Containment: The Zombie Puzzler

Year: 2011
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://www.containmentthezombiepuzzler.com/

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Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 5.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 3/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (11/9/2015):  I like many puzzle games. I prefer them to involve a touch of strategy.  What this game did right was to have reasonable complexity.  The "good guys" have 4 different types.  If you surround zombies with one type of survivor (denoted by color) then the survivors will kill the zombie.
  
  Here is the problem.  This game is not turn based.  If you don't do anything, the zombies will overtake you.  They have a timer that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the actions of the player.  What this means to the player is that if you click faster you get more done.  This removes any hope of logic challenge from this game.  You don't need to THINK about what you are doing.  You just have to move really fast.
  
  My brother and I used to play card games when we were growing up.  Two different types of games come to mind.  The style that I enjoyed and am still willing to play today are games like rummy and ... well... that may be about it.  This game rewards people who take their time and consider the best action.  Yes there is some luck, but a "good" player is one who makes the right call after long consideration.  The other type of game is like speed or war or slap jacks.  I hate those games.  They capitalized on quickness and not over-thinking.  In our house they bred brutality and pain and to this day I have no use for them.  Containment is like this second type.
  
  So, move quickly, don't worry about making mistakes, and don't overthink it.  That being said, don't spend the time if you have anything better to do.

Blek

Year: 2013
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://blekgame.com/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 3.0
• Playthroughs: 0
• Rating: --/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (6/28/2015): Oh shit yeah. Very clever. Blek is a great game! I was traveling again this weekend, and I once again, I needed to kill several hours on the train, in the airport, and on the plane. Much like last weekend's Box Cat/Flappy Golf combo, I found a game that didn't appeal to me (2-bit Cowboy), and then Blek, which definitely did.
  
  Blek starts out with very little instruction. You kind of just have to figure it out. The first puzzle is simple, once you know what you are supposed to do. The goal is to make a pattern with your finger that will repeat end to end, in an attempt to take out the colored dots without touching any black dots. That much is easy enough to figure out, but the rest, I'll let you learn for yourself, as that is the fun and rewarding part! Most of the puzzles started out as head-scratchers, but after studying the dot patterns and experimenting a bit, the solution usually became clear. Within a few hours, I was able to complete the first 55 puzzles. I understood how to do #56, but it took several tries to get the timing just right. I had to cheat on puzzle 57 by looking up the solution online though. (Once again, I had the right approach, but I couldn't get my timing just right.) Puzzles 58-60 are just silly. Perhaps I burned myself out on pushing through every Flappy Golf level last week, but for this game, I just don't feel like grinding the last few puzzles to log the playthrough. Had I done so, this game would easily have gotten an 8 from me. Go give it a spin!

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor

Year: 2009
Genre: Puzzle, Action
Website: http://tigerstylegames.com/Spider/tsobm/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 8.5
• Playthroughs: 2
• Rating: 8/10

Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 4.5
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 5/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (2/26/2014): This was another favorite from the first Humble Bundle Android pack that Shane and I picked up. I was intrigued by the game mechanics and delighted by the ease with which one can build large webs to catch bugs. It was also satisfying that the game introduced new bugs to catch every few levels, with new techniques being required to take down each bug. For example, you had to chase the mosquitoes into a web, the hornets needed to be taken down out of the air, and scoring a firefly required a mid-air grab with a shove into a web.
  
  This gradual "easing me into the game" made the first playthrough very captivating and enjoyable. However, when I started the game over, the second playthrough offered no new content, and my interest in the game suffered a bit. Replayability is huge consideration for me from a hedonic rating standpoint. Much like Ridiculous Fishing, Spider got dinged for replayability, but from a value standpoint, I got many hours of great entertainment out of another game that cost about $1.
  
