It’s been over a month since my last post. What could possibly explain such an inexcusable lack of updates? Well, I got married and spent half a month traveling around the Turkish countryside. If you’ve ever gotten married (and if you haven’t, I highly recommend it) I’m sure you will forgive my inattention to this site, and while there are countless game and writing related topics I’m itching to talk about with you, today I’d simply like to share some of the amazing experiences my wife and I have had over the past month.

The Build-Up

From the beginning, my wife, Dassance, and I knew we wanted a non-traditional wedding. We wanted a celebration, not a ceremony. We also knew that we would be preparing, planning and executing the entire thing ourselves — no room for a wedding planner or professional catering in our budget or our vision. Shortly after the proposal, we had it all figured out. Six months before the wedding we were ready. Food? Taco truck. Decorations? Decided. Cake? Mom’s on it. Music? Kick ass iPod playlists. Drinks? Homebrew and mojitos. There wasn’t a question about our wedding that we couldn’t answer.

We spent the months leading up to the wedding becoming less and less prepared. If you haven’t experienced it, it is difficult to explain, but the time leading up to the wedding, all the way up to the second you begin to walk down the aisle, is an epic crescendo of entropy. Long before the wedding, when the event is still abstract and unreal, it seems so easy. Saying “we will have thousands of origami butterflies and Japanese paper lanterns” solves the problem of decoration. But it doesn’t make the butterflies or hang the lanterns. As the day, hour and even minute of the wedding approaches, the sheer amount of work that needs doing in order to realize your vision comes into increasingly sharp focus, to the point that you find yourself running in circles shouting for decorative thumbtacks.

Mercifully, the moment of the wedding arrives and the frenzied preparation comes to a silent halt as people begin to walk down the aisle. What’s done is done and what couldn’t be finished is left undone and life goes on. Those decorative thumbtacks that seemed so important ten minutes ago evaporate when you see the love of your life, radiant, coming down the aisle to join you for the rest of your life.

The Big Day

Our wedding was the most fun I’ve ever had. After the short eight minute ceremony, my new wife and I emerged onto the most amazing scene of merriment. There was juggling, hula-hooping, piñatas, confetti and of course copious amounts of alcohol. Most importantly, there were 120 close friends and family from across the country, all gathered to wish my wife and me a joyous life.

The celebration after the ceremony is all a bit of a blur. The food was great, the company unmatched, and the wine flowed like a river (maybe explaining the blur…). Despite efforts to speak with everyone and thank them for coming, it quickly became apparent that it was a losing battle and before we knew it, dusk had settled on the reception and it was time to dance.

The great irony of weddings is that they are rituals to bring two people together, but those two people inevitably spend the entire night apart. Dassance and I spent very little time together after the ceremony, but the dancing was a welcome chance for us to escape the chains of conversations and relax in each other’s arms for a few short minutes before being whisked away into another game of “Ninjas” or a conversation with a long-lost friend. But it was all okay because the next day you get to wake up with your wife, while that long-lost friend is back on an airplane and who knows when you will get to see him again. The next day you realize that it’s not just a celebration for the bride and groom, but for everyone who came because they love you and want to share in your new life.

Together At Last

We had a quick turn-around between wedding and honeymoon. Our team of generous helpers got the wedding site all cleaned up, leaving us the opportunity to relax and get ready for Turkey. We decided on Turkey because we wanted to go somewhere neither of us had been before, that had amazing history, as well as beaches for the obligatory post-wedding relaxation. Dassance and I are both annoyingly well-traveled and we worked our way through all of Western Europe and much of the Americas before we found a place that fit our criteria.

Turkey had been on my radar since my brother came back from a tour of Europe with stories of amazing food and better Greek ruins than Greece. I’m a sucker for ruins. Show me a tumbled down pile of marble and I become invigorated, gaining an almost superhuman ability to trek through blazing sun as the wrecked city comes to life in my mind. I hear the bustle of citizens as I walk down two thousand-year old roads, feel the roar of crowd wash over me as I sit in the seats of an ancient amphitheater.  Sadly, ruins seem to have the opposite effect on my new wife. More like kryptonite to her Superman,  Dassance trudged on, amazed and awed by what we were witnessing, but drained by the experience, and as the days of ruin-watching wore on, she became weaker and weaker.

It was time for a break, and we found it on Bozcaada, a tiny island that has been producing wine for Dionysus worship for the last four thousand years. And it had beaches. Beautiful, clean Aegean beaches. A day and a half on Bozcaada and Dassance was ready for Troy. Not the movie, Troy – that put us both to sleep… on three consecutive nights. No, after relaxing on the beach we made our way to the real Troy. Not much to look at anymore, but the weight of history that is packed into that tiny archeological site is stunning. We had experienced ruins far grander, but Troy felt both familiar and momentous. Visiting the ancient city that spawned both the city of Rome (according to legend) and some of the greatest tales ever told fulfilled a lifelong dream.

But it was by far not the only dream of mine to be fulfilled of late. I have married the love of my life, celebrated in grand fashion with a party that far exceeded our expectations, and added another amazing country to the list! So forgive me for not posting sooner. It’s been a busy month.

Every board game I can remember playing as a kid was competitive. Most were simply a race to get to a space on the board, like Shoots and Ladders or Sorry (I fondly refer to it as “Sorry I made you play this game”), other games, like Monopoly,  were epic quests to slowly torture your friends and make them never want to see a polyhedron again. Playing these games as a kid, I learned how to win and lose gracefully. More importantly, I learned that winning’s no fun against a sore loser, and sore winners make losing even more excruciating than it already is.

Psychology of Winning and Losing

I’m no psychologist, but I’ve played a lot of games in my day. I know that it feels good to win, I know that it sucks to lose, and I know that people react very differently (often badly) in either outcome. In my experience, it’s much more difficult to lose to another human that it is to lose to a system. Not that losing is ever fun, but it’s easier to die in a video game, for example, than it is to be slowly and inexorably driven into abject poverty by your “friends” over the course of 5 hours. In a video game we usually just shrug it off and hit continue.

Interestingly, the feeling of accomplishment and success from beating a video game isn’t diminished compared to winning against your friends. In many ways it feels better because the video game usually won’t bitch about that cheat code you entered back at the title screen or complain about how it never wins.

This combination of satisfaction in victory and perseverance in defeat makes video games an appealing alternative to board games, especially for those who don’t handle losing gracefully. If only we could find some way to capitalize on this quirk of the human psyche in the board gaming industry… But wait! We can!

Enter the cooperative board game. Making a board game with satisfying wins and soft losses isn’t easy and games approach cooperative play in different ways. In the following section I look closely at several cooperative board games and see what works and what doesn’t.

Levels of Cooperative Play

Straight-Up Coop: Arkham Horror is a prime example of this type of coop board game. It’s the players versus the rules and the luck of the draw. Can the players coordinate their actions and utilize the skills and tools provided to overcome the obstacles created by the board? This style of coop play is satisfying with the least potential for conflict because in the end, everybody  at the table is a winner or a loser and all players are united in a common goal. Any conflict between players is cause by different ideas of the best way to achieve the same goal.

Straight-Up Coop (Or Is It?): This is Straight-Up Coop with a mechanic that creates the possibility of an adversary amongst the players. Shadows Over Camelot uses this method. It’s a good style for players who enjoy surprises and munchkining in their games but, in the case of Shadows Over Camelot, once the traitor is revealed, it’s pretty much game over for the traitor. If I were to make a game with this mechanic, I would create a more satisfying play experience for the traitor after being discovered. Part of the reason for the unsatisfying options for the traitor post-revelation might be simply incentive to keep your treacherous nature concealed. Still, if the traitor is discovered early in the game, it’s an hour and a half of not much fun for one of the players at the table…

You Scratch My Back, I’ll Stab Yours: Games like Munchkin and Risk allow the players to cooperate if and when they want to. In my experience, this sort of coop is exciting, creating some very entertaining table-talk and player interaction, but inevitably leading to betrayal and in some cases hurt feelings. This type of game is still competitive at its core and there can be only one winner, so cooperation is ephemeral and alliances are strictly on an “until it serves me better to stab you in the back” basis.

It’s Us Against You!: Mansions of Madness, the sequel to Arkham Horror, is only semi-cooperative. Instead of players against the game, it’s players against the “Keeper,” a kind of referee and storyteller somewhat analogous to the Dungeon Master in D&D. While this model works well in D&D, where the DM can’t actually “win” the game, in Mansions of Madness, things can get a little touchy. The fact that the Keeper is actually trying to win the game crates a fair amount of conflict between players and keeper. Add that to the fact that the odds are very stacked against the players and you have a recipe for frustration and a tough loss. With this game, it is best that players who don’t lose well play the keeper.

The Referee: The obvious example of this type of cooperative game is D&D and other table top RPGs. While not exactly a board game, D&D has evolved more and more towards the genre with game pieces (miniatures) and a game board (dungeon tiles). In this type of cooperative game, one person at the table plays the referee (DM in D&D) who acts as an arbiter and storyteller. Their job is to make sure the story progresses and that the players are having fun and playing by the rules. Many DMs don’t understand this, but the referee is not an adversarial presence, even though they control the forces of evil. The players, however, are usually united in the common goal of fighting the DM’s monsters and destroying his carefully laid out plans. Conflicts at the table are similar to straight-up coop in that players have the same goal, but often disagree on the best way of achieving it.

Cooperative Gameplay in the Games of Ismia

So what does all of this mean for the games of Ismia? Readers know that I have been working on implementing some cooperative elements into Heroes of Ismia with the new party quests. The party quests in Heroes could be described as straight-up coop, but I’d like to work in some more munchkining opportunities. Or perhaps I could come up with a version of the game that requires all the players to work together against a single epic quest, instead of having each player working on their own. In the end, though, I think Heroes will always be a largely solitary journey, despite my efforts to remedy that.

What’s the answer?  How ’bout a new game! It’s quite premature, but I have been working on the next game in the Ismia franchise. Siege of Ismia will be a straight-up coop game from start to finish. It’s been set aside while I work Heroes into a presentable prototype, but once developed, Siege will be a 1-6 player game where each player has a defined role and multiple paths to victory or defeat based on how well they play against the random elements put forth by the normal progression of a turn. I also have some interesting new battle mechanics worked out that I look forward to sharing once Heroes is closer to completion.

For now, I will continue to work on incorporating some more cooperation into Heroes of Ismia through party quests or some other mechanic I haven’t yet devised. If you have any ideas I’d love to hear them. Drop a line in the comments section.

I’ve been visiting my best friend up in Seattle who’s a motion video artist with PopCap Games, and I had the opportunity to help his team out with a video shoot yesterday. Without divulging any information that hasn’t already been divulged, it was an afternoon of mischief and shenanigans and yes, even a little bit of hijinks stirred into the mix– a cocktail of fun I like to think of as PopCappery (a term that may already exist, but I am re-coining now).

For the event, I donned the fetid guise of Zombie Temp Worker and shambled around a garden for the afternoon. Turns out, Zombie doesn’t have a green thumb… well, he does, but the only way it’s going to grow any plants is as compost because Zombie demonstrated he doesn’t know the business end of a rake. It was refreshing working with a group of such talented people who get the job done well but know how to have fun while doing it.

To cap off the whole day, we got a group of PopCappers together to play test Ismia. It was the first time that I had the chance to step aside and watch people play the game and the experience was enlightening. Everyone provided great feedback, and I look forward to working in all the great suggestions.

If you’re interested in seeing more adventures of Zombie Temp Worker, check the PopCap blog regularly. There should be some great undead PopCappery coming your way soon!

It’s been several play tests since the last revision of Heroes of Ismia, in which classes were completely reworked and character movement was increased amongst other changes, and I’m ready to give another update on the state of the game. I’m in the middle of hurried revisions because next week I’m going to be play testing with a group of professional game designers and I’d rather not embarrass myself. On the one hand, I feel like the game is really beginning to take shape, with fairly well-balanced combats thanks to the tier system, and quicker quest completion from the 2d6 movement, but there’s still a long way to go and the bulk of the game feels largely repetitive. Here are a few changes I’m working on to shake things up:

Wandering Monsters

A long-time problem with the game is that combat didn’t feel incredibly integrated. I tried adding more combat based quests and greater incentives to go monster hunting, but we still found it possible to go most of the game without having a single combat. Enter the wandering monster. I changed one of the wild card sides of each resource die to a wild/monster. During a gather action, if you roll 2 or more wild/monsters, you must immediately have a combat and defeat the monster before you can collect your resources. This rule proved a little problematic early in the last play test when my fiance got trapped in a catch 22. She needed to complete quests to be powerful enough to survive a combat, and she needed to gather to complete quests, resulting in two character deaths; an issue that may need to be addressed.

Non-Combat Powers

After all the changes I made to character powers, when actually play testing, they seemed a bit overwhelming. Players often forgot about powers because of the abundance of options. Also, most powers were combat based, and players rarely used their stamina or magic resources for anything other than drawing an action card. To fix this, I am working on gathering and movement powers for each class; powers that will require stamina or magic and enhance actions other than combat. Hopefully this will force players to more carefully monitor their resources.

Party Quests

This is the most exciting change: quests that require players to work together and coordinate their turns, an idea suggested by my friend Jeff, a partner in many a board game adventure. Party quests represent global events that require the attention of every player. Failure to complete a party quest results in a permanent penalty or alteration to the game board, but success yields incredible rewards for all players.

The hope with the addition of party quests is that player interaction will be stressed even more. A drawback to many board games is that players spend much of their time focussed on their own goals. They are only reminded that there are other players involved when their actions are thwarted or when they are offered another beer. The PvP powers and cards I put into effect in the previous iteration helped, providing some of the highlights of the last few play tests, and this is a chance to add even more.

More to come after the next round of play tests!

As Dungeons & Dragons expands its playership and branches out into new genres, I found myself wondering how I could take these new games, specifically the D&D board games, and use them as a tool to enhance my home campaign. Today I’d like to share a few ideas about how to integrate the Castle Ravenloft board game into your home DnD campaign to create a dynamic encounter.

The Background:

My players had been investigating the nefarious dealings of Ramander the Wise and his attempts to undermine the Lady of Pain in the planner hub of Sigil. Ultimately, they needed to gain the Lady’s favor to be granted permission to use a closely guarded portal to the Planner Weavers where they hope to acquire a patch of space-time fabric. After defeating Ramander on his own demi-plane and upsetting his plans, they found that the plane they were on was being held together by Ramander’s will alone, and was quickly falling apart. They passed through a portal and found themselves on a levitating platform of rough stone. Debris drifted everywhere and in the distance the party could see several other floating platforms, one of which bore a gateway back to Sigil, the other two held chests guarded by four pillars of crackling electricity.

The Setup:

I selected several Castle Ravenloft Dungeon Tiles from the board game and stuck them to a flip mat (the flip mat was used simply for determining range of attacks). I used the “Start” tile as the party’s goal and placed the “Arcane Circle” tile at the opposite end of the flip mat as the entrance. Between these two tiles I placed two tiles with no walls and put a d4 on each corner to represent the energy pillars that guard the loot.

I then picked an assortment of 4 white triangle dungeon tiles and 7 black triangle dungeon tiles, shuffled them and placed the stack face-down near the board.

The Monsters:

For the encounter I used the following monsters but changed their descriptions and attack types to physical or electrical.

The Pillars – Lich Remnant (level 16 minion); I only used the Orb of Obliteration power from one pillar, with the other pillars “charging” it using the Obliteration Empowerment effect.  The pillars can fire once, then require a turn to recharge, thus this powerful attack can only happen once every 2 turns. Alternately, you could assign a recharge 5 or 6 to the firing pillar

Black Triangle Tile Defenders (Minions)- Lich Remnants described as crackling lightning beings. Change damage types to lightning – or – Angel of Valor Veteran. I took away their fly speed.

White Triangle Tile Defenders – Angel of Battle described as an animated heap of the drifting debris, held together by crackling energy. Again, no fly speed and their devastating Storm of Blades attack reduced their move speed to 2. – or - Drider Shadowspinner. Throwing nets of clinging energy and shooting bolts of electricity.

The Encounter:

To move across the game board, a player must stand at the edge of a tile and make either an Arcana, Wisdom or Charisma check (moderate DC) to exert their will on the drifting debris and form another platform. The player draws the top tile from the stack and places it with the arrow facing their character, just as in the Ravenloft board game. