Picross

Picross (a.k.a. Nonogram) are Japanese logic puzzles where a picture is revealed by filling out spots in a grid using numbers on the columns/rows.  For example, if there is a 1 1 1 on the side, then there will be three individual spots filled out with at least one empty spot between each one.  Usually Picross puzzles come in either 5x5, 10x10, or 15x15 configurations.  It also helps to have grown up with pixel art to try to determine what the picture actually is (especially on the 5x5 ones).

I'm pretty addicted to these puzzles types (if Sudoku made pictures when complete, I'd probably be equally addicted to that) and have played through/bought pretty much every instance of it I've seen.  Online versions like Armor Picross and Armor Picross 2, DS versions like Picross DS and Picross 3D, 3DS versions like Picross e, Picross e2, and soon Picross e3 (just came out yesterday), and Kindle Fire versions like the Flippix Art series, CrossMe Color, and Picranium Picross (of course I always wait for those to show up as Amazon's free app of the day).

If you play one Picross game, generally you play them all (unless it's a color version since that changes how the puzzles/number system actually work).  There are minor differences in how the input works.  For example, are mistakes pointed out immediately (usually with a time penalty or a limited number of allowed mistakes) or can you build the remainder of the puzzle based off of a mistake?  Can you zoom into the 15x15 grid or do you have to be a little too accurate?  When you're done, do they turn the pixel pictures into a real picture or color it so it's easier to see what they are saying it is?  If you have never played a Picross game, I'd start with one of the free online ones to see what you think about it.  The Armor Picross series is very well done, so I'd start there.  Enjoy and don't spend too much of your day on it!

Books I Grew Up On: Two Minute Mysteries

Ever since starting this whole Blank I Grew Up On series, I've been struggling to remember the names of the books I read as a kid.  Thanks to Monday's post, I now remember one set of books, the Two Minute Mysteries series of books.  This was a series of books containing a whole slew of 2-3 page mysteries that was more an exercise in reading comprehension and critical thinking than a story with a plot.

Since each mystery is so short, there really wasn't much time to set things up or have a denouement of any sort for each of the stories.  It was mostly just a focus on that fun crucial part of mysteries where the detective catches someone making a mistake.  At the end of each story, the book would pose a question like, "How did the detective know that person was the killer?" with an upside answer explaining the subtle mistakes.  A lot of times the person mentioned something about the crime that the detective never told them (so they weren't supposed to know it).

I think this series was a good training tool for even deeper mystery solving and has prepared me well for the Phoenix Wright series.  Now I know to scrutinize pronoun use and crime timelines among other things.  The series has three books in all, but looking on Amazon, only the first one is still in print (and the others must be in huge demand since the new price is $150-200!).  Fortunately, if you read one, the others are pretty just more of the same.  If you're into mysteries, I'd give the main one a look since it's only $5.

Review: Whodunnit?

The summer is a strange period where there are more people with free time, but significantly lacking quality new media.  Movies seem to know how to take advantage of this, but for some reason, there's an incredible lull in new games and new television and generally what is released is pretty terrible (with a few notable exceptions).  The summer seems to be a good time for TV producers to test out their unique reality TV show ideas like The Mole, Pirate Master, and this season's show, Whodunnit.

The premise of the show is one of those murder mystery parties/dinner theaters with a reality competition laid on top of it.  Each episode, there is a murder.  The contestants must try to piece together the murder.  Each one can choose to investigate the crime scene, the morgue, or the last known location the person was before the murder.  Since no contestant can be in all three places, some information must be shared, but the murderer is among them, so it's hard to tell who to trust.  Not to mention that they are all competing to be the final contestant "left alive".  After the investigation, everyone is given a riddle (a la Treasure Hunters), whose solution will lead to one more clue to how the murder occurred.  Then in a confessional, the contestants lay out their theory of how the crime took place and who the murderer is.  The two contestants whose theories were furthest from what happened become marked, with one of them becoming the murder victim for the next episode.

It's a really interesting premise for a show, but it definitely is pretty darn awkward.  The deaths are so blatantly fake that the contestants even remotely acting like any of it is real is really just insulting to their (and our) intelligence.  One contestant convulses on some wet ground as a cut, sparking wire lays on the ground kind of near her, but clearly not touching the water; one contestant on fire runs outside and jumps in a pool and somehow instantly drowns?; one contestant "conveniently" needs to go to the kitchen because their meal wasn't cooked like everyone else's and gets "attacked" by a mountain lion?  I'm pretty sure everyone knows how murder mysteries are supposed to be, so acting like it's real when there's no real effort made to make it appear real is just strange.  The confessionals where the contestants lay out their theory about the murder are just terribly acted (I'm sure the people had fun doing them, but over the top doesn't begin to describe it).

