Through a World of Warcraft discussion message board, I heard of a research study being conducted by West Virginia University on the relationships between videogame players and their avatars. In a "what the hell" mood, I responded to the survey with a story about one of my WoW characters. I thought the story was minor, but to…
About a year ago, I joked that from now on, all console games that I played must have a colon in their name, because the ones I played with a colon were more fun. Then I played God of War, which I enjoyed despite its lack of a colon. Now I come to NieR: Automata. I purchased…
I'm a fan of Mystic Vale. It's a deck-crafting game. Unlike a deck-building game, in which you add cards to a starting deck as you play the game, in a deck-crafting game you modify the cards themselves. In Mystic Vale this is done by inserting mostly-transparent cards into the plastic sleeves of the cards of your deck.…
I enjoyed the first game in this series, Batman: The Telltale Series. It had a different take on the standard tale of Bruce Wayne as he transitions into his role of the Batman. It also set the stakes for a different origin of the classic Batman villains, especially the Joker. Batman: The Enemy Within continues the story…
I played EXIT: Abandoned Cabin with a group of friends yesterday. I warned them of my experiences that I described in my last few blog posts, but they were willing to accept the challenge. We finished in one hour five minutes and used no hint cards, which gave us a final score of nine stars. It's the…
Forgotten Island was a different experience than my last EXIT game. I solved it in three minutes. Let me back up a second before I explain that: After my previous blog post, the responses of my friends on Facebook suggested that they too were no longer enthusiastic about playing any more EXIT games. I had spare time…
I'm stuck at home for a while, so I decided to tackle an EXIT game solo: Polar Station. It took me 3 hours and 15 minutes, and I used 6 hint cards, which gave me a score of two stars. This is the lowest score I've seen in any EXIT game I've played so far. Even though…
This is a follow-up to my previous post. Last night I played EXIT: The Forbidden Castle with a different group of friends than the ones from last week's puzzle game. Notes: The game seriously handed us our butts. It took us two hours and forty minutes to solve it. We used several hint cards, though only three…
Please don't buy any of the Thames & Kosmos EXIT games... so I can play them with you! I purchased my first EXIT game because the series had won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award in 2017. These are "escape room" games: Your character is trapped, and can only escape by solving a…
It just occurred to me: In the past year, among my Wiccan friends, a couple moved to North Carolina, another friend moved to South Carolina, another is moving to Texas. Among my gaming friends, one has moved to Philadelphia. Another is moving to Seattle. A couple are moving to Minnesota. It's my deodorant, isn't it?