Coffee Klatch

So it looks like Pirates of the Caribbean is getting into the MMORPG racket. It’s called Pirates of the Caribbean Online and after I read about how it was going to work, my first question was, “Will I have to pay for this or will there be a free version?” Turns out they’re expected to have an “Advanced Player” subscription of $9.95 a month but the basic version is supposed to be free. FREE! I read that the only difference between the two versions is going to be ads. And since I use Firefox, I can easily block the ads and just play the game! WOOHOO!!

(These pictures are screenshots from the game. Click them to view tons more screenshots.)

There’s already a nicely detailed article on Wikipedia about the game, which I’ve read is supposed to launch on June 1. I’ve been playing Tribal Wars for a couple of months now and have started to get bored with it. I’ve already dropped most of the accounts I had the various Tribal Wars worlds (there are 7 now) and am down to just one or two that I still maintain and check on daily. Still, a pirate MMORPG would be awesome! There are a couple out there now, but they’re not very impressive. THIS one sounds like it will be.

Here are some key elements of this game:

• You create your own customized pirate character and battle other pirates and go on piratey quests.
• When you’re on a ship, it’s not just you running the ship. It’s an actual crew, with someone in charge and giving orders and the rest carrying them out. It’s going to be a “friendly community” setting where people can interact with each other rather than everyone on their own individual ships.
• You can interact with many of the characters from the movies.
• There will be player guilds and a “virtual economy,” so you can acquire gold and buy and sell things. Buried treasures are, of course, part of the game, and you can trade the gems and artifacts in this open-market-style economy.



• There will a variety of ships to choose from, which you can buy or even take over from other pirates.
• The combat system is supposed to be quite “robust,” with levels of weaponry that you have to earn to “unlock” and make available.
• You can join crews (for quick battles) or guilds (for long term strategic play).
• Your character can build up notoriety by mastering skills, winning battles, hunting for treasure, and even by playing poker, blackjack, and darts with other pirates in the taverns.

All in all, this sounds like the best of Puzzle Pirates, 3-D interactive gaming, and MMORPGs, all immersed in the Pirates of the Caribbean setting. How fun is THAT??

I remember seeing this guy on TV back when I was a kid. Did you ever think it was possible to make a Bubble CUBE? Watch this!

Today I found out about a cool and challenging website thanks to Library Stuff’s blog post: Are You Smart Enough?. It features a 3,000-question puzzle and all the questions are riddles of some kind. So far, they don’t look like they’re technology related or anything, like SOME of these sites use. They’re mostly just riddles and word puzzles. But using Google may still help occasionally.
http://www.correct4.com/

One cool thing is that you can enter your latest correct answer on ANY screen and jump to your next one. So no remembering the path and all your answers–just your most recent one.

But with three THOUSAND questions, it will probably take a LONG time to work your way through it all. By the way, there are, in fact, prizes available along the way. Like 100 of them! So get going!

Okay, I got introduced to a game yesterday and I got hooked! The game’s called Tribal Wars and the short version is that you develop a village, acquiring resources, building buildings, and recruiting troops, all the while interacting with neighbors and people you meet in the game. Most people join (or create) a tribe, both for discussion and mutual protection & support. Sometimes villages get attacked and war can sometimes even be seen on tribal levels.

It’s a great deal of fun. And the best part, besides being FREE, is that things happen in real time. So if you’re building an upgrade to your Market or Warehouse, it may take a couple of hours and it really does. But at the same time, your workers are harvesting timber, clay, and iron at a rate of so much per hour (based on the levels of your facilities). The result of this setup is that you don’t spend hours sitting online playing the game. Instead, you just check in once in a while (daily, every other day, hourly if you’re obsessed ) and queue up building projects and maybe check your mail. Yes, it eventually will get more complicated than that, but for a while when you’re starting out, you’re just trying to get your village established.

Here’s a bit of their own description of the game:

Tribal Wars ist a free browser based MMOG. You can play the game from nearly any computer with internet access because there are no downloads necessary.

Your goal is to lead a medieval village to fame and power. With your help the small village will grow bigger and bigger. The population grows, production rises and trade prospers.

But not only your village grows. Neighbours are also looking to expand their influence. Troops are being recruited, villages are fortified and wild axemen plunder and kill.

You will meet other players, with whom you can fight together in a tribe.

Your village grows bigger and soon the formerly small village will conquer other villages….

I’ve already gotten a few friends hooked, um, I mean ENJOYING the game and we’ve formed our own tribe, called MSTies. If you recognize the reference to MST3K, you belong in our tribe.