The other annoying part is that it's a lot like the Sherlock Holmes books, in that, as the viewer, there is no way for us to really play along or figure out anything ahead of time.  The riddles are more like scavenger hunts and all the contestants seem pretty stupid, so it honestly could be any of them, but despite that, there is some part of me that wants to keep watching.  Maybe part of me is hoping it'll turn out like the murder mystery episode of Saved by the Bell where there will be a twist of epic proportions part way through, but most likely this will just be a show that was much better in concept than in production.  Really, it's just making me more upset that Treasure Hunters never got another season...

Games I Grew Up On: The Neverhood

I've always been a big fan of claymation things.  I can probably thank Nickelodeon showing Aardman Animation's Creature Comforts.  So when I saw a claymation PC game growing up, I grabbed it immediately.  It helped that it was a point and click adventure game as was popular back in the day.  The game in question was called The Neverhood.

The game starts with Klaymen (the player's character) waking up in a locked room with no knowledge of what he's doing there.  There aren't very many other characters in the game and most of the story/world building is done by exploring and finding the giant wall of the world's creation story or various videotapes of Willie Trombone (awesome name) telling a bizarre fairy tale.  I can't say too much about this game since the whole point is to explore and discover everything on your own (and it's well worth it if you can), but I will say this: it has one of the funniest scenes in a video game ever and some of the best music of any video game ever.

I guess I should also point out that what brought this game to mind is that the creators have a Kickstarter going for another game in a similar vein called Armikrog that you should very much support because it'll be awesome and if you had never heard of The Neverhood, maybe you have heard about Earthworm Jim, which was made by the same people.

Review: The Cave

Created by Ron Gilbert, of Monkey Island fame, The Cave is an interesting game filled with dark humor and puzzles.  The game starts with the player selecting three characters from a set of seven, each with their own backstory and unique ability.  Once you have selected your three characters, you explore The Cave to try to resolve the character's moral choice.  The Cave is made up of a series of puzzle areas: four major ones you will go through no matter which characters you choose, a couple minor puzzles, and three puzzle areas based on which characters you have selected.  At the end of all this, you'll find yourself back at the beginning where you get to see how the character's story ends.  You actually get to decide if it's a good or bad ending, which I was not aware of until I had already beaten the game with all the characters once with the bad ending.

The whole game is beautifully narrated and almost every line is some joke or ominous foreshadowing (a lot like the story in the Deathspank series).  The puzzles themselves are interesting the first time you solve them.  Some require all three characters to work as a team, some require a character's special ability, some are just made easier with the special abilities.  The downside of the game is that if you want to see everything, you have to beat the game at least six times with the majority of the game not changing and (I still don't understand how this happens nowadays) with unskippable cinematic bits.  So the first time through The Cave is 100% fun and awesome.  The second time through is roughly 42.9% awesome since you have already done the four major shared puzzles before.  The third time through is 14.3% awesome since you are now only seeing one new area.  For the remaining three playthroughs, the only difference is the ending you get based on the choice you make at the very very end.  I've already mentioned how much I hate backtracking, so you can imagine that this doesn't go over so well with me.  On the plus side, it did allow me to watch Netflix on my laptop while playing the game because I didn't have to pay attention that much, so at least I was getting two things on my mental checklist done at once...if you're not a completionist and the game is on sale for like $10 or so, I would highly recommend this.  If you really like dark comedy and puzzles and don't mind a little backtracking, I would also recommend this.  If you enjoy doing speed runs and trying to cut down the length of a playthrough to as short a time as possible, this would be a lot of fun, too.  If none of those apply, I'd probably avoid it.

Games I Grew Up On: Adventures of Lolo

One of the earlier puzzle video games I played growing up was Adventures of Lolo for the NES.  Lolo's girlfriend, Lala, has been kidnapped by the evil King Egger (definitely a theme with NES games...) and Lolo must climb the 10 floors of the tower and defeat King Egger to save her.  Each room of the tower consists of a puzzle where Lolo must grab all the heart tokens without getting killed by Snakeys, Skulls, Almas, Medusas, Rockys, Leepers, Gols, or Don Medusas.  Some of these enemies kill Lolo with a touch, others merely block access to places.  Specific heart tokens will give Lolo the ability to shoot at enemies and encase them in eggs that he can safely push around (some enemies cannot be egged).  There are also tokens to make bridges over water (that Lolo can't cross otherwise) and hammers to remove a single obstacle per hammer.

