Category Archives: Games

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Kickstarter Roundup Edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’d like to return to the subject of crowdfunding and puzzles. I’ve done several posts like this in the past, spreading the word about puzzly projects I discover on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and today, I have a few more worthy candidates.

First, let me remind you about the Indiegogo campaign I discussed a few weeks ago, regarding Washington State puzzle/game shop Completely Puzzled. Sara Kingsland is hoping to restock her newly acquired (and long beloved) local game shop, and she could really use your help. Check out the details here.

Second, we’ve got two campaigns involving friend of the blog and Cheapass Games president James Ernest.

Not only is there a campaign to create a digital version of their game Fish Cook (where aspiring chefs vie to become France’s best chef), but there’s a new Kickstarter campaign to launch Stuff and Nonsense, a delightful strategy game where players pretend to be intrepid explorers, faking expeditions and trying to conjure the best adventure for their oblivious colleagues.

Can you convince your fellow explorers that your fake expedition was the most thrilling AND profitable? Can you become France’s premier fish cook? Each games sounds like a fine addition to Cheapass Games’s long tradition of combining storytelling and tactics with a tongue-in-cheek twist. Check out the Fish Cook Kickstarter here and the Stuff and Nonsense Kickstarter here.

For something a bit more hands-on, check out Zobrist, a puzzle game featuring 33 Tetris-style pieces and thousands of potential combinations, as the solver tries to fit the given pieces into specific 3x3x3 cubes. You can solve head-to-head with someone else or tackle the various puzzles yourself, putting your spatial reasoning skills to the test.

Finally, there’s Roselin, a mobile-device puzzle game based on a very simple idea: in space, you keep moving in a direction until a force stops you. In the game, you have to navigate various challenges, puzzles, and mazes, all while trying to plot your puzzly path as inertia keeps you floating in a given direction.

For more details on Roselin, including sample screens and gameplay, click here.

Hopefully one of these puzzly campaigns piques your interest! Worthy projects are being realized every single day with the help of crowdfunding, and the power is literally in your hands, PuzzleNationers.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out our library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Tetris Theology Edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, I’d like to return to the subject of Tetris for a moment.

This year marked the 30th anniversary of Tetris, one of the all-time favorite video games in history, and we’ve joined in the celebration with posts about a new Tetris world record in Philadelphia and the power of Tetris to curb the urge to snack.

A friend recently pointed me toward this comedy skit from CollegeHumor, which finally solves the riddle of where all those Tetris blocks come from.

And so, without further ado, I present The Tetris God:

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out our library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Save a Shop Edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, I’d like to return to the subject of crowdfunding and puzzles.

I’m a sucker for a great puzzly Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns. We’ve covered several terrific ones in my time here at PuzzleNation Blog — including Baffledazzle and Board Games: Now Blind Accessible, both of which I’ll be updating you on in the coming weeks — and I love spreading the word about interesting and worthwhile projects that the PuzzleNation Community can take part in.

Today, I’ve got another good one for you. A friend of the blog pointed me toward the Indiegogo campaign for Completely Puzzled, a puzzle and game shop in Port Townsend, Washington, that is in danger of closing.

The intrepid Sara Kingsland, long-time patron of the store and puzzle lover, wants to keep the store open, and is hoping to revamp its image and restock on games and puzzles galore with the help of fellow puzzlers and game fans.

The Pacific Northwest is home to a lot of wonderful gamers, puzzlers, companies and shops that represent the best in puzzles and games, and it would be terrific if we could do something to help preserve that fine tradition of puzzle fun in Washington State.

For details and to donate, check out the Completely Puzzled Indiegogo page here. Good luck, Sara!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out our library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

PuzzleNation Book Review: Tic Tac Tome

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Welcome to the tenth installment of PuzzleNation Book Reviews!

All of the books discussed and/or reviewed in PNBR articles are either directly or indirectly related to the world of puzzling, and hopefully you’ll find something to tickle your literary fancy in this entry or the entries to come.

Let’s get started!

Our book review this time around features an interactive challenge, as we match wits with Willy Yonkers’ Tic Tac Tome: The Book That Will Beat You at Tic Tac Toe.

Plenty of books can make you feel stupid, but it’s far more rare for a book to actually defeat the reader in one-on-one combat. Tic Tac Tome pits the player against the endless permutations of Tic-Tac-Toe, challenging you to avoid losses and draws and seek out the lone path that means victory against the diabolical book.

Playing is pretty simple. You choose where to place your X and turn to the page number indicated. On that page you’ll see your mark, as well as the book’s countering move. You then select your next move, and turn to that page number. And repeat until you’ve won, lost, or reached a draw.

[Both pictures courtesy of Winkbooks.net.]

This is an immensely clever idea, especially since the book offers you the chance to either go first or take the much more challenging route of letting the book make the crucial first move. (The richly smug and snarky introductory section, ostensibly written by the book itself as it taunts the reader, only adds to the charm.)

Unfortunately, I did encounter at least one error in the book (two pages had been misassigned or swapped), so be aware: there could be more errors lurking within the fourteen-hundred-plus pages of the book.

That being said, I enjoyed sparring with Tic Tac Tome, and I suspect most puzzle fans and Tic-Tac-Toe enthusiasts would also enjoy. This is prime coffee table book material.

[To check out all of our PuzzleNation Book Review posts, click here!]

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Parking Lot edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, in the spirit of yesterday’s post about The Riddler, I’d like to post a brain teaser for you to solve!

Can you explain the numbering system in this parking lot?

Also, do you have any favorite riddles or brain teasers? Let us know and we might feature them in a future post!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Riddle Me This, Batman!

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With so much Dark Knight-related news floating around, this might very well be the Year of Batman.

Not only is it the 75th anniversary of Batman’s first appearance in comics, but he’s going to be all over screens in the coming months. There are already teaser images out for the 2016 Batman Vs. Superman film, plus Fox’s upcoming prequel drama Gotham. As if that wasn’t enough, it was recently announced that the entire 1960s television series is coming to DVD and Blu-ray!

So it’s the perfect opportunity to take a look at Batman’s puzzliest foe, The Riddler.

Played by Frank Gorshin (and John Astin, in one episode) in the 1960s TV series, The Riddler was absolutely manic, often breaking into wild fits of anger and laughter, compulsive in his need to send taunting riddles to the Caped Crusader. (This actually became a point of contention with his fellow villains in the Batman film, since they didn’t appreciate Batman being tipped off to their plans by the Riddler’s riddles.)

His riddles were similarly inconsistent and unpredictable. Some of them were genuine puzzlers (highlight for answers):

  • How do you divide seventeen apples among sixteen people? Make applesauce.
  • There are three men in a boat with four cigarettes but no matches. How do they manage to smoke? They throw one cigarette overboard and make the boat a cigarette lighter.

Others were similar to children’s jokes, silly in the extreme:

  • What has yellow skin and writes? A ballpoint banana.
  • What suit of cards lays eggs? One that’s chicken-hearted.

While Gorshin’s Riddler is probably the most famous and familiar version of the villain, my personal favorite was the Riddler in Batman: The Animated Series.

This Riddler (voiced by actor John Glover) was more suave, sophisticated, and cunning. In his debut episode, entitled “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?”, he challenged Batman and Robin with a boobytrap-filled labyrinth, complete with numerous riddles that were far more challenging than Gorshin’s Riddler would ever use.

Fittingly, a final riddle — the Riddle of the Minotaur — awaits Batman at the center of the labyrinth. Can you solve it?

I have millions of eyes, but live in darkness.
I have millions of ears, but only four lobes.
I have no muscles, but I rule two hemispheres.
What am I? The human brain.

This version of the Riddler only appeared a few times in the animated series, due to the writers’ difficulty coming up with his riddles and keeping his complex plots simple enough to fit into a single episode’s runtime. Nonetheless, this Riddler remains a fan favorite.

In the film Batman Forever, Jim Carrey actually gives us three versions of the Riddler: the scientist Edward Nygma (who definitely has a screw or two loose), the businessman Edward Nygma (a charming, public facade betraying none of his truly villainous tendencies), and the Riddler (a diabolical, borderline insane villain with an ax to grind with Bruce Wayne). Whether you like Carrey’s take on the character or not, he embodies an effective combination of Gorshin and Glover’s Riddlers.

Of course, despite his bizarre plan to read people’s minds through television and become smarter by doing so, this Riddler had one advantage over the previous versions: he had puzzlemaster Will Shortz designing his riddles for him.

While each riddle by itself meant little, except for providing a challenge to Batman’s intellect, all of them combined revealed the Riddler’s identity and set up the final showdown between the heroes and villains.

As for the newest version of the Riddler in Fox’s fall premiere Gotham, we don’t know a lot about him, since this is set in the days before Batman prowled the streets.

Apparently, the younger Edward Nygma (played by theater actor Cory Michael Smith) is a forensic scientist working for the police (who may formulate his notes in the form of riddles).

Hopefully, this Riddler will carry on the fine tradition of Riddlers past, challenging the defenders of Gotham to outthink him, rather than outfight him.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!