Before lockdown, I participated in two board gaming groups. One was every Monday at Dave and Pinguino’s apartment and the other was every Tuesday fortnight at work (an intentionally pretentious time period). That last one has been going for seven years so far. Now that our movement has been restricted we’ve been exploring other ways to play and it’s been a bit rough. I wanted to share some of the options out there and what we’ve been using. Continue reading
I’m still board gaming as much as ever (last year’s post) but I feel like my rate of game acquisition has slowed. Dave, Craig, Pinguino, and I are still regularly playing and having a consistent group of people has really made it fun to run more campaign or scenario style games. Our game night at Two Bit Circus is also still on Tuesdays every fortnight. It’s been going for six years now and we picked up a few more people in the last year. Continue reading
It’s been a couple years so I thought I’d share a couple of my favorite games from last year, like I did in 2016. I’m still playing weekly campaign style games with friends. Tonight we’ll finish Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. The year before we tackled Mechs vs. Minions. I’m also running Board Game Night at Two Bit Circus on Tuesday every fortnight in Downtown LA too. Email me to join in. Continue reading
I got back into boardgaming in 2012 after receiving a copy of Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre. Before that I had a copy of Catan and Carcassonne from high school and college. Since 2012 though I’ve been playing regularly and acquiring quite a few more. I wanted to cover a couple of my favorites I got in 2015. Continue reading
Remember my giant countdown clock? Well, as soon as I got back from Germany, I immediately went back to work at Two Bit Circus to prepare for the STEAM Carnival. The Carnival has a large variety of home built games, carnival inspired activities, and educational fun. Many of the games were built by our summer interns; it’s what I built the spirograph for. The week was full of events starting with our Gala on Wednesday night with a cocktail party, dinner, and a show. Thursday was a hackathon. Friday was our education day with almost 3000 school children coming through to do a workshop and play our games. Saturday and Sunday was the main event with even more people coming through each day. I was demoing Intel’s ConnectAnything one-on-one to kids of all ages. It let’s you change the connections between inputs and outputs on a microcontroller dynamically. The days’ big finale was the Dunk Tank Flambé which you can see embedded below. We’re taking the show on the row next year. Continue reading
I’ve been cleaning out my closet and listing items on eBay, one of which is the original Penny Arcade card game from 2006. It used the UFS rules designed for collectable card games (CCGs) but was itself a standalone, pre-built set. Upon listing this, I discovered that Penny Arcade is actually selling a new card game described as, “It’s a deckbuilding game, if you’re familiar with the genre. Think of games like Dominion, Ascension, or Thunderstone.” I was not familiar with deck-building, but I love interesting game mechanics so I started researching. Continue reading
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/h5QSclrIdlE&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999
The video above shows a clever use of the Nintendo DSi’s front-facing camera. It tracks the user’s eyes and redraws the scene accordingly. This is the same trick used in Johnny Chung Lee’s Wii display hack. He was using IR instead of facial recognition though. Continue reading
With the arrival of StarCraft 2, one of the major staples of professional gaming is in for a shake up. It won’t just be the way the game is played though. The way tournaments are handled and broadcast is going to change.
Last week Blizzard launched one of the most anticipated beta tests ever. StarCraft 2 has been in various playable forms since its announcement in 2007, but this is the first time players have had access to the game outside of special events. The original StarCraft was released in 1998 and has spent the last 12 years as one of the most popular multiplayer online games. The game is played professionally in South Korea where games are broadcast on three different channels dedicated to professional gaming.
Scribblenauts is a new Nintendo DS game from 5th Cell. Yesterday was the early launch and I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the game. The overall idea of the game is that you can create anything just by typing in a word. You then use these objects to solve levels. The game’s ROM was leaked last weak and someone managed to dump a 22,802 word list. Many of these are aliases, but it still leaves 4,105 unique objects.
RobotSkirts 