Free Play: Chalk

Very Challenging.  You're a floating Asian person connecting dots and stuff.

Replay value low.  Fun, but I'd rather REALLY draw lines on actual paper.

Game play driven  If there's a story, I don't care about it.  My memory is full.

Presentation good.  Yep.  Confusing at first because I never read rules.

Controls easy.  Feel suitable.  Basic human computer/hand movements.

Special features none.  I wish it could make me a sandwich.

I'd change the size of that big monster thing at the end.  It could scare timid people.

I give it 6 out of 10 Rosie O'Donnell toenails.

The Mystery of The Four Mysterious Pictures

The Center For Unspectacular Research.  Dover, Delaware.  March 16, 2:13-ish P.M.  

Dr. Osis Flapp, 79, long-red mullet, Sagittarius, mouth breather, has been working all week in his basement office on a project of misguided attention and forgotten importance.  Oldies 107.3 FM blasting in his headphones.  He hardly notices Gurton, his midget assistant, approach with dagger drawn.  Years of mental abuse and ear thwapping have bubbled over to this moment.  Flapp sneezes his first sneeze since childhood at the exact same moment that the dagger plunges into his left buttock.  Like a hot knife into peach ice cream.  Buried up to the handle.  He makes eye contact with his attacker briefly.  Smiles an unsteady smile.  Blood streams from his mouth for some unrelated  health reason.  He staggers, knocking over some dumb pencil holder he got from his son-in-law for Christmas in 1997, and flops face first to the floor.  Gurton flees through The Doors of Equal Unimportance:    

Alarms go off.  People stare at the midget in the blood-stained labcoat.  Children laugh and point.  Adults encourage their children to laugh and point with more intensity.  A police car squeals to a stop, pinning Gurton against a wall.  At chin level almost.  The policeman's eyeglasses are knocked off his head when he frantically exits the vehicle and forgets to remove his seatbelt.  He attempts to proceed with the apprehension of the mysterious bloody suspect, but with his blurred vision, he handcuffs himself to a newspaper stand.  Later, back at the station, he describes exactly what happened to the chief in a very detailed, time-consuming wood carving, pictured here:

Far, far away in religious Italy, the old bell washer in The Church of Santa Clammy, is summoned from far up inside the bell tower all the way down 504 steps to the old, rickety fax machine in the lobby.  It's beeping very timidly.  He puts another roll of paper on the spool and it starts printing out a message.  Very slowly.  He fixes a new pot of coffee, sweeps the steps, washes a bunch of dishes, makes chit chat with a priest about the best kind of bell washing soap - all while the fax prints.  Finally, near midnight, he uncurls the message and reads it. He thinks about it for a moment, then shows it to the camera.  It says "You missed a spot."  

(The preceding story was originally 6 pages long, but I discarded the superfluous description of what each character's breath smelled  like and the contents of their bowels)

(You're welcome)

Tense & Televised Video Game Excitement!

Try not to doze off.

Genre vs. Type

Genre versus type.  Type versus genre.  Which one is more important?  Well, who is it important TO is important.  To the general public, it doesn't matter.  Stores can't keep Wii systems on their shelves because it's a brand new type of game all together.  Humans enjoy new things.  If the blobs on "The View" talk about it or Jay Leno made a joke about it - you simply must have one.  No.  You need two.  One for upstairs and downstairs.  NO.  Wait.  You need one in the stairwell, so get three.  Yes, you will buy three.

The genres are just sorta lumped together in basic categories like "violent", "sports", "kids", and "adventure" to make selling them easier.  Old records have "File under Rock n' Roll" labels at the top so folks knew what section to put them.  Those were the days when they sold records in grocery stores. The 60-something-year-old shelf stocker had no idea what section to put the new Peanut Conspiracy record in.  Folk?  Jazz?  The trash can?  Looks like a bunch of girls if you ask me.  Actually sir, one member IS a girl.  Oh.  Well, it needs to have a label that says that, too.  Okay, sir.  We'll make labels that say "One Member is a Girl" and, we'll say that YOU were responsible for bringing it to our attention.  We'll have a smaller label on the album that says just that.  What's your full name?  Well, uh....okay, I guess.  It's...Harold, H-A-R-O-L-D, Jenkins, J-E-N-K-I-N-S.  Allright.  Better head off to the label printers. Thank you,sir.

For players, genre is "What I play and don't try to tell me not to, because this is what I always play and I'm pretty damn good, so be quiet so I can get back to shooting these people".  Sure, they'll play Guitar Hero at Thanksgiving with the little kiddies, but they're rather be shooting stuff.  The type of the game player's chosen game is usually something they've come to love and rely on as well.  Don't mess with it.  How the game is seen.  Where the camera is.  Who, if anyone, are you playing against or with.  What is the goal of the game.  Is there a goal.  Is it dumb or serious.  Rarely, does a game company change the formula to a successful game.  There will be angry emails.  Eighteen billion of 'em.  Some with mild profanity.   

Like music lovers, some game players probably enjoy experimenting with different genres and types all the time.  But then again, you're not walking around inside the songs in your MP3 player, shooting bass drums with bazookas and punching the lead singer repeatedly in the gut.  Whoa.  Another cool idea for a game.  Gotta go.

