Some of your dreams can come true in Disney Magic Kingdoms

At some point, I do promise to write about Theme Park, which was not the greatest simulation game ever to be simulated, but it stands out in my mind as something special because my sister Julie and I played it together, creating less-than-stellar amusement parks and laughing at how many people we could get to hurl after going on our sick–and I do mean sick–rollercoaster designs. I also remember being extremely impressed, at the time, over the visuals, especially the 3D parts where you could go through the rides view a first-person POV. I guarantee the game doesn’t hold up one lick today, but it’s a sentimental entry in my gaming history nonetheless.

Disney Magic Kingdoms doesn’t let you do that or even really run an amusement park in a simulation fashion. You can’t adjust how much the hot dogs cost or what admission tickets go for on a weekend versus a weekday. It’s instead more about leveling up, both the rides and attractions you place on the ground, as well as the familiar characters inhabiting the park from open to close. Yes, you level up Mickey Mouse, and it is both satisfying and unnerving at the same time. Also, every time you complete a mission with a character, you collect your reward by tapping their upraised hand, giving them a digital high-five. I’m pretty okay with that, especially when it is Buzz Lightyear.

Magically, Disney Magic Kingdoms does come with a plot, as well as many small, off-to-the-side subplots. Here’s the big one: Maleficent casts an evil spell on the Kingdom, ridding it of all of its powerful magic, and it’s up to Mickey and his friends to bring everything back. A bit perfunctory, but it gets the job done, and this thing is clearly aimed at a younger generation, with its bright, colorful graphics and bouncy tunes, so it’ll never get darker than that. Basically, you’ll be trying to build specific attractions and bring in famous characters from all the popular franchises, ranging from Sleeping Beauty to Toy Story to The Incredibles. To do that, you need the right amount of currency and special items, which you collect from rides/attractions on timers and completing missions. Alas, some missions take sixty seconds to do, and others go for anywhere between six to twelve hours. Yikes.

I find that, obviously, Disney Magic Kingdoms, is best played in short bursts, with the goal of returning to it many, many hours later to see what got done and start the process all over again. I usually finish everything I need to do in under 10 minutes, and once you have checked all your rides for currency/items and given every character a quest there isn’t much else you can do except stare at your screen and wait. Might as well wait doing something else. However, let me confirm that it is a big bummer when, after waiting six hours for a quest to complete, you sometimes don’t get the item you want and have to try again. I’m sure there is a way to buy the item or complete the quest using real-life U.S. dollars, but I’m not interested in that. I’m saving my hard-earned cash-money for next month for Disney Magical World 2, which should come as no surprise to those that read my thoughts on the first game.

Oh, and I never really mentioned the whole Happiness aspect. See, a bunch of the park’s visitors are looking for things to make them happy, and that could be going on a specific ride or listening to Jessie yodel. Everyone has their kinks. Anyways, if you fill the Happiness meter up all the way, you can start a themed parade, which, for a limited time, allows rides and attractions to give off bonus magic and XP, and quests will also end with better rewards. Unfortunately, the Happiness meter drains when you aren’t playing, so I haven’t focused too hard on this area as it never feels worth the effort.

Being a free-to-play mobile game, Disney Magic Kingdoms is constantly changing. The game has gone through several updates already. One update brought in a timed event themed around The Incredibles and tapping on a bunch of evil robots invading the park. Looks like this week there’s an update that’s all about Pirates of the Caribbean. When will we get one focused on The Rescuers, hmm? There are also now chests akin to the chests from Clash Royale that you can find and open, but they are naturally on timers, and you can only open so many and open them so fast unless you are willing to spend the rarer currency of gems. No thanks. I mean, I’ll continue to open one chest at a time and hope for the best, but otherwise want nothing to do with this system.

Disney Magic Kingdoms is a more enjoyable time-killer, tap-taker than other games in this genre, but I wonder if that is mostly due to my love and appreciation of all things Disney. It really does help that the quests revolve around familiar, likeable characters, and that the carrot on the stick is unlocking more familiar, likeable characters. Plus, the game both looks and sounds amazing. They have Mickey’s “Oh boy!” and Goofy’s “Guffaw!” down perfectly, and the soundtrack features a number of memorable tunes. The characters are well animated, the environments are authentic, and you’ll find yourself whistling while you work as classic Disney themes play overhead.

