About this video:
“Marvin has the most boring job in the universe - but all is not as it seems…
Director: Henrik Bjerregaard Clausen
Modelling & Character animation: Søren Andersen & Michael la-Cour
Original Music & Sound Editing: Rasmus Kudahl Kaae Munch
Production: JUNK
Originally premiered at BreakPoint ‘08 in Bingen, Germany where it won the 1st prize in the animation competition.”
It’s very nice, compared to the old thinkpad I was using as a temp. And infinitely nicer than what I had at Sprint.
Then the unexpected happened, my boss came by with some boxes that had my docking station, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. WOW! It’s a Dell 2208WFP (that’s a 22″ Wide screen for those of you who don’t speak Dell) a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and my docking station. I’m in geek setup heaven right now. hehehehe
All that and I should be getting a blackberry too! I have to say Perot Systems treats it’s employees right!
I’ve already run across three great games from the end of last week and beginning of this week. First, is a sequel to one of the ones I featured in my favorite webgames post, Totem Destroyer 2. It has more features than the first. It’s still a puzzler where you are trying to bring down the totems but making sure your idol doesn’t hit the ground. But now there are a couple of new types of stone, an exploding one and a unusual one.
Second, is Roly Poly Cannon where you have an unlimited number of exploding cannon balls that you are using to try and send the Roly Polys on the meet their maker (they turn to angels when killed) Some of the shots you have to make are timing based and others are based on aim. Some require finesse while others require brute force (the farther away from the cannon you aim the harder and faster they shoot). It really is a fun game, with some challenging levels.
And the last one that I ran across today is simply called Block Drop Puzzle Game. It is a puzzle game where you are trying to get your diamond which you control with the arrows, to the checkered block. After you jump off a block it disappears into the water. It’s a relaxing easy going puzzler that does require you to think ahead or you won’t be able to make it to the goal.
Since I like to play games I thought I’d create a list of favorite games instead of giving you a link to someone else’s top 10.
I’m showing off my favorite web games because these are what I play most of the time because they are quick to play, usually don’t require a download, cd, or install, and don’t usually require a lot of machine to play them:
fantastic contraption - Great physics game. The objective of the game is to use the provided resources (wheels and sticks) to build a contraption that can get the pink object into the designated pink area. The wheels include ones that rotate clockwise, counter clockwise, and free rolling. The two types of sticks are a water stick, which can go through other items and a wood stick which cannot go through any items. The replayabilty of this game are tremendous, two options I’ve seen on their forums are to do a green machine (no automatic parts), and a minimalist approach (use the least amount of parts).
portal: the flash version- Great 2d adaptation of the 3d FPS game (Portal from the Orange box). The objective of the game is to use your two portals to get from point A to point B. There are some very challenging levels that require timing and thought to get you through the level. Watch out for the machine guns, they are killer!
boombot - Fun little puzzle game using explosions to get your guy to the exit for each level. There are boxes, TNT, exploding Gel, and burning oil barrels to help and hinder you. Have fun blasting your way through all 50 levels. Instructions are easy - Left click and hold to make a bomb, release to set it, the rest is up to you deciding the best place to set the bombs off.
chronotron - Puzzle game, with a unique twist. The objective of the game is to get your robot into the portal, but you have to collect pieces in order to open it. but the twist comes in that you can time travel backwards and see yourself so you would have two robots and I’ve even gone on upwards of six robots on screen at the same time. The hard part? you have to get all of yourselves into the portal. This game definitely takes some planing and thinking in how your environment works when things change. But be careful cause you may cause a paradox, which is not good.
ice breaker - A different puzzle game. The objective of the game is to get the vikings that are stranded or frozen onto the ship. You do this by slicing sections of ice to make the viking slide down the glaciers to the boat or using the ice to make rube berg type machines to get the viking to the boat.
disinfect the core - Strategy game, with a fun premise. The objective of the game is to infect the core with your virus and overtaking your opponents virus. You take turns turning one of your nodes in order to get it to point to another node. If it is grey you’ll turn those and those that are connected to it green. If it is red you will be turning your opponents virus into yours. Has some great strategy to it and big changes in the board can happen with one move.
desktop tower defense - Great resource strategy game. The objective of the game is to use your gold to buy different towers to defend your desktop. There many different towers, the cheapest two are pellet tower (more damage slower re-fire) and squirt tower (quick re-fire less damage). The pellet tower can be upgraded to a sniper tower which as a great range. I try to upgrade to one of these as quickly as possible. Some of the other towers include dart tower, swarm tower, and frost tower. There are several different game type. Easy sends one stream of baddies where as medium and hard send two streams of baddies. There is also a challenge gameplay which has several different challenges to do, and also a fun game play with several other game styles. This is a really enjoyable game and you will spend an entire afternoon trying to perfect your maze for the baddies to go through.
