StumbleUpon Find: Dice Wars
Posted on February 19, 2007
I was getting worried about finding a game for today. But StumbleUpon is a wonderful thing, and it led me to Dice Wars, a game that is basically the card game War, except with dice. Yeah, so that doesn’t sound like much fun, since War is basically a game of luck. But Dice Wars is so much cooler than that.
You start off as color and you have a portion of the board. Your goal: hostile take-over of all of the countries occupied by other colors. How do you do it? Roll against them, of course. You have an upper hand if you have more dice than the your rivals.
Filed Under Flash Games, Free | 1 Comment
Random Linkage
Posted on February 18, 2007
- That College Kid has a post on open-source gaming.
- Line Rider, the Flash toy that everyone’s heard about (except for me, apparently).
- Travis will attempt to take a game from idea to finished product by the end of the year.
- There’s a list of Free Online Games. It’s a really, really big list.
- This is another “toy” that has you tinkering with attractors.
- This one is like a kaleidoscope, but better.
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Trial Review: Teddy Tavern
Posted on February 16, 2007
Teddy Tavern: A Culinary Adventure was recently released on PlayFirst. I’m not sure of its availability on other sites that feature game downloads, so you should check into that. So, now for the beginning of the actual review on the one hour I was allowed to play during the trial period.
Teddy Tavern (don’t you just love cutesy alliteration) is about as cute as the title makes it out to be: sickenly so. The main character is a teddy bear aspiring to become a great chef (sadly, he works as a short order cook in a popular teddy hangout). All of the customers are also stuffed animals come to life. Well, more specifically, teddy bears.
In order for your teddy to get out of the drudgery of his short order cooking job, he needs to earn medals from restaurants around the world! Thus, each stage is in a different country with different dishes that the teddy bear must serve. While this is starting to sound an awful lot like the set-up for games like Diner Dash, Believe in Santa, and Cake Mania, the gameplay is original enough to merit this title some recognition.
Each level is set up in the same way. For the ones that I’ve played, there are three ingredients on the bottom of the screen with which the teddy can make different dishes. Usually, dishes are made with two of the three ingredients. For example, hamburgers were made with bread and beef. Then you need to send the food up into the air so the appropriate customer will catch it. Yes, you effectively play with your food by flying it in the air. Then you have to clean up after your messy customers by throwing sponges at dirty tables. No kidding!
Although this game is satisfying solely due to the fact that it goes against all conventional wisdom: don’t play with your food, it also has some great game play mechanics. It’s quite simple: everything, from mixing ingredients to throwing food to your customers (I guess “bounce” would be a better term) is done with the mouse.
The simple game play is offset by the frenetic pace that begins quite early in the game. Soon, I had to keep track of ordering teddies, angry teddies, and dirty tables. It is actually harder than it sounds, since much of what you need to do is on the bottom of the screen, and much of what the teddies are demanding that you do are on the top of the screen.
I thoroughly enjoyed Teddy Tavern, but I don’t feel like I absolutely need to buy the full version to fulfill myself. It’s a great download on the trial run, and enjoyable while it lasts. The cute factor may turn off some guys, though.
Filed Under Happy Rating, Not Free, Downloads | 3 Comments