Look, I’ll keep going with it, but I wonder if, just as with The Sims FreePlay, I’ll hit a point with Disney Magic Kingdoms where the grinding takes too long and becomes more of a nuisance than fun and close this park for good, only to ever see it appear again in one of those posts about creepy, neglected amusement parks overgrown with rust and decay.

The first to finish this free-to-play Ben-Hur race is the last to die

It sure has been a lot of games completed haikus–seven in a row!–and nothing much else here on Grinding Down for these past few months, and that’s fine. This happens every year. My archives prove it so. Summer is crazy-busy for me at the day job, which basically means I find myself with both less free time to think and write about all them videogames in my possession. Plus I’m trying to get some comic books done for MICE. Do not fret; I’m still playing things here and there, jumping from game to game and system to system like an unchained glutton, but unfortunately I’m just not finding the time slash energy to put down all my hot takes. That is until now.

The other night, while mindlessly scanning the list of new releases on Xbox One’s store, I noticed a free-to-play thing called…Ben-Hur. Hmm. Curiosity got the better of me, and I had to know what exactly this was. Not because I’m some huge fan of the 1959 film starring Charlton Heston as the title character or even the least bit interested in this new re-imagining of the source material (though Morgan Freeman’s hair looks amazing). I’m just forever bewildered by tie-in videogames of all shapes and sizes, whether they are for movies, comic books, or even pizza-delivering establishments. I went into Ben-Hur thinking it’d be a quick, lackluster experience that existed only to constantly urge you, the player, to stop playing, drop some cash, and go sit in a movie theater instead, and I wasn’t disappointed in that prediction. At least I got a bunch of Achievement points, right?

Here’s how Ben-Hur goes, and try not to blink or you’ll miss the entire rundown: you participate in a chariot race where need to mash the A button to accelerate–but not too much as your horses will tire–and pull the left and right triggers to whip opponents on either side of you in hopes of taking them out for good. The natural goal is to come in first place, and you can do this by being a strong racer or simply eliminating the competition. Whipping the horses or running opponents into traps and other obstacles on the course does the trick. A season is made up of three individual races, each with their own number of laps and opponents. That’s it.

My first session with Ben-Hur lasted a total of twenty-eight minutes, in which I both won the season without breaking a sweat–or my chariot–and popped 8 of the 10 easy-as-pie Achievements. I’ve since gone back and gotten one more Achievement, and a part of me wants to get the last one, which requires destroying every opponent in every race of a season, but I think if I don’t get it the next time I play this will simply be removed both from the Xbox One and my memory. The tricky part is that you, the titular Ben-Hur, must destroy all the chariots yourself; they can’t be destroyed by other players or their own undoing. That’s as challenging as this live-or-die race gets, and the most hilarious cause-and-effect happening is seeing these health power-ups tossed out on to the track the moment you take a teeny tiny bit of damage.

Turns out, Ben-Hur was published by AOL and developed by Float Hybrid, which creates “branded experiences,” and Krome Studio, the developer of games I actually enjoy, such as Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Maybe that’s what was missing from Ben-Hur: boomerangs and that distinct-sounding Australian English that I’ll never be able to perfectly replicate. Oh, and no, this did not inspire me to purchase a pair of tickets for the new movie. If anything, I’m inclined to stay far, far away.

2016 Game Review Haiku, #48 – Ben-Hur

Take the reins, Ben-Hur
Steer this freebie, for glory
Easy Gamerscore

–

Here we go again. Another year of me attempting to produce quality Japanese poetry about the videogames I complete in three syllable-based phases of 5, 7, and 5. I hope you never tire of this because, as far as I can see into the murky darkness–and leap year–that is 2016, I’ll never tire of it either. Perhaps this’ll be the year I finally cross the one hundred mark. Buckle up–it’s sure to be a bumpy ride. Yoi ryokō o.

Matching four of a kind in Gems of War is indispensable

Early on during my Nintendo DS days, I played a lot of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, as well as Mario Kart DS. But more Puzzle Quest than anything else. It successfully combined role-playing, strategy, and puzzle elements in one addictive pill to swallow, and threw in a fun, if cookie-cutter storyline to follow. At some point, I showed it to my sister D, and she got hooked, asking to play any time I came down. Eventually, I just left the cartridge with her since she could play it on my mother’s Nintendo DS easier–and faster–than waiting for me to visit every few weeks. Anyways, when I was into it, I was into it, and Puzzle Quest was this nearly perfect storm to kill fifteen minutes and feel like you were accomplishing something and having fun, marching down a path.