auditorium- Beautiful game, with a fun premise. The objective of the game is to get your lightwaves to travel through the sound equalizers. By using curving and repelling objects, you ‘bend’ the light to were you need it to go. As you hit the different sound equalizers it adds a new piece to the overall harmony you are hearing. It’s a beautiful game, visually and auditorially, although a bit taxing on a lower spec’d system.
totum destroyer - Puzzle game. The objective of the game is to remove the indicated number of pieces from the tower. The hard part comes in that your totem can’t hit the ground and it can’t hit any other pieces too hard or it will crack. It turns into a ballet of timing your clicks with where your totem is falling. It was fun playing it a second time as well. So it does have some replayability to it. Oh yeah, remember (black blocks cannot be destroyed).
launchball - One of the first ‘get the ball into the portal using the given tools’ objective games I played. You got different modules you place in order to get power to the moving parts. There are modules like water turbines, boilers, and wind turbines. It’s well done and you do have to plan ahead in how your ball interacts with each of the different tools. Fun game!
hexxagon - Strategy game along the lines of checkers or othello. To win you have to convert more of the opponents jewels than they do your’s. It’s a fun game and the computer is hard to beat. Once you think you have a strategy down it does seem to adapt to it and change it’s strategy. So lot’s of replayability with this one.
And for a stressful game, yes I said stressful give Grid 16 a shot. You have 16 games you are trying to play at one time. They clock counts down and switch to a different type of game. It can really get your anxiety up. Fun but definitely not a stress relieving game.
And now for something relaxing - sand. Just enjoy it.
I hope you enjoy these games as much as I have.
“Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away. And respawn in 5-10 seconds.” -Steven Jones
So my mantra has been God, Games, Gadgets, and Geekery and I thought I’d share with you how this fit in with my Christmas vacation (not the movie although I do love it).
God - We started a new tradition this year. Jacob helped me to bake a birthday cake for Jesus. So we baked the cake, put candles in it, sang happy birthday to Him, and then ate some of the cake. While eating the cake we talked about why Christmas was special and why Jesus’ birth was special. It was a very nice time with D’Anna, Jacob and I (we’ll include Julia once she is old enough to eat cake). It’s a tradition that we will continue to do and it will be the first thing we do before the mad rush of opening gifts, traveling, etc, etc…
Games - We bought a wii for the family for Christmas! It is amazingly fun. Although the graphics are not your latest and greatest, the implementation of the games with the wii-mote and the nunchuk are awesome! We went ahead and bought two extra wii-motes and one nunchuk so that D’Anna, Jacob and I could all play. We (not wii) bought wii-sports, wii-play, and Kawasaki-snow mobile. Wii-sports is by far the best of the lot we bought, featuring tennis, golf, bowling, baseball, and boxing. D’Anna beats my in Tennis, cause I have no backhand. Golf is a nice relaxing game. Bowling is an intense battle between all three of us, even Jacob does really well at this one. Baseball is all about timing, and Boxing is the real work-out and really enjoyable yet frustrating at the same time. Wii-play came with the extra wii-mote and it features a progressive list of games that helps with your control of the wii-mote/nunchuk better. Some of the games include a shooting game, a fishing game, a cow racing game (yes a cow) which is Jacob’s favorite, and a tank strategy game which is my favorite. If you haven’t had a chance to play with a wii, I highly recommend it as it is very fun.
Gadgets - Really the only gadgety thing I did this break was I help my grandmother set up her digital picture frame. Oh yeah and I bought D’Anna a new phone, the Samsung Instinct. It is very cool!!!
Geekery - Started talking and brainstorming about making a movie with five other friends (you know who you are) and I’m leaning towards playing a computer geek hacker type guy, yeah far stretch for me, right? I’m looking forward to working with these guys in such a creative way.
Ryan Hill, a friend of mine and fellow volunteer in 121Kids at church, wrote and starred in this awesomely funny and silly viral video for Verizon Fios. Enjoy:
The V-League consisting of Bolder, Faster, and Smarter! They will defeat Kabul and Satellite in their evil plans.
What's not to love about God, Geekery, Gaming, and Gadgets?
God - He created us, and saved us from ourselves!
Geekery - computers, technology and electronics!
Gaming - fun, creative, strategic, and entertaining!
Gadgets - portable pieces of technology!
-Troy
Ok, my laptop was delivered to me today here at 
chronotron
ice breaker 
disinfect the core
desktop tower defense
auditorium
totum destroyer
launchball
hexxagon