Are Either of You Paleontologists? I'm In Desperate Need of a Paleontologist.

And now... a moment of silence... in remembrance of Dave's first Facebook Scrabble loss.

[insert silence here]

Thank you all for respecting the gravity of the moment...

Greetings! It is I, Dave the Odd, back for another round of nonsense and literary mayhem. Yesterday's post was a little out there, thank you for your patience and understanding as I experiment. Just trying to keep it fresh. And weird.

I lost to Cathy O. at Facebook Scrabble today. No excuses; she outplayed me on almost every hand. Props to Cathy. My "undefeated streak" has now been downgraded to merely a "winning streak" of 19 games, which is not bad. Ahh... I can feel my character being built up as we speak! It feels kinda tingly, actually. Though that might be the energy drink talking...

In other game-related news, I downloaded a bunch of indie game demos off of Steam to fart around with. There are a couple little gems... I'm contemplating pulling the trigger and paying for the full game on a few, since they're pretty dirt cheap. Which is good, because at the moment, my bank account is pretty meager... let's just say if I were to sit inside my bank account with a boom box, I'd get a pretty nice "auditorium" sound in there...

Anyway, I played demos of the following indie games.

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And Yet It Moves:

Very cool game, awesome ambient sound effects and music. Looks awesome at highest res on my big monitor. Cool game dynamics, which you can see from the video. A tap of the direction key will rotate and reorient the entire game world - wall becomes floor, that sort of thing. Very fun. The graphics make it seem like the game world is made out of torn pieces of paper.

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Cogs:

I've always been a sucker for sliding tile puzzles, as well as the "pipeline" type games that have you lay out sections of pipe to complete a circuit before time runs out, that sort of thing. Well, Cogs combines both of those types of games into one beautiful, frustratingly fun game. The demo features a more refined game than the version on display in that video above, but that gives you the basic idea.

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Trine:

I've never been much for side scrollers (or "platformers" if you prefer), but this one is terrific. In all my years, I've never played a game like this, that allows you to switch so easily between three completely different types of characters. It is a boatload of fun, the controls are intuitive and rock-solid, and it really is an exceptionally beautiful game.

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World of Goo:

This game has been out for several months now, and I've been tempted to buy it based on review alone. But I decided a demo play-through was in order, so I gave it a go (or rather, gave it a goo). I'm glad I did. The art in this game is every bit as bizarre and wonderful as I'd read, and the music completes the experience. You use little balls of living goo to gain access to a hard-to-reach pipe, saving as many as you can, a la Lemmings. And like Lemmings, each different color goo ball has different characteristics. Anyway, fun fun fun.

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If you have Steam installed on your computer, I recommend grabbing these demos. You can get the demos other ways, but Steam is the most convenient. The demos are all free, they don't require much space, or much of a time commitment - you can play around for a few minutes, then duck out easily if you'd like. They all look and sound beautiful, you don't need a killer rig to run them, and they are easy both to understand and to play.

I tried a couple others, but they aren't worth spotlighting here.

Man, it's all about games today, isn't it!

I ordered two more games (lol) from Amazon today, effectively killing off the remaining balance of birthday money sitting in my account over there. I ordered Borderlands (as I threatened to a few days ago), and I also ordered Scribblenauts for the DS. In fact, here, check out this video of Scribblenauts...

An open-ended, puzzle-based game. As you can see from the video, the possibilities are near limitless. Write any object, it will appear in the game, and you can use it. Can't wait to get my grubby little paws on this one. I'll have to wait, of course - for both. Scribblenauts doesn't come out until mid September, and Borderlands will release late October. Good thing I've got a zillion other games to occupy myself with...

Of course, it's not all fun and games. I'm working on the October Piranha newsletter files today, as well as some more stuff for both Rug Care Central and Wagnervana. Plus more skateboard graphic wallpapers are under construction as well.

In any case, I guess that's that for tonight. Kind of all over the place this week. Like my brain, I suppose...

Until tomorrow, remember, "defcon" indicates our current defense condition. It should read "Defcon 5", which means "peace." It's still on 4 because of that little stunt you pulled.