Hold on. I just pulled out my copy of Puzzle Quest and popped it into my Nintendo 3DS. Looks like my save data is still there, as well as my sister’s. My character’s name is Ferpina, and she’s a tough-looking, dagger-wielding, redheaded warrior at level 50. Oh my. When I load up the current mission, it’s called “The Final Battle,” and a message says that I managed to escape from Lord Bane’s clutches, and that I must try again. That means either I never actually beat Puzzle Quest or I did beat it and this is the last moment it saves your progress. Ha, I just tried taking on Lord Bane and he whipped my butt hard, so I have to imagine I never saw credits roll.

Well, good news and bad news–the developers behind Puzzle Quest are back (505 Games), and their new game is just as appetizing and fulfilling as before, if strikingly similar. In Gems of War, you create an avatar–I’m a cat lady warrior–and then match gems to power your array of spells, as well as match three or more skulls to deal direct damage to your opponent’s team of enemies. If you take out each troop on the opposing side, you’ll gain gold and souls, both of which are used to buy more soldiers, as well as level up the ones you got. Rinse and repeat until you take hold of all the kingdoms, of which there are currently fifteen. It’s quite close to what Puzzle Quest was, but with some free-to-play stuff here and there, though none of it has been bothersome or in the way at this point.

For Gems of War, I’ve been sticking to a specific team, really enjoying the way these troops interact and gel with each other. In my first slot is either a red mana or yellow mana weapon (I keep flipping between them) that does damage to a single enemy. Then I have a Boar Rider, currently strengthened up to level 7, followed by a Templar for boosting shields, and a Golem for exploding skulls and reducing enemy armor. Boar Rider is maybe my favorite troop, as its ability is to clear out an entire row, deal damage to an opponent’s troop, and then take a free turn afterwards. If you are playing strategically, you can use this ability to gain multiple turns in a row and keep the attack pressure on your enemy.

Still, I mash buttons during the intro and outro “dialogue” sequences, which exist only to give you a story-related reason to do battle. It’s fine, but fluff, and I’m never very invested in any narrative here. I just want to do all the quests in a kingdom and then claim it as mine. I also feel like there are perhaps too many choices when it comes to troops and you can waste a bunch of souls leveling up the ones that don’t matter or aren’t great for long-term play, which is why I’m rocking a team of one common and two rares because that’s all I’m comfortable experimenting with. Some of the rarer cards look neat, but aren’t immediately easy to use.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Gems of War is that, so long as you don’t go spending all your coins like a kid without a care, you can play duel after duel after duel. There’s no energy system here to stop you from playing. Each duel costs 50 gold to start, and that’s easy scratch to have and hold on to, even if you end up losing a few. Other free-to-play games bum me out in comparison to Gems of War, simply because they make it a struggle to even play and make progress. Not in this realm though.

Also, allow me to list what other match-three (or try hard to match four for better results!) games I’m currently juggling alongside Gems of War:

• Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight
• Pokémon Shuffle
• Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition

Okay, three. That might not seem like many, but it is when they are all at once similar and dissimilar to each other. It’s like trying to eat four cheese sandwiches at the same time, but each one contains a drastically different tasting cheese that lingers on your palette and actually begins to affect how you taste the other delicious sandwiches. Also, you like cheese, so this is one of those first-world problems, where it’s only really a problem if you analyze it too deeply. If you have a better analogy than this, please leave it in the comments.

Well, back to matching I go. These skulls aren’t going to combine themselves. See you after I’ve conquered every kingdom in the realm, leveled up every troop I like using (sorry, Zombie), and decked out a variety of teams to their fullest capacity, each capable of handling a number of situations tossed before them, whether it’s a boss fight or simply trying to stay alive as long as possible in an arena battle. In short, “To (Gems of) waaaaaaaaaar!”

Help elf people survive in Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure

There’s a first for everything, and Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure is my initial dip into a free-to-play hidden objects game. Y’know, that mega popular genre where you examine a scene and click on items to check them off a list. Back in the old days, you used to do it on paper, in magazines like Highlights, while waiting in some reception area. It’s strange to see this genre smothered by staple free-to-play elements like energy and special currencies, but it’s free on Steam and sometimes all I want to do is scour a scene for the most random of items, and this kind of fills that desire, but only kind of. Unfortunately, while clicking on crabs, knapsacks, and hidden oars, I also found a number of problems along the way.

