Tamagotchi

Alan used to have a little crab as a pet. He kept it in his room in a nice crab environment with crab toys, water, plants, and some dirt so she could dig a nice hole. Sadly she kept getting older and older, and when we returned from our last trip she had passed away. To bad. Alan was in favor of getting a new pet, en we started to investigate. A walking stick seemed like a good idea, or maybe a new crab. Maybe even a hamster. The crab was nice but it spend most of its life inside its little hole in the ground. Only to come out to quickly get some food. The care for the little animal was also quickly allocated with Alan’s dad. That needed to change.

Searching for a new animal I also passed for a toy store. I hoped to find maybe a robotic fish, or something similar. Then I noticed the tamagotchi eggs. Maybe this could be interesting. The technology is from the last century, but if it’s fun, it’s fun. For Alan is was the perfect gift. He was so happy. His thoughts of any live animal disappeared immediately, as he started feeding and training the little digital animal. The animal also had a small game, and could be disciplined. The best part was that Alan could take it wherever he went. A great gift for sure.

Recognizable game

As a test/hobby project I have been building a game similar to minesweeper, but with a completely different theme. Instead of looking for mines you will need to look for mushrooms. The game logic was easy because it is shared lots of times online. The entire app structure was for me, and was basically what I wanted to learn/achieve. What I was missing was the assets. Images and sounds to make it all look perfect. For this I used fiverr and I hired an indonesian guy to make around 20 images for me. Great to have such a huge international marketplace. What I am still missing it some soundeffects. I will probably try and convince the kids to help me with this, because Alex has already showed me he does this very well, like the shooting effect in our stopmotion.

GC5196A – A rubber ducky cache

Our first cache is finally live! Together with the Ammers we worked hard. Thought of routes, riddles, placing rubber duckies at child-friendly places, making pictures, writing nice descriptions, recording coordinates, asking permission. All for a very nice box filled to the rim with rubber duckies.

The result is a fantastic walk/search through a nice green part of the randstad. Searching brightly colored duckies and in the end finding a huge box filled with rubber ducks.Team Rubber ducky!

Fourth postcard to Spain

The fourth postcard comes with quite a bit of explanations. All the prices of all four postcards need to be collected, en the sets of two prices need to be pasted together.

This needs to be done in the following manner:
Latitude: – xx.xxxx
Longitude: -xx.xxxxx

The coordinates refer a a place somewhere on earth. A place we wanted to go a long time ago, but we never did. Will this be the occasion where we do realize one of our dreams?

Postcard 4 (send of the 10th of oktober):
Ana in Zara reclame!

Third postcard to Spain

The third postcard comes with a little help. It is explained that there need to be made a few combinations. The price of the happy meal and the price of the dress are related. The prices of the sun glasses and the broom are also related.

Postcard 3 (send on the 7th of oktober):
Ana in Ray Ban reclame!

Second postcard to Spain

The second postcard also had an advertisement. This time it features a nice broom from the Gamma, but rest assured. There is no deeper meaning to the card as our home is always nice and clean.

Postcard 2 (send on the 3rd of October):
Alex in a Gamma broom advertisement!

First postcard to Spain

This month is a special month and to celebrate I have send a couple of postcards to Spain. Each card has a commercial on it, and together the cards form a riddle. I wonder if Ana will figure it out.

Postcard 1 (send on the 1th of October) :
Alex in a McDonald advertisement!

Cats&Dogs

Dog!Cat!The wait is finally over. Cats and Dogs, Boys and Girls, a never ending battle between men’s best friends, combined with the most epic battle of all, the battle of the sexes. Action-packed in just half a minute of gaming frenzy.

An easy and exiting game, now playable on your Android phone. Practice your reflexes as you try to keep up with all the action on your mobile. This hot new game is available as an Android App on Google Play now and best of all, totally free!

The object of the game is as easy as it is challenging. Select either cats or dogs and boys or girls and start the action. Avoid touching the wrong animal or gender. Are you able to get the high score of the day, while only playing one minute? Don’t wait any longer! Get this game now!

View the all time high scores and today’s best scores.

Torchlight

Torchlight 2!Finally, a game that plays how it is supposed to. A while ago I tried Diablo 3. It was a nice game, but it had a few shortcomings. The earlier versions were a lot better. Diablo 3 was just to easy, impossible to play without internet and quite expensive.

When Diablo left mi a bit disappointed I went and searched for alternatives, and quickly I ended up with Torchlight. Today the second version becomes available. Torchlight 1 (and surely also Torchlight 2) is very similar to Diablo. Killing monsters and searching for the best equipment. At the same time you are saving the world from all the evil. A concept that agrees with me.

Torchlight has a nice few characteristics. Much more color and the style of the game is sometimes more like a cartoon. Very nice. The hero has the talk to kill monsters and he does this accompanied by his faithful pet. Compared to Diablo it becomes clear that Torchlight is better in almost every possible way.

Version two of Torchlight becomes available today but I think it will only have a digital version. You won’t find the box in the shop. The most amazing thing is the price. The game will be sold for a mere 20 dollars, which translates to a little over 15 euros. A very nice deal! You don’t need internet to play… can create your own multiplayer games… and if you want you can extend the game yourself.

Where Diablo left me with doubts and in the end made me decide not to buy the game (a good choice because I quit playing the game a long time ago) I will buy Torchlight 2 for sure. Selling such a nice game for little is something that must be rewarded.

Diablo 3

Diablo3!A long time ago I was a very frequent player of computer games. Diablo was one of the games I liked playing and recently a new version of this game was released. A game I just had to try for myself.

A free version is available which you can use to try the game. The free version allowed you to play a small part of the actual game, but you can only get access to the free version if you know someone who has bought the game, and who is willing to give you one of his special try-out keys. I was lucky because I knew just such a person.

Now for the game. The first thing I noticed is that it resembles the previous version a lot. Really a LOT. Did this really take 8 year to create? My PC did not match the minimum specs but still the game ran surprisingly well. Killing monsters went smooth and easy and I did not run into problems. The old feelings I remember having while playing this game resurfaced.

I managed to perfectly kill lots of monsters, but that the game was without problems is not really accurate. The new version of Diablo requires you to be online while playing and you need to be logged into your battle.net account. Not really a problem, except that it fails quite a lot of times. Sometimes you loose your connection in the middle of the game, and all you can do is exit the game and restart it. After the last update I am unable to play at all. To bad.

The last issue I have with this game is the price. In the local shops you can buy the boxed version for a little over 40 euros. The digital version is easier to get, without leaving home at the Blizzard site. This digital version is without box and without CD but for some strange reason it is priced at almost 60 euros. A ridiculous difference.

My conclusion: It is a nice game, but for now I´ll stick to the demo version even though I finished this small part of the game already a few times.