Adventures of Lolo is still one of the few true action puzzle games I've played to date.  Portal and Portal 2 had moments here and there where timing was required, but not with enemies chasing you down (stupid Almas...).  Most other action games with "puzzles" are mostly just block puzzles where you need to put Crate A into Slot A and Box B into Slot B.  As a kid, I think I might have managed to get through maybe half of the game.  In college with an emulator and save states, I was able to beat the whole game.  Then, after college I managed to beat the game on the original system, but it's definitely a brain twister and a half.

Lolo got two more games after this and Lala was not only not captured in the third one, but you could play as her if you wanted.  I think my favorite part about Lolo and Lala is that they were enemies in Kirby's Dreamland and later became staple Kirby enemies named Lololo and Lalala.  Also, given their super simple geometric shapes, Lolo, Lala, Leeper, and Rocky were my first creations in a brief foray into sculpting I had a few years ago.

Kirby about to put the hurt on Lala

Review: The Fool and his Money

So I previously mentioned a game I had pre-ordered for what I estimated was 5 years (turns out it was 7 years ago).  It finally came out last Friday and long story short, it was well worth the wait.  The Fool and his Money is a sequel to the game The Fool's Errand.  I'm not sure if you have to play the original to understand the sequel, but it's free and it's awesome, so there's really no reason not to play the original, especially if you like puzzles.

The game is set up much like an Usborne Puzzle Adventure.  There is a page of story text with an associated puzzle to solve.  One difference is each page only shows a few sentences until the puzzle is solved.  It's ideal to play the puzzles in order so you can understand the story, but it's not necessary.  The game starts with around 10 puzzles unlocked with a new one unlocked for every puzzle solved.  So if you get stuck on one puzzle, you can move on to another and come back when you're ready.  Each puzzle solved unlocks a part of the Moon's Map.  Once all the pieces are unlocked, they will have to be arranged appropriately to unlock the final set of puzzles.

All told there are well over 150 puzzles in this game that need solving.  That's not counting the fact that you will have to figure out what the puzzle is in many cases.  For example, there are 5 different card games whose rules you will have to learn through deduction and trial and error.  Once you learn the rules, it's a whole other matter to defeat the other player.  The best part of all the puzzles is that you can trust them to be fair.  You don't have to worry about any trick questions, any hidden pixels, or any scattered information.  Everything you need to solve a puzzle is on the page you find it or has a link to send you to where the information is.  The clues are also subtle while still being obvious that there clues to be found.  If you're really stuck on solving a puzzle, the main menu has a link to a very well crafted hint page that can guide you to a puzzle's solution without necessarily ruining the answer.

For $40, this brain buster is a grand bargain for anyone who loves having their smarts challenged.  It's especially wonderful for fans of word play.  However, be warned, you better really love anagrams.

Review: Bananagrams

If Scrabble and Speed had a child, it would be Bananagrams.  Play is quick and frantic as players try to use all their tiles to form their own personal Scrabble board.  The game starts with players taking a set number of tiles based on the number of players.  At the yell of "Split!", players reveal all their tiles and try to form them into a crossword-looking set of words that crisscross each other.  Once a player has used all of their tiles, they say "Peel!" and every player (including that one) must draw another tile.  If a player wants to get rid of a tile they can't play (say an X, a Q, or a Z), they can say "Dump" to put that tile back in the shared pile and draw three more tiles.  Once someone says "Peel!" when there are no more tiles to draw, the game ends.  All other players inspect that player's board.  If there is any mistake, that player loses and play continues until there is a winner.

I have only played this game once, so maybe I just don't quite understand things quite well, but it seems to me that there is no limit to the number of times you can dump tiles, so it seems like you can just repeatedly dump early on to have a much larger batch of tiles to work with.  This game also has the same problem I have with Scrabble and its nonsense words (especially the two letter words like Qi, El, Za, etc.).  But I guess this just means when I beat you with a whole board filled with real words, it will be that much more satisfying.