Allow me to get the silly out of the way fast and describe the game’s story. Yes, Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure has a plot, if you want to follow it. Right, here we go. A bunch of elves were forced to set sail for a new home after their kingdom ends up in ruins. A terrible storm ends up crushing their ships, forcing them to the shores of a lost island. Unfortunately, despite all the green grass and flowing rivers, this beautiful new world is filled with danger. The elves try to leave the island, but discover it is surrounded by an impenetrable magic storm. Survivors on the island recall a legend about the last of the ancient elves, who they hope will awaken sleeping for a thousand years to help them overcome hardship. Dream big, I guess.

Overly epic plotline aside, gameplay revolves around scanning a scene and finding a number of specific items hidden in the picture. Just like you’ve always done in these games, which my mother was a huge fan of on the Nintendo DS, with titles like Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville in her collection. Sometimes they will list the items by name, sometimes they are silhouettes, and sometimes you have to search the scene at night, which means your point of view is limited by darkness. Each scenario is timed, and if you finish finding everything fast enough, you’ll gain stars (three, two, or one), which feed into upgrading that specific level, allowing you to find more ingredients upon completion. Ingredients are used to complete other quests and help deal with different races without paying gold coins.

Shockingly, I’m barely paying attention to the plot, only interested in which locations I’m supposed to analyze for the right items. Since you have to deal with a limited amount of attempts, I’m finding myself min-maxing every choice to ensure I’m spending those energy points wisely. Occasionally you’ll unlock a treasure chest, but to open it you need to do a Professor Layton-esque mini-game, like hitting all beams of light in a certain order or connecting colored lines without crossing over each other. I am curious to know if there are boss-like battles down the road, and if they are anything more than gathering a bunch of items to clear the path.

Besides the fact that you can’t simply play this to your heart’s content due to a stupid energy meter, there’s a few other issues in Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure that bring the fun down several notches. First, no matter how many times I select “Click to continue,” the game still wants to force its intro movie upon me, which features an old elf speaking like you might suspect an old elf would speak; thankfully, it’s skippable, but the game should remember that I’ve already seen it. I think having a time limit, and a short one at that, negatively affects my enjoyment, forcing me to often click like a madman in hope of nabbing that last item that can’t possibly be found unless I had all the hours in the world to scan every pixel from left to right. Lastly, I’ve popped a bunch of in-game Achievements, but after nearly two hours with the game, not a single one on Steam has unlocked. Sure, that’s a small quibble, but I need my digital rewards, and I’m not sure if the whole thing is borked.

Similar to Taptiles and Microsoft Jackpot, Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure is a game I will probably check in on daily for another week or two, especially to get those daily rewards, and then walk away from entirely once I feel sated. I don’t care whether the elves make it off this island and are safe and happy and making future elf babies to rule the kingdom. I only care about finding the paw print, butterfly net, and shoe quick enough to get three stars and unlock more loot to finish that quest for what’s-his-name faster. Call me a monster, or call me casual. This is the way it is.

Absent’s time travel trip is a bit rough around the edges

Surprisingly, or maybe it’s not surprising at all because we now live in an era when you can’t look left or right without something free being dangled before your hazy, consume hungry-limned eyes, there are quite a number of free adventure games on Steam to try out. I’ve already played The Old Tree, but there’s also Emily is Away, Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (that’s one game name, by the way, starting at the doctor part, which I ended up playing in the time it took me to finish this post, whoops), Only If, and Missing Translation to look forward to in my ever-growing pipeline of even free things I don’t have time to play right now. Le sigh.

For the moment, I’m giving Absent from FNGames a go. I saw some posts about it over at the Adventure Game Studios forums, which I like to frequent now and then to see what people are working on and what’s out in the wild, especially since many of those titles don’t get a ton of coverage from the major websites. It was originally released in 2013, but made its cost-effective debut on Steam in 2015. Other than that, I went into it fairly blind, other than obviously seeing a screenshot or two to confirm it was, in fact, a point-and-click adventure game of the traditional sense.

Absent stars the determined if somewhat aloof Murray Schull, a young man attending college and who walks as if he has a permanent wedgie that he is internally debating on picking in public. One day, his best friend Steve’s girlfriend, Crystal, disappears, an event that spirals out of control and puts Murray on a path of danger, disillusionment, and death. Also, time travel, but that really only comes into play towards the very end. Oh, and Murray is haunted by visions of both the past and future, which factor into the puzzles and his decisions on what to do next to find answers as to Crystal’s disappearance.