  One of the only things about the gameplay that disappointed me was that when you knocked hornets from their nests, they would escape the level if you didn't chase them down in time. It was very difficult to catch them all, which meant that it was also very difficult to get a 100% completion for every level. I was intrigued enough to keep trapping bugs after achieving the percentage required to open each level's portal (to the next level), but I wasn't about to grind each level containing a hornet nest to get the full completion.

• Shane (11/15/2014)  I also logged a playthrough of this game, and once again, I was surprised when Lee told me how much he enjoyed it.  I remember being in the middle of the platformer/adventure game Swordigo (same Humble Android Bundle, if memory serves) and not really feeling like I had time for this one.
  
  Don't get me wrong, it was neat.  It just didn't thrill me.  I remember wondering why I should care about this spider.  I cared even less about the big house the spider was (inexplicably) moving through.  If I tried it again now, I might have a different take on it, but back then, it wasn't what I wanted to do.
  
  All of that being said, it was very pretty, it had neat controls, and the different bugs did different things.  I give thumbs up on all of those points.  Otherwise, I guess I don't have all that much to say for Spider.

Doodle God

Year: 2010
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://doodlegod.com/games/doodle-god/

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Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 1.0
• Playthroughs: 0
• Rating: --/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (11/15/2014): I am not going to play this one any further, I don't expect.  I already did a full playthrough on Doodle Devil.  I am not going to say that I exactly regretted it, but I don't want to subject myself to any more of this pointless shuffling.
  
  Also, I am an atheist, and games based on religion annoy me. 

Doodle Devil

Year: 2010
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://doodlegod.com/games/doodle-devil

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Shane:

• Platform: Android 
• Hours logged: 8.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 3/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (10/20/2014): I have a weakness for build trees.  I love them, honestly.  Back in middle school, I sat for hours reading the build tree insert that came with StarCraft.  I kept reading it long past when I had memorized it.  That obsession continues through to other games but I didn't expect a game to be nothing but that mechanic.
  
  Unfortunately this isn't a very good game.  I think that is mostly because there isn't really any GAME to play.  As the screenshot above states, I did eventually find all of the elements, but after the first 40 or so, I did it out of obsession more than any feeling of entertainment.  I even feel a bit angry at myself for how many screen taps I made for essentially no good reason.
  
  So, I finished this one, but I can't recommend it.  The connections that the developers tried to make didn't usually make much sense to me, which was frustrating. And, as you are collecting these icons, there isn't anything to DO with them.  Just make more connections that reveal nothing.
  
  3/10.  Bonus for the sense of accomplishment I felt when I was done.  Another point gained because the game had Cthulhu. 

Threes!

Year: 2014
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://asherv.com/threes/

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Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 10.5
• Playthroughs: --
• Rating: 8/10

Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 10.0
• Playthroughs: --
• Rating: 8/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (9/22/2014): This game was a surprise hit for both Shane and me. Though simple to learn, this game is rather challenging, but is also very addictive. The goal of the game is to increase the value of the tiles on the board by swiping across the screen either up, down, left, or right, which moves all of the tiles in the chosen direction, and combines tiles according to some rules: 1) a "1" and a "2" tile will combine to create a "3", and 2) two identical tiles of "3" or above will combine to create a tile worth double that value (i.e. two "12" tiles create a "24"). At the end of the round, the game scores each tile and reports your final score for that round.
  
  When I first started playing this game, I expected that it would capture my attention for a couple hours at most, before I lost interest and moved on to something else, much like the game, SpellTower. But I was wrong. Several times, I found myself finishing up one round, then immediately starting another one, thinking, "I can do better."
  
  Shane, Julie, and I got into a bit of a competition to see who could break 10,000 points in a round first. Julie and I both landed scores in the 9000s, but the 10k mark eluded us. I put the game down for a month, then picked it back up, played a few rounds, and finally scored a 10,422! I may have gloated a bit after that... But nine hours later, I got an email from Shane with the title, "Eat it". Inside the email was a screenshot of his new score, 21,522. I give up.

