Entries Tagged 'game' ↓

What I Learned Today had a link over to Tux Paint, which looks awesome. From there I burrowed my way through to Tux Typing and Tux, of Math Command.

Tux Paint is an open source drawing program supposedly for children ages 3 to 12, but the way it looks, I kind of want to use it myself. I haven’t tried it yet, but just from the screens I can see it has cool stamps and a fun, bubbly interface. I think we should design all our programs as if we were making them for kids.

Tux, of Math Command is an arcade-style, comet-blaster math game, much in the style of that typing shark popcap game that everyone has played. Alongside with a training academy, you can choose what type of math problem you want to work on, or you want your kid to work on if, you know, you’re gonna actually use these things for their intended purpose. But who would want to do that?

I don’t see any nifty screenshots for Tux Typing, but I can guess that it’s pretty straight-forward, and that it’s meant to teach kids typing skills. It probably even has cute graphics and nifty sounds. Really, what more do you want from a typing program?

Here are the download links for math and typing. If you’re a Windows user like me, go for the installer.exe files. You can download Tux Paint over on its website.

If you’re interested in other free entertainment software, check these guys out. They seem to be behind the Tux4kids apps, among others.

The Dolphin Olympics 2, to be exact. This game, which is incredibly fun though also occasionally incredibly frustrating, requires only the arrow keys to control, and the premise couldn’t be simpler. You control a dolphin who has two minutes to perform a dazzling display of aquatic and airborne dexterity; each flip, tuck, twist, tailslide, corkscrew, and flawless landing increases your speed, thereby eventually increasing the extraordinary heights you can achieve on each jump. Similar to some of my other favorite flash games, once mastered, Dolphin Olympics 2 appeals not only to the mastery of its technical challenges, but also provides the player with a sense of artistry; each leap, every twist and turn is a stroke of paint across the two-minute canvas of your run, finally combining to create an oeuvre of dazzling achievement. I should warn, however, that to begin with, it’s much more like a coloring book that only comes with a lead pencil.

Kongregate, of course, adds its own challenges to the game. The impossible badge, which I just managed to earn, requires reaching the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which requires some skill, some luck, some praying, and a lot of cursing. For me, I know a game is good when I complete all the challenges, and I still want to play it.

Play Dolphin Olympics 2 at Kongregate.

Finally, you can claim experience points for housework.

Recruit a party of adventurers from your household or office, and whenever one of you completes a chore, you can log it and claim XP.

For reals.

Dude. Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot: The Role-Playing Game!?

Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot: The Role-Playing Game!

There’s also one called “Ninja Burger.” Both games are based on the “PDQ” system (Prose Descriptive Qualities), created by Chad Underkoffler, about whom Eric Burns just did a lovely little write-up.

Silly though it may be, it’s the little things like this that make me feel like it’s an alright world, after all.

Maya sent me two comics that are currently sitting over on the Salon website. If memory serves, Salon limits non-member access to fairly recent materials, so you should check them out while the checking is good (while noting that “if memory serves” is really the key operator here, and that memory, often, doesn’t).

The comics involve librarians, censorship, and a dog scrotum. In my book, that right there is what we call a winning combination. Oh, and it involves how nice librarians smell, which is always a plus (and totally true). They’re sequential, so read this comic first, and then move on to this one.

In other news that ranks similarly in awesomeness but has no other discernable association, Penny Arcade is going to have a video game, and there is a trailer for it that is very, very wangtacular (which is a good thing). I was heartened to see that the Fruit Fucker (that lovable little bastard) appears to have a fairly large role in the game, which pleases me to no end. If you’re not familiar with the FF, then you should start here, and continue onward if you’ve got the stomach. If you have a particularly positive inclination towards fruit, and might therefore have issues with its … violation, then you might want to skip that link. However, if you laughed during American Pie then you should know that you’re a goddam hypocrite.

That is all.