To say I was taken aback by Absent is being kind. This game really surprised me, for good and for bad. First, a lot of adventure games I snag from the AGS forums are short, tiny little experiences. Snippets of an idea, a few screens to explore. Like A Landlord’s Dream. Absent features plenty of unique animations, is fully voice acted from beginning to end, and took me over six hours to see its credits roll due to the amount of story, puzzles, and, this is not a plus, backtracking involved. Sure, sure. Visually, it is not going to win any awards or even get my eyes to dilate with pleasure, but the graphics take a backseat for an admittedly overambitious story and dense amount of content to poke at.

Let me get more specific here, before I bring up the parts of Absent I found extremely lackluster, as there are many. Though the story is too big for its britches, I give FNGames credit for going big or going home. Since time travel is the deus ex machina to solve everything come the end events, there had to be some careful planning into setting it for that outcome, and I can appreciate details like how the first Reaper was made and that crack behind the canteen appeared. There’s a good amount of dialogue options to go through with many of the NPCs, as well as numerous unique responses for trying items on items that clearly won’t work with it. Showing everyone Murray’s homework assignment was amusing. Lastly, I dig the look of the ghastly, otherworldly Reapers, even if I don’t fully understand their motives.

Alas, Absent is fairly rough around the edges. Also in its middle area. From a technical stance, sometimes the cursor icon would automatically change to “use” when you hovered over a door or exit to a new area, and sometimes it wouldn’t. The inconsistency varied from screen to screen. There were plenty of times I also didn’t want the icon to change, forcing me to have to left click several times back to my preferred option. A few screens, like in front of the college and the swamp, are a wee bit larger than what you can actually see, so you are constantly changing to the “walk” icon to move a foot to the right or left and find the exit. It’s annoying. More times than not, the subtitles and voice-over work do not match up, and there were a number of typos spotted along the way, which, as an editor, I simply can’t not see.

One of my biggest critiques of Absent revolves around logic. Almost immediately, characters are shown to jump to the wildest conclusions without any rationalizing. For example, within minutes of learning that his girlfriend is missing, Steve is absolutely convinced that she was murdered by so-and-so and will hear no other arguments. Missing equals murdered in this world, and then once he finds out that Crystal was cheating on him, he no longer mourns for her. Like, not even a little bit, claiming she got her just desserts. I think at this point in the timeline, it’s been one day since she vanished. Granted, once the speculative fiction elements really start taking shape, a lot of logic-based decisions can be tossed out the window, but for the early part of Absent, I was hoping to see some more believable reactions out of the cast, especially Murray, who seems to simply be a dude we use to click around on things and cause events to happen. I’m still not sure why he’s the main character we play as.

Lastly, in terms of diversity, Absent is absent. This is a world of white people and only white people. Considering the size of the cast, it is a shame to see it so one-sided, and hopefully this is something that can be addressed in the forthcoming Absent II. I mean, it takes place at a college, for goodness sake, where all shapes, sizes, and color of people from everywhere in the world come together to learn, make mistakes, and learn some more. At least the female characters are voiced by women and not men pitching their voices up.

Still, all that said, I’d recommend checking Absent out. You might not be impressed with the story and safe way it wraps everything up, nor the difficulty of the majority of puzzles, which mostly require item on item interaction save for one involving a sliding ladder, but there’s still something interesting going on here, especially from a small team. Plus, if you like British accents, this game has them and then some. I personally think Steve sounds like Jim Sterling, but that’s just me. Maybe every angry British man does.

2016 Game Review Haiku, #4 – Absent

A girl vanishes
This mystery must be solved
Time travel will help

–

Here we go again. Another year of me attempting to produce quality Japanese poetry about the videogames I complete in three syllable-based phases of 5, 7, and 5. I hope you never tire of this because, as far as I can see into the murky darkness–and leap year–that is 2016, I’ll never tire of it either. Perhaps this’ll be the year I finally cross the one hundred mark. Buckle up–it’s sure to be a bumpy ride. Yoi ryokō o.

