malvasia bianca

I back Kickstarter projects not infrequently, but I don’t talk about them much here. And the project I backed most recently, Bhaloidam, was going to be no exception: surely you’re all quite familiar with Corvus Elrod, have been hearing about this project for years now, and have already signed up to back it? It’s about […]

Last month, I talked about the sexuality of my Rock Band avatars. Since then, I’ve been singing an unusual amount, and I’ve realized that, for me personally (as distinct from my avatars in game), singing is sexually charged in a way that the other instruments aren’t. Datum one: when singing in Rock Band, I prefer […]

When my copy of Rock Band 3 showed up, I immediately tried out its pro keys mode. I’m used to playing piano, and reading piano music; but the game instead gives you a visual representation of (a section of) a keyboard, divided into regions by color. So I had to constantly think about where I […]

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP has the distinction of being the most disappointing game I’ve played in ages. I’d heard a lot of good things about it, and rather liked the visual style. The problem is, though, that I didn’t like the writing style or the musical style, and the former of those in particular […]

I’ve already talked about the puzzle gameplay in Catherine; what about the rest of the game? For me, the tone was set with the very first question I got asked in the confessional: “Does life begin or end at marriage?” Which is an analysis of marriage that I would never for a moment consider performing: […]

Catherine seems to mostly attract interest for reasons related to its narrative, but of course you spend most of your time with the game shoving blocks around in the puzzle mode. I went through it on Normal which, generally speaking, meant: quite difficult. So I failed a lot, but with persistence, I made it through […]

I was pleasantly surprised by the original Puzzle Quest; I enjoyed Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, but not as much. Given that, I assumed that I’d eventually play Puzzle Quest 2, but I’m also not surprised that it took me a little while to get around to it. Recently, though, I found myself awake in the middle […]

I woke up this morning in a musical but frenzied mood; so, as soon as the rest of the household emerged, I sat down at the piano to play (and, in places, sing) through a Billy Joel collection that I bought yesterday. I’d been full of energy this week, so next I decided to work […]

I had the pleasure of appearing on the Experience Points Podcast this week. Kirk Hamilton and Dan Apczynski were also guests, which made it the most participants in any EXP podcast; at 1:15, I suspect it’s also the longest. (I guess we all like to talk.) The topic of the podcast was music games, which […]

I finished Ghost Trick a few days ago, and I haven’t figured out what to say about it. I certainly enjoyed it: good puzzles, and I only went to Gamefaqs once (though I narrowly missed going a second time), which certainly isn’t always the case with puzzle/adventure games. I rarely had to do laborious exhaustive […]

I was impressed enough by Randy Smith’s GDC 2009 talk “Helping Your Players Feel Smart: Puzzles as User Interface” that I’ve made a point to go to his talks the last two years as well; and I quite liked his 2010 talk “Increasing Our Reach: Designing to Grab and Retain Players” as well. Because of […]

So: Minecraft. I’m in the habit of writing here about each game that I finish, and I have indeed finished Minecraft. By which I don’t, of course, mean, that I’ve actually finished Minecraft, because it’s not the sort of game that has an end: I’ve merely stopped playing it. At least for the time being, […]

So: I’ve been playing pro guitar mode in Rock Band 3 a fair amount over the last few months. And it’s great, and I’m even learning a little bit about how to play rock guitar! The thing is, rock guitar is not the only type of guitar that I like to play: as Jordan will […]

As I’ve mentioned before, we often play Burnout Revenge after lunch at work. Not always—we play board games once a week, we recently got a nice Rock Band setup, and several people have started playing ping pong—but Burnout Revenge continues to be our go-to game. A month or two ago, we unlocked a Formula 1-style […]

I’ve been playing Zynga’s latest, Empires & Allies, since it was released, and I’m still trying to figure out what I think about it. My initial impression of it was a lot like CityVille: clearly well done, taking lessons from their prior games (and from others’ games, of course), and adding a couple of new […]

As readers of my other blog are aware, I’ve now finished all the Rock Band 3 songs on medium pro guitar. Which has been a fascinating experience, because while I’m not actually playing music yet, I’m getting close enough that I can see the music just a little ways away! On easy, I was playing […]

As I’ve said before, GTD isn’t actually about getting lots of things done: it’s about doing what you most want to do at any given moment. Having said that, ever since I stopped putting tasks on my Next Action list that are more than two weeks out, I have in fact been Getting Things Done. […]

I had the pleasure of taking part in a couple of podcast appearances recently. Specifically: I appeared on the CDC podcast talking about GDC. A very pleasant conversation, I quite enjoyed chatting with the other guests, and Eric did a great job editing the audio for this one. And I appeared on Playable Character, talking […]

At the start of 2010, FarmVille was everywhere; at the end of 2010, Minecraft dominated the conversation. The discussion of those two games, at least on the sites I frequent, had a very different tone; I believe, however, that much of those games’ successes stem from the same source, namely their strengths as guided construction […]

For whatever reason, I’ve been playing a fair amount of Flight Control HD this week, and it’s reminded me of my current attempt to get my next action list under control. In both cases, there are a bunch of items (tasks, planes) that you’d like to take care of, with new ones appearing all the […]