Draw a Stickman: EPIC

Year: 2012
Genre: Puzzle, Action-Adventure
Website: http://epic.drawastickman.com/

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Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 5.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 2/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (9/16/2014): I made it through this one after putting it aside for several months.  To be honest, I never really thought of this as a game.  Throughout, this one felt like a proof of concept for a neat technology (namely starting the "game" by making the user draw two stick figures, which then serve as both a character and the player's avatar, with individual limbs moving as if walking), more than a polished offering for a puzzle-loving crowd.
  
  Many of the levels in this game have multiple ways to complete them.  Usually, I enjoy having more content to work through but everything here was...well...clunky.  The screenshot I selected even shows some of the awkwardness.  My avatar is stuck behind a rock.  I am mildly annoyed to have to see this now as I type it.
  
  All of that aside, the concepts that were being played with were reasonably neat.  If these things made their way into a more polished game, I would be happy to play it.  

Puzzle Bots

Year: 2010
Genre: Graphic Adventure, Puzzle
Website: --

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Shane:

• Platform: PC
• Hours logged: 2.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 4/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (8/25/2014): This thing is a kick.  It is small, simple, and aimed at a younger audience, but I never felt that it was talking down at those who play it.  A number of jokes that happened made me chuckle.
  
  I played it for an evening, beat it, then switched over and killed some zombies in Left4Dead.  That was a really nice evening.
  
  I don't expect that I will play this game again.  I didn't think about it after I finished it.  When my kid is old enough to play games I may sit her in front of this one... but I would rather she get good at Mario.  My rating of 4 out of 10 isn't meant as an insult to this title, and I hope it isn't taken as such.  Just... how much can you expect when you play a game for which you are 20 years too old?

Bejeweled 3

Year: 2010
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://www.popcap.com/bejeweled-3

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Shane:

• Platform: PC
• Hours logged: 8.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 5/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (7/24/2014):  It is Bejeweled.
  
  Yep.
  
  That is actually most of why I wanted to review this title.  Sure, it isn't Pong, but for my generation this is probably the most influential casual game in existence.  Think of the hours (Possibly DAYS) spent matching those endless falling jewels (or bubbles, or balloons, or letters or other goofy whatnot from whatever version not built by PopCap games.)  Think of waiting at the airport.  Sitting in your hotel room for 30 minutes before your dinner reservation.  Shoot, the waiting rooms at doctors' offices should, by now, have been renamed "Dens of Bejeweled playing" for all of the people that pass the time doing just this.
  
  People start their kids into gaming with this game.  People start their PARENTS into gaming with this game.  (I was going to say grandparents but in my world that would be freecell and sudoku.)  What more can a person say about it?
  
  And now I will say something more about it.  There are a few new game modes here.  Lighting we have seen before and classic is obviously the old style.  The Poker variant was new to me, as were some of the quest mini-games.  I wasn't particularly enthralled by the ice climbing mode (where you race the climbing columns of water, then ice, before you lose) but I played a decent amount of mining (blowing up blocks near the dirt to remove it and reveal treasure.)  The graphics were given a boost in this version, which was... neat I guess.  I don't remember ever playing a match 3 style game and thinking "this game would be so much better with some better rounding on those edges" but that could just have been me.
  
  All told, it is Bejeweled.  I gave it a 5 after calling a completion of Quest mode one playthrough.  Keep in mind, my rating of 5 isn't a slam.  It is recognition that this is a reference game.  A game with which to compare all other games.  Not sorry I spent the time while doing other things.  In the end though, I uninstalled it.  I have had enough icon matching for the time being. 

Bag It!

Year: 2011
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://www.hiddenvariable.com/bagit/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 14.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 8/10

Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 2.0
• Playthroughs: 0
• Rating: --/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (5/21/2014): When I started playing Bag It, the game immediately came across as silly and gimmicky, which is similar to how I felt about Bad Hotel. It wasn't a good sign. But it turned out that this game offered a decent amount of challenge and clever scoring, objective, and award mechanisms that kept me coming back for more.
  
  The premise of the game is that you are grabbing items from a conveyor belt at a grocery store check-stand and packing them into a grocery bag. Generally, you will want to put the stronger and heavier items (milk cartons and watermelons) on the bottom of the bag and the lighter and more fragile items (chips and eggs) on the top. But once you place an item in the bag, you can’t take it out, so some rearranging is required to keep items from getting crushed. Each item has a limit to how much weight can be placed on top of it. If that limit is exceeded by a little, a timer will start ticking down on the item, and if you don’t fix the problem before the timer runs out, the item gets crushed. If you exceed an item's weight limit by a lot (the animated character for a lighter item will flip the fuck out as you hold a heavy item such as a watermelon over its head), you get no timer, and the item simply explodes. Bonus points are awarded for combinations of items placed next to each other. For example, “Balanced Breakfast” = Milk + Orange Juice + Cereal + Eggs. Some levels require you to actually crush certain groceries and save others to solve the puzzle. Each level has a scaling objective that can earn you up to three stars, in addition to two medals, which can be achieved by meeting extra criteria (usually item combos or placing every item upright). You must unlock the second medal by earning the first one, but both can be achieved at the same time if you are lucky. Once both medals are obtained, a blue ribbon for the level is awarded.
  
  I enjoyed the fact that I could play a few rounds of this game in one sitting, then put it away. I felt accomplished when I was able to finally solve a puzzle that I had been working on for a while, especially if it gained me more stars and/or a blue ribbon. I liked that for many of the levels, achieving stars and each of the two medals required completely different strategies, but on occasion, if you played the level just right, you could grab all three stars AND get the ribbon in a single round. I felt like a freaking superhero when that happened. Some of the puzzles are rather challenging, but ultimately entirely solvable. There were a few times that I beat the level only a fraction of a second before the weight limit timer ran out on one or more items in my grocery bag. To be honest, those situations were kind of nerve-wracking and made my ass pucker, like when jumping over a bottomless pit in Super Mario Brothers.
  
  I didn't get a lot out of the game modes that kept track of your high score instead of dangling stars and ribbons over your head. I guess I just wanted to finish the game and move on to something else, so I played each one of those levels once and called it good.
  
  I decided that a playthrough could be logged by unlocking and solving every level in the game. I didn't require that all stars and blue ribbons be achieved, but unlocking some of the later levels in the game required obtaining a large percentage of the stars and ribbons anyway. After completing the last level, I ended up having scored a total of 277 out of 291 stars and 155 out of 186 blue ribbons. Not bad! All in all, I would highly recommend this game to anyone looking for a casual brain-tickler to pass some time here or there.

• Shane (6/22/2014):  It is really interesting to me that Lee got as much enjoyment out of this game as he did.  I played it for 2 hours or so and almost got through the first set of puzzles but I ... I guess I wasn't very good at it in the end.  It wasn't interesting to me, or interesting enough to make sure I knew how many milk cartons could be stacked on an egg carton before they crushed something.  I appreciate what was built here, but it was just never all that interesting.
  
  Sorry Lee.  Maybe we can agree on the next one.  :)

Bridge Constructor

Year: 2012
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://www.bridgeconstructor.com/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 8.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 7/10

Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 4.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 7/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (4/29/2014): I have found that I enjoy physics-related puzzle games like this one. Bridge Constructor is a decently challenging game with a clever difficulty scaling mechanism. After you build a bridge for a given level, you can choose which vehicle(s) to drive over it to test out the bridge’s structural integrity. The options are: a car (Easy difficulty), two small delivery trucks (Medium difficulty), or a bigass tanker truck (Hard difficulty). If your bridge isn't strong enough, then it will crumble and collapse, and the test vehicle will plunge into the river, canyon, or chasm and explode quite spectacularly.
  
  If you have read some of the other entries on this blog, you may have seen the term “Lee-mode,” which we use to refer to a game’s easiest setting. It might surprise you to know that I sent the two delivery trucks over every bridge that I built...and Shane played the game on “Lee-mode” with the car. That could explain part of why my playthrough took twice as long as his. I definitely blew up a shitload of delivery trucks on some of those levels.
  
  I enjoyed that the terrain in each level was different from the others (sometimes only in a subtle way), but those differences often had a large impact upon the approach I would have to take to build a bridge that would support the weight of the delivery trucks.
  
  After completing the game on the Medium difficulty with the delivery trucks, I then ran the tanker truck across each of my bridges to satisfy my curiosity. Some of them actually held, but most of them collapsed. I considered fixing up the remaining bridges enough to beat the game on the Hard difficulty, but I decided to move on to other games instead. I may come back to this one again someday though and see what I can do about making “tanker-ready” bridges.
  
  This game wasn't amazing, but it was entertaining and engaging enough to extract eight hours out of my life over the span of two days. So that's something. As a quick side note, one of my all-time favorite games in the physics puzzle game category is a browser game called Fantastic Contraption. You will likely be seeing a review of that one soon...

• Shane (5/6/2014): I have played several versions of this game; Elefunk, X Construction to name a couple.  I really did like all of them.  The premise is simple.  Build bridges across gaps.  Some version of real physics apply.
  
  A large part of me has the need to get this kind of thing right the first time through.  I get caught up never letting a bridge blow up, often thinking that there might be an achievement for being perfect. There never is though.  That is, so far, the best takeaway from this blogging project.  I can play some games without needing to be a world-class expert.  I am more willing to suck at it because just consuming the game isn't the only reason to play.  Probably the second best part is that I have more motivation to write stuff, but that is neither here or there.
  
  This is a fine entry into the bridge simulator world.  Clean lines, clear instructions, non-cartoony animations and some more granular controls if wanted.  If someone asked me which bridge building sim to play, it wouldn't be hard to recommend this one.  Unless they were on PS3 and hated elephants...because I murdered so many damn elephants in Elefunk... 

SpellTower

Year: 2011
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://www.spelltower.com/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 2.5
• Playthroughs: --
• Rating: --/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (5/2/2014): I tend to enjoy puzzle games, and I get pretty excited about words, so I felt that SpellTower held a lot of potential. But for whatever reason, I didn't get sucked into it for very long. I enjoyed the Boggle-like search for words (BTW, I love this), and the rare time that I was able to link a Z, Q, X, or J, it was satisfying to see an entire line get blown away. I felt pretty clever whenever that happened. However, despite the fact that this game tickled my noodle, I still got bored with it after a few hours.
  
  A couple months went by, and in preparation for writing this review, I reloaded the game in order to grab a screenshot. After taking a pretty glorious screenshot (IMO), I found that I wasn't ready to put the game down yet, and I ended up playing a few extra rounds.
  
  Once again, our project guidelines dictate that I cannot record a rating for this game, since I neither logged any sort of playthrough, nor played the game for the requisite 10 hours, but I feel that it would have landed somewhere around a 6.5 rounded up.
  
  SpellTower reminds me of Scrabble. But unlike SpellTower, Scrabble stresses me out. I get very worked up and extremely competitive. This is a weird thing for me. I love playing tabletop games, and I truly have no issue with losing most games. I love the interaction with others at the gaming table, and I get tremendous enjoyment out of watching the gameplay unfold in clever and unique ways. Except for Scrabble. And chess. I know that my history with chess is to blame for this. I spent several years in high school studying chess openings and practicing my endgame strategies. I played with the pros at Borders Books on Monday nights, and I took what I learned there and used it against my friends and the weirdos that collected for Chess Club in the Eagle High School Geometry classroom at lunch time. I was the Chess Club founder, president, and often the ladder leader. (Side note: We had only one Chess Club tournament. There was even a trophy. I didn't win it. Shane, do you still have that trophy somewhere?? You dick.) Then I quit playing. I couldn't handle the stress. I discovered that Scrabble causes me the same issues. Over the decade since high school, I have played a handful of games of chess (and Scrabble), and the stress came back every time. I've decided that I need to fix that shit. I miss both of those games. Random thought vomiting over.

Hundreds

Year: 2013
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://playhundreds.com/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 5.0
• Playthroughs: 0
• Rating: --/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (5/1/2014): When I first started playing Hundreds, I felt that the game was unique, very clever, and had a lot of potential. I definitely sucked me in, and over the next two days, I dumped five hours into solving as many of the 100 puzzles as I could. When I found one that I couldn't beat after a few attempts, I would skip it and move on to the next one. After trying all 100 puzzles, I went back and completed several of the ones that I had skipped. I got pretty damn lucky on some of them, but a few of the others completely stumped me. Level 89 was one of them. A Google search yielded several others venting their frustrations with that puzzle, including one comment saying: “Level 89 will be the death of me.” Some people suggested playing the game on a tablet, since the dots on the phone can be too small to precisely and successfully manipulate with fat fingers. I didn't feel like grinding this game to completion, so I opted to walk away a mostly satisfied customer. In the end, I think that I solved 88 puzzles out of 100.
  
  Our video game project guidelines dictate that we cannot rate a game unless we log 10 hours of gameplay or make it to “the end” of the game. Since I only played five hours, and I wasn't able to beat all of the puzzles, it didn't feel right to log a playthrough, and thus rate the game. But if I were to assign a rating to it, it would be a solid 7. I’m starting to see that for these Android games, the more successful they are at extracting gameplay time from me AND delivering a satisfying ending, the higher the rating I will give. This may seem obvious, but in looking at the Android gameplay data that I have collected so far, the two games that have scored 9s were also the ones that I played the most (Kingdom Rush: 21.0 hours, Zombie Gunship: 17.0 hours). The 8s have less time logged (Ridiculous Fishing: 12.5 hours, Rymdkapsel: 9.0 hours, Spider: 8.5 hours, Gemini Rue: 8.0 hours). And the 7s have even less (Bridge Constructor: 8.0 hours, Solar 2: 5.0 hours, Jack Lumber: 4.5 hours). Fascinating. Yes, I’m a huge nerd.

Katamari Damacy

Year: 2004
Genre: Puzzle, Action
Website: http://katamaridamacy.jp/

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Lee:

• Platform: PS3
• Hours logged: 5.5
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 9/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (3/31/2014): I seem to remember about a decade ago Shane insisted that, as a fellow Japanophile, I must play a game called Katamari Damacy. Shane’s recommendations rarely lead me astray (except perhaps for sour beers and Led Zeppelin III), so I bought a copy of the game for my PS2 on Amazon. It turns out that it was a fantastic recommendation! Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when it hit me that I absolutely had to play it again. But unfortunately, I had given the game away when I got rid of my PS2 several years ago. After a bit of research, I discovered that there was a $10 PS3 digital download for the game from Amazon. Sold. I think within the first five minutes after downloading and launching the game, I likely proclaimed “What the fuck?!” two or three dozen times. The intro scene includes dancing pandas, rainbows, butterflies, mushrooms, and a gigantic dude with a funny hat and a monster bulging package in his purple tights. WTF?? I had almost forgotten how deliciously fucked up some of the things you find in Japanese culture can be.
  
  It turns out that the gigantic, flamboyant dude is the King of the Cosmos, and he did a few too many acid-laced shrooms one night (OK, that’s not part of the story) and broke all of the stars in the sky. Your task, as a tiny little prince picking up objects by rolling around a ball (called a “katamari”), is to make new stars for the sky...and to put up with the ridicule, harassment, and impatience of the rambling and ultra-strange king. After finishing the tutorial, the first level starts you off at about the size of a mouse, and you are only able to pick up tiny objects like dice, thumbtacks, and marbles. Once you reach a certain size, the screen zooms out, you and your katamari increase in size, and you are then able to pick up even bigger objects like Mahjong tiles, Lego blocks, and snails. This process of rolling up increasingly larger items to grow your katamari repeats until you are at least the size that the king tells you to be at the beginning of the level. When the time limit for the level is up, the king appears and scoops you up and brings you back into outer space using a Royal Rainbow, which he shoots out of his gaping mouth. WTFFF?!  If you achieved the required katamari size within the allotted time, the King of the Cosmos makes it into a star and tosses it up into space (after telling you that you could have done better); if not, he gets SUPER pissed and things get a little dark and scary.
  
  
  Bottom line? I loved it. I loved it when I played it on my PS2 years ago, and I loved logging this recent playthrough. There are points during the gameplay when it is hard to see where you are going because your huge katamari and large surrounding world objects obscure your field of view, but if you just keep rolling, your katamari will usually quickly get big enough for the screen to zoom out another step. I enjoy the fact that the controls are very simple, as you only use the two analog sticks on the PS2/3 controller, but mastering the controls still requires a degree of coordination and dexterity. Completing some of the levels with the allotted time can be challenging, but the level goals are all reasonably achievable. For a few of the maps, if you do really well on them, then your katamari will get so big that you can just roll up everything in the map. When that happens, it is pretty gloriously satisfying.
  
  I would highly recommend this game to anyone who is in the mood for a dose of humor and whimsy in your gameplay. The game is over-the-top in a lot of ways, and over-the-top fun is definitely one of them!

Little Inferno

Year: 2013
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://tomorrowcorporation.com/littleinferno

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 4.5
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 5/10

Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 4.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 6/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (3/5/2014): WTF? I can't believe I actually played through this game. The premise of the game is that you order items from a series of unlockable catalogs, then you burn those items in your fireplace. I actually almost enjoyed discovering the item combinations to satisfy the list of challenges, and setting fire to the various items was moderately amusing, but gaining money for deliberately burning the spiders that crawled around in the fireplace was a little sick. Seriously, WTF?
  
  For 4.5 hours, I kept playing with the hope that the game would get better. It didn't. The entire game takes place either staring into your fireplace (with little breaks of flipping through the catalogs of items; referencing the item combination challenge list; or reading the mail from the deranged, highly unstable, and seriously creepy little girl next door)...until the ending, which involves one of the strangest and most pointless WTF moments in my gaming experience thus far.
  
  To wrap this up, I leave you with a seemingly appropriate video: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/blogs/the-travers-take/travers-rango-is-the-most-wtf-movie-of-all-time-20110303.

Aether

Year: 2008
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle
Website: http://armorgames.com/play/2153/aether/

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Shane:

• Platform: PC
• Hours logged: 0.5
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 5/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (3/5/2014): Really quick, both in playthrough and in idea-to-execution.  A message I saw somewhere when I started playing this said it was 14 days of development on this game.  For that kind of effort from the developers I have to admit that I am a bit impressed.
  
  The game is really simple.  You play as a thing riding another thing that has a really big tongue.  This tongue can reach out and grab clouds, then stars, and propel you throughout the cosmos.  Directing your flight towards the helpful little arrows on the screen will let you land on different planets where you can find and solve a puzzle and make the planet "happy" (as judged by the music change and the anthropomorphic faces changing from frowning to smiling.
  
  Do I recommend this game?  I can't even TRY to answer that question.  All I am willing to say right now is that I was happy to play it.  It helps to flesh out more points on my "gaming experience" chart.  I will likely play more of the games in "The Basement Collection" when next I have 30 minutes and I want a quick thrill.