Theme Park God

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One of the fantastic things about this job is the capacity of students to surprise you with the things that they do. Yesterday, in the First Year Labs, Michael asked me if I wanted to have a look at the game he'd been working on for a little while.

It's really nice.

It's a Theme Park simulation written in Scratch. You can have a go here. Quite a few thousand people already have.  I told Michael that he must promise to start writing a blog about the game and how he made it, and I really hope he does. 

Skull, Mascarade, Coup and Snake Oil

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Adam is leaving us. End of the month. Heading to Canada. We wish him luck and thank him for all his efforts making the systems work and helping to organise lots of lovely student events. We are really going to miss him around the place.

The only good thing about him leaving is that in celebration (?) we had a games evening tonight. I was quite keen to have a go at Snake Oil, as I'd not played it before, and other folks had brought along games that they thought would be fun too.

Snake Oil is an OK game. Pitch ideas for dodgy products, and take it in turns to be the discerning (or not) customer. Not bad as a party ice breaker but limited, as observed by David, in that there is restricted potential for deceiving the other players.

 

Mascarade is an awesome game, especially if you can get 13 players playing at the same time, which we did.

Lots of bluff, counter bluff, and bluffing when you don't even know who you actually are. Strongly recommended if you are expecting  a large number, but I'm not sure how it would go with four.

I'm going to have a go though. 

We've played Coup before. Always fun, always infuriating. Especially when you are playing it with this bunch of reprobates.

Bluffing is not encouraged, it is pretty much mandatory. 

skull.PNG

The final game of the evening was Skull. Which pretty much did me in for the night.

Rather like poker, but distilled down into the bluffing and deception bit.

A really, really good game with the right people. And these were definitely the right people. I didn't win, but by golly I was very close. 

Meatly Game Jam Judging

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Meatlyjam is a game jam that was running over weekend. I've been asked to help with the judging of the entries. Apparently there have been 62 games submitted, which is just amazing. Kudos to the organisers and those who took part.

You might think that going through 62 different games and scoring them is a bit of a pain, but actually I'm really enjoying clicking on each entry and finding out what it does.

If you fancy having a look at the entries you can find them all here. I've only had a look at the first few so far, but there are some really nice ones in there.

Next Gen Grand Theft Auto Rocks

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Grand Theft Auto 5 is a game about mostly horrible people doing horrible things. With guns, cars, planes and large ugly dogs. But I reckon it is a towering work of art too. And on the next-gen consoles it is even better.

I spent a happy afternoon watching number one son run through a few missions in the new First Person View and it really is disgustingly great. Even if you have played the previous versions on your PS3 or XBOX 360 I reckon you should get a copy for your next gen console too. 

Robs Red Nose Game now in Windows Store

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Robs Red Nose Game, long available for Windows Phone, has now made it into the Windows Store.  As you can see above, it is massively popular. Or something. 

It's a free download, and mostly harmless. It only works on tablets and it seems stupidly easy right up to the point where it becomes impossible. For some reason I'm embarrassed to relate it has 001 in front of the name. This is not a clever marketing wheeze to put it at the top of the Windows Store listings, but something silly I must have done a while back. I might keep doing it though, which means that the seventh game will probably involve secret agents. 

And get me sued. 

Anyhoo, feel free to have a go, and let me know what you think.