Puzzles in Board Games

To round out what has apparently become Puzzle Week, I wanted to talk about puzzles in another media type besides books and video games.  I tried to think about puzzles in movies/television and the closest I can come up with is are shows like Psych or possibly Leverage (which come to think of it is probably one of the reasons why I like those shows so very much...) where there is some mystery to solve (who murdered that person or how are they going to steal that?) and in theory you are given just enough clues you might be able to guess it.  The problem is that if they give too many clues, then it ruins any twists or surprises the writers have in store, but if they give too few, then it's like a Sherlock Holmes story where there is absolutely no way to guess the outcome because the clues Sherlock Holmes discover are never revealed until the end when he explains the answer.  So ultimately, the episodes are designed so you can't solve it ahead of time, so they're not really puzzles.

So I decided to talk about puzzles in board games.  I'm not talking about jigsaw puzzles or Mastermind, but something with a little more depth and variety in its puzzles.  The only example I can really come up with is the game Mansions of Madness.  I haven't actually been able to finish this game yet, let alone play it multiple times, so I can't do a proper review, but one of the things that made me buy the game was that it had in game puzzles that needed to be solved by players before they could achieve their goal.  I was very curious how it was possible to make a repeatable puzzle in a game that both gave players time to think, but didn't completely stall the game for all the other players.

What they have come up are pipe and lock puzzles where you are given random pieces in a predetermined format and must swap and rotate them so that all the colors/shapes/whatever align.  Not a very difficult puzzle, but these can definitely be tricky.  The genius part is that you are only allowed to move and swap a set number of pieces each turn (determined by your player's Intelligence trait).  So if you know how to solve the puzzle quickly, but your character is an idiot, it will take a long time to solve it or if you can't figure it out, you can think about your next few moves while other players are taking their turns.  Again, I haven't played this enough to see how consistently awesome this is, but from what I saw it was pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I bought the game.

I'm still trying to figure out a way to combine the Usborne puzzles and maybe some Cliff Johnson puzzles into a board game in such a way that it offers deep and clever puzzles that are replayable and not game-stalling.  I'll let you know when I figure out how to do that...

Cliff Johnson

Alongside puzzles in book form, I also grew up playing many puzzle games on the computer.  One of my favorite creators of these games was Cliff Johnson.  I grew up playing Fool's Errand and 3 in Three (I think I've played through both of them at least three times each) and in college discovered At The Carnival.  I still haven't played his other games because I haven't been able to get them to run on any machine I've tried them on yet.  If anyone knows a free and legal way to run a Windows 98 program on a Windows 7 machine, I would greatly appreciate it.

In theory, at the end of September, Cliff will be releasing a new game called A Fool and His Money.  I say in theory because I was immortalized in the Compendium of True Believers (i.e. pre-ordered the game) I think 5 years ago when I used to work at Liquid Entertainment.  Each year the game was supposed to be coming out that year sometime, but kept getting pushed back due to a technical flaw or family emergency (it is only one guy making the game after all).  I have hope this time will stick, though, because unlike the other times, Cliff has a weekly production schedule with clear goals and deadlines.

Of course, even if it doesn't, I'm all for supporting one of the men responsible for the games I was raised on. Heck, I'm even quoted on his page (although uncredited): "I grew up on Fool’s Errand and 3 in Three and cannot wait for their further adventures. You are a genius and you make me feel like one when I beat your games."

Review: Dismantlement Series

I have always been a fan of quick and clever flash puzzle games.  A couple examples are the escape the room games and word games.  I especially love it when talented people make a continuous series of these games because then I immediately know I will like it when I see them.  One such series that also doesn't really fall into one of the above categories is the Dismantlement series from Gam.eBB.  There are now 16 of these Dismantlement games and I've played each of them at least twice if not more.  Unfortunately, there's not much replay value in puzzle games if the puzzles themselves don't change, but that's one case where it's great to have a crappy memory like mine.

The goal of the game is fairly simple.  You are given an object (ranging from a toaster to a radio to a lunch box) and you need to dismantle it with a screwdriver.  Unfortunately, most of the screws will only be uncovered once you solve a puzzle.  The clues for the puzzle are always found somewhere on the object and most of the time, you don't need to do any pixel hunting (warning TVTropes link) to find them.

The games are made in Japan (if you didn't catch that from the URL, the Dismantle Tea Canister, Dismantle Box Lunch 1 and 2, and Dismantle Mikoshi should give it away) and the earlier ones suffer a bit from Engrish, but you never really need to read anything of consequence anyway.  There is no story here; there is rhyme or reason to what you're doing.  Just dismantle things!