If you want to check out the game and maybe give it a try, visit Tribal Wars and log onto World 3–that’s where we are. Also let me know what your username is and I’ll send you an invitation to join our tribe.

Since you occasionally interact with other players, especially those near to you geographically, I’ve already found another tribe that is from Milan and all speak Italian. Now I get to practice what little Italian I know, since some of them speak hardly any English. Che ficata! I mean, how cool!

[tags]games, online, tribal wars, medieval, MMOG, MST3K[/tags]

Everybody’s heard of Sudoku nowadays, the game where you put numbers into a grid so the digits 1-9 appear once (and only once) in each row, column and 3×3 square. There are a few good websites for playing Sudoku online. Here are some.

Sudoku.com, Sudoku.org, & Sudoku.net all forward to Sudoku.com. This site has a program you can download and solve them on your computer. They also provide solutions for Sudoku puzzles printed in newspapers. You just pick your paper and enter the first five numbers provided in the puzzle. Pretty handy and keep you from having to wait for the solution the following day.

WebSudoku is good site. They offer billions of puzzles in four different levels of difficulty. And, using cookies, they keep track of how many puzzles you’ve solved at each level and your fastest and average times. They also have a link to Jigsawdoku.

When you run out of domain name choices, you sometimes have to try alternate spellings. Soduku.org is another decent website. When you solve a puzzle at any of the four difficulty levels, you enter your name and that’s how they keep track of your scores. There’s a list of the top scorers, but it’s pretty obvious that the top ones were not solved by individuals. You can also download puzzles to print out and solve offline.

One more: SudokuShack. Tutorials, puzzles, links, and more. And of COURSE you can play online, too. No timing going on, so you can relax and solve away. The interface is VERY much like Soduku.org, so I’m guessing they’re related.

Some of these sites allow you to enter more than one number in a box, in case you’re not sure. That can come in handy.

Anyway, there you go. Bookmark what you like and solve in whatever style you prefer: timed or untimed, online or downloaded. Enjoy!

[tags]sudoku, puzzles, games[/tags]

Here’s a cool new game I found at CognitiveLabs. They specialize in games and tests to help you improve your brain functions and speed of thinking. I wrote about them back in December. Anyway, the game is called Stackopolis. You have to move the blocks around one at a time, redistributing them around the board to create the pictures they display. In principle it’s easy, but they also have a countdown clock running, which puts more pressure on you. As the puzzles progress, it gets harder and you have to be faster.

Can anybody get past the pyramid one? I haven’t yet!!

[tags]cognition, brain function, games, puzzles[/tags]

Here’s a fun little site for you. It’s The Llama Song and once you’ve heard it a couple times, it’s sure to stick in your head. It’s from Albino Blacksheep, who does all kinds of funny Flash Movies and Files. There are also some really interesting Rube Goldberg machines.

So there you go. When you go to bed tonight singing the Llama Song, don’t come complaining to me.

For your holiday pleasure, here are a few more interesting yet pointless websites. Some are fun, some are funny, and some are just useless.

• Falling Sand Game
• Cows Go Moo
• Text Version of Pong
• Leek Spin
• Jedi Trainer
• Spot the Difference
• Become a Gnome
• Singing People

There are tons of free websites that provide online Sudoku games. Yesterday I saw some books of Sudoku games in a store, but figured I could get them for free online and not pay for the book. Since I’m more often with my laptop than I am without it, the online way to go was preferable. I was looking for a website, then, and I decided I liked Web Sudoku pretty well. It actually offers billions of puzzles (levels easy, medium, hard, & evil) and keeps track of your average time for solving each level of puzzle. Options include displaying or not displaying the time, allowing multiple numbers in one cell (to help solving), and the effects of the “How Am I Doing?” button. They also offer daily variations, so there’s always something new if you just want a single puzzle to solve.

If you want more, they offer a Deluxe version (for Windows and Mac) that includes playing offline, extra sizes (from 4×4 to 16×16!), full screen viewing, several variations, and printing up to 6 puzzles per page for old-style pencil-and-paper solving.

Visit http://www.websudoku.com/ to get started.

[tags]sudoku, online puzzles[/tags]

Here are some games for you to play in your free time during the holidays. They’re all Christmas related or seasonal. I’m not sure if they’ll be available year round or just for the season, but I’m guessing they’ll be there for quite a while.

• Snowball Fight
• Ice Slide (my best: 247)
• Snow Day
• Nordic Chill (my best: 25,300)
• Make-a-Flake

Do you have a favorite game like these? Leave a comment with a link to your game.

Thanks. And enjoy!