HIGH CONCEPT: Document

Jon, Ian, Tyler, Jeff


Palling ‘Round with God is a 4 player epic adventure of three heroes who are looking for the all-powerful, radiating orb of infinite shenanigan wisdom…which is covered up by gold coins and $20 bills in a steamer trunk hidden somewhere in the world.  The one lucky buck that gets to play God must defend the treasure at all costs.  Sadly, it’s all that’s left worth saving.  The housing market’s crap nowadays.  Television hasn’t been good since 1959.  And your son hates you.  He had the nerve to stay in bed all day on his birthday last year just to spite you and your festive holiday party plans.  Screw ‘em.  You’re the boss.  Your t-shirt says so.  You guide gloomy buffer angels, dirty devil demon crawlers, and a mega-giant of massive meanness to stop a trio of bumbling schmucks from getting your stash.  The three searchers are lost in a vague world.  Slowly proceeding over an empty landscape where untold riches (actually just about $8,020.17) or fierce tooth-to-toe battles await just around the corner.  Movements are direct and the mission is clear.  Steal God’s thunder fund.  

Memory and luck will reward the patient, but be careful of your teammates in this quest.  They can choose to revive a fallen comrade as they lay bruised and confused on the path ahead or they can take an extra long step over the carnage, give a thumbs up sign, smile, and keep on looking for that confounded treasure box thing.  And always remember, far, far above - God’s watching it all.  Reveling in the squabbles and near misses with the loot.  One of the heroes walks mere centimeters away from the loot?  Should God have said anything?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  It’s up to God.  But remember, as the result of an old football injury, he can’t move the heavy treasure after initially putting it down.  It’s there forever.  And once it’s discovered - the great big gig’s up.  It’s been fun palling ‘round with you, God, but I’ve got to go!  (fade-up distant angry thunder, wait for electricity to go ou-------  -

HIGH CONCEPT: Video Pitch

Yowza.  We spent four weeks in pre-production on this.  Getting locations and realistic looking wigs wasn't as easy as we imagined.  Six scripts were tossed before we finally settled on this one, and then, Ian says he has a problem with sitting in a spinning office chair on a moving elevator.  Script number seven was the one we went with.  It took about two months to film the entire thing.  The Director of Photography quit in the middle of week five and we ended up replacing him with one of the catering guys.  Three weeks for editing and special effects stuff followed immediately after that, and so, it's finally, all...completely finished...now.

Free Play: Abstractica

After looking at a bunch of shootin' n' tootin' games available for download at 1up,com, I settled on a totally different, oddball kind of game in the puzzle section.  It's called "Abstractica" and they described it as "just a series of deceptively simple-looking brainteasers designed to test how quickly your head hurts when playing it." Perfect.  I'll be able to beat this sucker in no time.  Hell, I'll try it with one eye closed.

Simple download.  No grinding noise from inside my laptop.  Yep.

Title screen.  Here we go.

...ok?  Hell, I was BORN OK!  Let's Go!

Over the next 42 or so minutes, I got through JUST 11 of the brain teasers.  Most of them are simple, black words or shapes on a white background.  All you gotta do is type a word or a few words and click a "submit" button.  It's the pure definition of "no frills".  There is no story.  And, to some, there might be no point.  Not for me.  I want to know how and why my tiny mind works in certain ways.  Some took me 1.3 seconds to figure out.  Those felt good.  You hear a deep church bell "DONG" each time you get one right.  I love that sound.  If you're wrong...nothing happens.  Maybe there's a way to finagle it, but I wish I didn't have to keep using the mouse to just move the cursor from the "word entry field" to the "submit" button over and over and over each time.  And, how about a hint after 50 good guesses?  

For some of the tough ones, I just stared at the screen hoping something would just pop out at me.  It can't be impossible.  The game maker wouldn't have made it impossible to get past the 5th or 6th one.  Usually, typing the most obvious thing IS the solution.  BUT, it's not always the obvious way of saying what's so obvious about what you're looking at.  Follow me?  At some point,  I just started typing funny things like "game over" and "for the love of god please just tell me the answer to this one". Nothing. You know the answer is right there on the screen, but it's impossible to figure out.  What am I not seeing?  Why am I not getting this?  Stare and think for a few minutes........oh, yeah......how....about.....this (type, type, type, submit)...DONG!

I got stuck on one and turned off the computer for the morning (yep, I'd been playing it in the deep, dark dead of night - no music, no t.v. - just me looking at brain teasers, typing stuff, and muttering profanities real low).  The next night, I wanted to see how Anna, my wife, did.  Maybe she would see the twelfth teaser and the solution would be clear to her.

It was a lot of fun knowing the answers while she struggled to solve the first ones.  For a lot of them, the very first thing that popped into her head was the same thing that I thought of first.  See, great minds DO think alike!

She did help me find the answer to #12, but then we both got stuck on the next one.  I could feel all the smart juice oozing from my brain, so I had to stop.  There are ways of finding out all the answers on the webernet, but I'd rather get 'em on my own (I did see that somebody in some chat room was asking about #46, so that made us feel like big ol' dummies).

I'll probably return to the frustrating mental fun house of horrors that is "Abstractica" one day.  One day in the far, far future.  If an answer I didn't try entering for #13 pops into my head while I'm scrubbing grout stains - I'll drop what I'm doing and type it in.  Maybe I'll get that elusive "DONG".

 Final rating.............7 out of 10 monkey sneezes.

(download it here and give it a try - if you get all of them and beat the game in 6 minutes - don't tell me...ever)