RIDICULOUS MARATHON HAS CANDY, TOFFEE, SWEETS, AND CONFETTI

If you have an eye for detail or are anal about words being in all capital letters when perhaps they have no reason to be, you might be wondering why this blog post about Ridiculous Marathon has such style elements enforced in its title. I assure you this is not a clickbait attempt or new thing for Grinding Down in 2016. I assure you. This stems from looking up further details about the game on Microsoft’s website and discovering that the only text provided before the “read more” link is as follows:

GET READY TO RUN A CRAZY MARATHON FILLED WITH CANDY, TOFFEE, SWEETS AND CONFETTI

Er, yeah. Settle down, copy writer. Also, even after playing Ridiculous Marathon for a bit, I can’t agree that the game is filled with these items. You’ll see a piece of candy every few feet, but only until you complete the Daily Challenge, and then you’ll never see another sliver of candy again until the next day. As for the toffee and sweets–no idea where they are. Confetti appears from time to time as you morph into a powered-up piñata, but this isn’t a game about hitting the crap out of a stuffed container often made of papier-mâché. It’s an endless runner, through and through.

I’ll say with certainty that Ridiculous Marathon is an easier and more forgiving endless runner than Temple Run 2 and Lara Croft: Relic Run–put together. There are fewer turns and obstacles to avoid, with a larger focus on jumping over construction signs and avoiding trucks carrying long wooden logs. Your move set includes jumping, moving left to right, and sliding–that’s kind of it. There’s no turning corners or running along walls to not fall in pits, but you can double tap the screen to turn into an invincible piñata that will, I believe, save you from one crash. I’ve gotten pretty far without much outside help, hitting around 150,000 points in score. With the help of some revive diamonds, I expect to hit 500,000 points rather easily.

Naturally, with this being a free-to-play endless runner, there’s microtransactions available that could help each of your runs be more successful, but only if you plop down some cash. So far, I’ve ignored all of those options and am doing just fine. You can buy single use power-ups with the gold you collect as you move through the Amazon rainforest, as well as upgrade power-ups or purchase costumes for your characters, though those are simply cosmetic in nature. There are ads, but they are easy to dismiss, though I don’t understand why I have to sign in with my Microsoft account every single time I load it up to play; other mobile games don’t ask me to do this.

There are two systems at work to keep one coming back to Ridiculous Marathon, and they are the Daily and Weekly Challenges. The Daily Challenge tasks you with collecting a number of candy as you run, which is easy enough because, just like with all the game’s power-ups, you can spot them from a distance as a beam of light shoots up and out of them. Do this for five days in a row, and you’ll unlock a mystery box, which gave me some free piñata power-ups. The Weekly Challenge wants you to collect golden palm trees, and the one I’m on is for finding 21, of which I’ve gotten nine. They show up a whole lot less, so we’ll see if I get any reward by the end of the countdown, which stands at 34 hours left. Hmm.

In the end, Ridiculous Marathon is fine. It’s not as ridiculous as one might think, nor as tiring as running an actual marathon. Well, I actually can’t speak officially on that last part. Perhaps this is a runner better suited for younger gamers or those just getting into the genre. Anyways, I expect to play it for another week or two until I’ve wrung every ounce of fun from it, and by fun I naturally mean Achievements.

Campfire’s scary ghost story is told by matching four

I’ve gone camping a few times, when I was younger, but never in the stereotypical manner depicted on television or in movies. You know, when everyone gathers round a roaring flame in one big circle, roasting marshmallows on sticks and whispering the beginnings of stories whose only purpose is to ensure you have even more difficulty falling asleep on the ground in a sleeping bag possibly crawling with critters. Instead, I slept in a cabin and had lights out by like nine p.m. or it was with my father, and we’d eat hot dogs and beans and then I’d play my guitar in the murky darkness of the woods before the sound of its strings–the guitar’s, not the wood’s–would quickly freak me out. Yup, I’m kind of a big scaredy-cat.

Campfire was created by Adam Hartling (XenosNS) and Chris Last-Name-Not Known (rogueNoodle) for the Halifax Game Collective back in February 2015, which sported the theme “ghost stories,” and the player weaves these spooky tales by matching four icons on a grid and increasing the meter on the bottom of the screen. Seems easy enough. If you don’t match four similar-looking monsters, the meter will deplete and those around the campfire will grow bored, even sleepy. Basically, like a multiplier, you’ll want to keep matching four after four after four to ensure all are properly frightened from start to finish.

Honestly, it’s a bare bones match four puzzle game, but I’m in love with its design and aesthetic. The crackling campfire, the sounds the monsters make when matched, and the cute, children’s book-esque illustrations are a sight to behold. They remind me of someone‘s artwork that I look at weekly, though the name refuses to hop off the tip of my tongue. Unfortunately, you don’t really get to view what is going on with the campfire and kids as you match, since your focus and eyes are looked into the grid, always searching for the next set to clear. Okay, I went back to see, and all that happens is the main bear thingy, the one with the darker fur, just speaks a speech balloon featuring the monster you matched. Be cool if the monsters changed expressions as they grew more scared or bored.

I’ve not played anything else from rogueNoodle, but looking through his games list gets me excited to try out a few others. The same can be said about Adam Hartling. Gah, too many cool-looking indie experiences to experience, and not enough time in this universe. Curse you, Warp Door, for revealing yourself to me today. Curse you, and also thank you.

Anyways, if you enjoy matching adorable vampire bats and often listen to a soothing soundtrack that is burning wood on loop, give Campfire a try–in your browser, mind you–right over this way.

Patience you must have, my young Star Wars: Commander

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think some new Star Wars talkie comes out this week in theaters. The Force Awakens or something like that. Personally, I’m excited for it, as I love all things space opera, but am going to hold back and wait until the crowds and madness fade, though hopefully I can remain relatively spoiler-free during those dark, lonely days. Perhaps I’ll fill that void with my massive collection of Star Wars-related videogames, of which I actually don’t have many. There’s Star Wars: Tiny Death Star on my phone, which is stellar, but mostly an elevator simulator, LEGO Star Wars, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which I’ve played the opening tutorial bits twice and never gone any further than that.

Well, let’s see what Star Wars: Commander is all about. It’s from Disney Interactive and available on a bunch of different devices. For this impressions piece, I’m hanging out with my boys Han Solo and Chewbacca on my ASUS laptop that now rocks Windows 10. In hindsight, this is not the best decision I’ve ever made, and I’ll get to why in just a bit. It’s a free-to-play strategy game in the slight veins of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Age of Empires, a genre I’ve had some reservations over for years, but you’ll notice I didn’t say “real-time” there, as you’ll do a whole lot more waiting around if you wanted to play it just like those games.

Here’s the gist, story-wise. In Star Wars: Commander, you must first to decide to fight for the Rebellion or Empire, train your troops, build up a bunch of units and vehicles, defend your base, and complete story-tinted missions. As you do this, you’ll level up your heroes and vehicles, battle on different worlds, and team up with friends to take on larger, more difficult scenarios. For what it’s worth, I went with the good guys, which most certainly means I’m on Darth Vader’s naughty list this year for Christmas. I can’t help rooting for the good-natured guys and girls in this universe that don’t want to see entire planets vaporized. I’ve also killed a bunch of womp rats on Tatooine already.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, which is from around an hour or so with the game, Star Wars: Commander is not great. It might be good, but probably falls more around the middling category. It holds your hand for far too long in the beginning, is too corny with its ads for rating the app and buying extra goodies with hard-earned cash, and doesn’t seem all that engaging from the get-go. This is certainly not helped by the fact that I’m playing it on a laptop, when it is clearly better suited for mobile, where one can easily check in on their base, tap the things that need tapping, and close out to get back to dreary life tasks, like blocking people on Facebook you know are foaming at the mouth to reveal Mark Hamill’s role in Episode VII.

Immediately after the game stopped holding my hand and actually allowed me to click around and spend coins/ore as I pleased, I began to explore the user interface. There’s a bunch of icons, and one should ideally know what each does before getting into the thick of things. The second icon I clicked on, which brought up a menu for purchasing resources with my precious diamond currency, nearly froze the game. I say nearly because I could continue to click the “back” and “X” buttons, but they didn’t do anything. I didn’t try actually buying any resources, though the cynical side of me suspects those buttons would have worked just fine. Eventually, I just tabbed out and shut the whole thing down, but I’m forever tainted by this experience, afraid to even open up the settings menu.

I’ll probably check in on Star Wars: Commander a few more times this week, though I don’t expect to stick with it. I was surprised by just how little you can actually do while building your base and prepping for the next mission, and so maybe I need to give Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a third chance and start exploring the galaxy, no cooldown timer needed. Also, if you’re checking out Star Wars: The Force Awakens this week, enjoy–but keep the details to yourself. Sincerely, everyone not seeing it immediately.