Category Archives: Games

Doodle God and Strimko

By chris Posted in Computing, Games Leave a reply

I downloaded an app for my iPhone last night which really confused me. Called Doodle God, it is riding high in the Top Paid Downloads section, is the lowest possible price, and has a nearly perfect rating from users. How could I go wrong in buying it?

I think I made my first mistake expecting it to be a puzzle game. It has many elements of the genre: you have to combine elements to make new elements, and I was looking for some guiding logic that governed why some elements can be combined, and others not. But there is none. You just have to randomly drag elements together until you get a combination. And that is it.

iPhone Screenshot 2

My ideal of puzzle game has the following elements: no luck, no randomness and no need for fast reactions. Word puzzles can be fun, but lack the purity of number puzzles, where no spelling difficulties (or national differences) have any influence. Strimko, pictured below, is ideal, but Sokoban is another example.

It is just you against the puzzle. If you can’t solve it, there is no-one to blame but yourself.

iPhone Screenshot 1

When I realised that Doodle God was not a puzzle game at all (in fairness, it is just listed as a game on the app store) I became overly agitated. It was like someone had violated a sacred principle. But what really amazed me was reading the (almost) uniform praise that the game gets from other people. What are these people thinking? Doodle God has a relationship to a real puzzle game as a toy steering wheel has to driving a car.

Thinking about it, I think the difference goes to the heart of my character. I like to think of the universe as governed by physical laws, with no supernatural influences. I like to think that all the answers to all the questions are just waiting to be discovered, some more obvious than others, but all waiting for the right mind to unlock the secret. All the seeming chaos is governed by science. This is the enlightenment view. If you don’t understand the universe, it is because you have not thought hard enough.

The other way of thinking is that the universe is governed by an unseen intelligence, whose ways are mysterious and inscrutable. This is the medieval view. That you do not expect to understand the universe, that understanding the universe is not possible for humans.

I am not saying that one way is right or wrong: my knowledge of science is limited to popular science paperbacks, and thus constitutes nothing more than a belief system for me. I just reflect that you can tell a lot from someone by which puzzle games they find satisfying to complete.

Review: Flower Garden for iPhone

By chris Posted in Games 2 Replies

Bouquet

My new favourite iPhone/iPod Touch app. You get to plant virtual seeds, and watch them grow into flowers. As you bring them to maturity, new varieties are unlocked.

The only complexity is how much you have to water them. Not exactly difficult, though it does vary from flower to flower.

The payoff is the ability to snip blooms and arrange them into a bouquet, which can then be emailed to a loved (or liked) one. 

The strange thing it, I think my wife appreciates my virtual bouquets almost as much as she would a real bunch of flowers. OK, she can’t arrange them and place them around the house like she can real flowers, but she knows that each flower has been selected by me, and I have hand raised each one personally.

It certainly takes a lot more care and effort than just spending a few pounds on flowers when filling up the car. And when each bloom can take several days to reach maturity, you pick and send them carefully!

http://www.snappytouch.com/flowergarden

The productivity of World of Warcraft

By chris Posted in Games 1 Reply

World of Warcraft has over 11 million subscribers – it is by some distance the most successful online game in the world. I am a casual player myself, but can’t help wondering sometimes why it is so addictive. I often find myself playing at the end of a frustrating day at work – with the unbidden thought in my mind: ‘at least I’ll get something done today’

And I think that this is the key. Warcraft represents a perfect job. In the Warcraft universe everything you do is important, and you are promptly rewarded and thanked for your efforts.

With Questhelper running, a WoW players screen looks like a heads up display for a cyborg using Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done system.

Imagine completing tasks in real life was as pleasing as in World of Warcraft: You can easily identify a customer or colleague by the glowing exclamation mark above their head. They quietly wait for you to approach them. They then clearly tell you what they want done, where you have to go to do it, and what you need to do it with. You are also told what you will get in return. All this information is added to your to-do list automatically.

As and when you complete any part of these chores, your progress is clearly flagged up. When you are finished, you never discover that your quest-givers priorities have changed: you just return to get thanked and paid. If you do this often enough, you get promoted.

You are not taxed.

Paradise, is it not? No matter what you do, you are always Getting Things Done. No matter how impossibly hard – or tedious – a task seems, there is no resentment, because you know what you are getting in return in advance. Don’t want a heroic mount? Then don’t get one. No problem. But if you do, here are the things you need to do to get one.

Perhaps World of Warcraft has some lessons for productivity experts. We don’t care what we do with our time, as long as we feel, in some part of our confused souls, that we are getting somewhere. That we are making progress.