Interstellar?

It looks like our gallant old voyager probe may have just stepped outside the bounds of our solar system.

Thats pretty cool. A machine built here on earth decades ago has managed to not only stay functional, but make it outside the influence of our sun.

Check it out On the discovery website

Some night photography i've been playing with

Recently at the Texas Rennasiance Festival (which I and a few friends got to work at on cast on this year, woot) I got a chance to take some shots by the light of the full moon.

They turned out halfway decent.

 

Check it out on my Flickr Account

Mini Review: Organ Trail

 

Today I figured that I would take a look at a mobile game (since I seem to be spending more and more time interacting with mobile media.) So today I'm going to briefly go over the game Organ Trail (not to be confused with Oregon trail). The game is a riff off of the super popular original Oregon trail and presents a very well polished  and clean take on the classic.

Much like in the original Oregon trail you make a few decisions about how you will start out your game choosing what and how much of each kind of supplies that you'll take in your beaten up station wagon in an attempt to survive the journey from one end of the country to the other.

As in the original incarnation, the journey across the United States will not be an easy one. Your station wagon will break down, your friends will be bitten by zombies (and you may have to pull the trigger to end their suffering) , and you wont have enough bullets to take out all the baddies in your way. The same harsh choices that made the original game a classic present themselves in different ways in this new take.

The game, written by a small indie development team called The Men Who Wear Many Hats, comes across as incredibly polished and well done. It's retro graphics look like they came straight off of an old apple and the sound and music design follow suite.

The only complaint that I might possibly be able to formulate about the game play is that, at least on phones, the aiming mechanism for some of the action portions of the game (usually shooting at zombies) is a little harder to pull off than it might need to be. This isn't quite as much of a problem of my tablet since the screen is larger and lets me be a little more precise. On my phone, however, aiming can be quite tricky. Between tapping to move your character and clicking and dragging to aim and release shots sometimes you will find your character moving when you intend to shoot or shooting at nothing instead of moving. On smaller screened devices this can make aiming a bit of a bother.

Aiming trouble aside I feel its a pretty solid game for scratching a retro itch on the go.

Check out their website here

(played on Motorola Razr and Asus Transformer)

Mini review: Dead hungry diner

I've been playing video games since the late eighties so it's rare these days that I come across a game that really sucks me in for hours at a go. Dead hungry diner manages just that.

I bought the game on a whim but it turned out to be a fairly polished and thoroughly enjoyable action/puzzle game. Similar to diner dash there are a number of tables on the field at which guests must be seated and served food, but quickly the game begins adding other concepts like guests who hate each other and will fight if placed next to each other.

The difficult ramps up very smoothly allowing you time to get used to each new concept before it cranks things up to an even more frantic pace. Black market games definitely spent time getting the balance just so and it shows.

As the action progresses you will also be able to spend some of your hard earned coin on various upgrades and spells that allow you to avert disastrous fights or soothe angry unread customers.

All of the action is delivered through well rendered 2d illustrations that are smoothly animated (much like pop cap's plants vs zombies) and accompanied via a well thought out score and sound effects that keep from grating even as often as they get played.

If you enjoy puzzle games or just need a break from orc slaying and head shotting trash talking 12 year olds then dead hungry diner does not disappoint.

Starting up again

Rebuilding a couple of masks for the fall ren fairs
We are also hoping to get to hit the Colorado Renaissance fair at the end of the month.