the website is called Fleeing the Complex. I wouldn’t count Breaking the Bank, but it’s referenced in Infiltrating the Airship and in Escaping the Prison, and stars Henry Stickman, so I will.

Each game has a plot, choices to make, crazy reactions to those choices that make no sense, hilarious effects, numerous references (“‘You’re a bender, Harry.’ -Gandalf.”) and epic fails. Breaking the Bank doesn’t have much of a plot on its own, but the rest have an intro and extensive inter-weaving of events meant to make it as enjoyable as possible. I would love to give more examples, but that would spoil the fun!

Perhaps my one complaint with these is that the timeline is confusing. Infiltrating the Airship referenced Escaping the Prison, Stealing the Diamond, and Breaking the Bank, Escaping the Prison made a reference to the teleporter’s previous uses and also made it clear that it came after Breaking the Bank, and Fleeing the Complex mentioned the character Charlie, who Henry met in Infiltrating the Airship. By this, I’d guess that it goes Breaking the Bank, Escaping the Prison, Stealing the Diamond, Infiltrating the Airship, and then Fleeing the Complex. I confirmed this by going to the Henry Stickman Wiki. I guess I didn’t need to do a complicated tangle of deduction? Oh well, it was good practice.

Anyways, these games are madcap silly and loads of fun. One of the reasons they’re so great is that each game has multiple endings, and, with the exception of Breaking the Bank, several ways to win, each with its own label. For example, Stealing the Diamond has three endings: The Aggressive Ending, The Epic Ending, and The Undetected Ending.

Can You Survive the Oregon Trail?

Wow, this is an old one. For those of you who don’t know, Oregon Trail is a DOS game that came out in 1990. My Social Studies teacher last year gave us a link to it and an entire class hour to just play, because it’s historical and all that. Everything is run using typed commands, like numbers, Enter, Y and N. (Yes and No.)

In Oregon Trail, you get to choose a difficulty setting. You can be the banker, with a ton of cash for supplies, the carpenter, with less, or the farmer, with very little. The less cash you’ve got at the start, the more points you get for surviving. You also get to choose what month to leave in. Too early, and it’s too cold at the start, too late and you freeze near the end. Nasty business, weather. You name the 1-5 people in your party. You have to buy your supplies in the shop before you leave (because obviously, you wouldn’t leave without supplies, would you? That would just be dumb), but thankfully, the guy at the shop gives you some guideline suggestions on what to buy.

As you move along the trail, you can adjust your pace and rations while watching your party health and supplies. You can buy supplies at the forts along the way, trade with other travelers, or hunt for food. If the weather gets extreme or someone gets hurt, you can rest for a few days, but don’t lose track of time. You still have to hit Oregon before it gets too cold.

You get to cross rivers, and, near the end, you have to choose paths. There’s also the looming possibility of someone dying. The caravan leader dies last, since that character is “you” and it’s hard to play when you’re dead. I heard that one of my friends played a game with Batman (leader), Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the Flash. Aquaman drowned, and Superman, Wonder Woman and the Flash died from exhaustion. How ironic is that?

So basically, cross the country, and don’t die. Simple, and old school, but fun.

DragonVale

I first started playing DragonVale when I was six. I played on my mother’s iPad, then on my tablet, then on my phone. DragonVale is a fun, child friendly (obviously) app where you raise and breed dragons. I’ve tried a few other games like it over the years, but never found it’s equal. (Granted, I’m a bit biased; it was my first dragon game online.)

Dragons come in types (Plant, Fire, Water, etc.). When you first unlock a type, you need to buy the Type Habitat and the main Type Dragon. Once you have these, you can breed them to gain combo dragons. These can live in Habitats of any type that match theirs. Note: if you breed a Fire Dragon with an Air Dragon, there are 4 possible that dragon types you can breed. I’d presume that logically, this is due to dominant genes and the like, but I have no clue. I think the game just decides randomly.

Besides breeding dragons, you can also enter them in Colosseum competitions and send them on quests. These earn you Dragon Food, money, and gems.

Occasionally you breed rare dragons. For instance, I’ve just breed an Epic Tinsel Dragon, which is, according the the DragonVale Wiki, produced by a Holly Dragon bred with any species of Cold dragon.

Crossy Road

The other day, I was on my phone playing a game called Crossy Road when my mother looked over my shoulder and said, “Wait… you’ve downloaded Frogger?” I was naturally confused, as to me, Frogger is the game where you all sit in a circle with the “Detective” in the center, and the “Frogger” sticks their tongue out at the other individuals in the circle, causing the others to “die” while trying not to get caught by the detective.

So, as I have found to be wise when I am utterly confused, I asked her what she meant and then showed her how the game I was playing worked. She has since downloaded the game, which I take to be a good sign.

Crossy Road app In Crossy Road, you pilot your avatar (the starter is a chicken) across roads and rivers, avoiding many different obstacles, such as various speeds of cars and trucks, getting run over by speedy trains and jumping into an icy river in an attempt to cross it.

You play daily challenges, which can be anything from frightening three birds (background scenery; I barely noticed them until I got one of these challenges) to hopping four hundred times (every time you move is counted as a “hop”). To move forwards, you can just tap the screen, and if you want to move sideways or backwards you swipe in that direction.

Challenges and daily prizes give you “gifts”, which you open to receive a randomized quantity of coins. You can also get coins by jumping on them during the game. Once you get one hundred coins, you can “win a prize”, which is where you win a randomized avatar.

The avatars are grouped by category. I’ve been mainly using the Arctic setting since near the very beginning, when I won an Arctic fox, then later on an Arctic hare, and I believe my default right now is a puffin.

Every map has it’s quirks. the Savanna has ridiculously breakneck fast tourist buses, Australia has alligators in place of some logs that can snap up and eat you if you jump too close to their head, and Pac-Man has ghosts to avoid instead of cars, but don’t be fooled by the little pellets that Pac-Man eats in standard Pac-Man: they’re just for show.

Each avatar has it’s quirks, too. The pumpkin leaves a trail of candy that falls out of its top every time it jumps, the vampire spontaneously turns into a bat and then turns back, and if you have your volume on, you can hear that the piper really does play bagpipes!

Some of the avatars are awesome, some are strange, some are adorable, and some are downright impossible! There’s 3.1, the computer; the African termite, which is kind of freaky due to the blocky animations; the baby animals category, which has fawns and iguana hatchlings and baby bunnies… so downright cute; and somehow the plate of kimchi is able to move independently?

Woah, look at me… I haven’t even told you the goal of the game! It’s a game against yourself, so your goal is to beat your highscore, and possibly those on the leaderboard, if you’re more ambitious than I am.

You can also play multiplayer if the other players are using the same router as you are, in which case the goal is to see how far you can make it as a team.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: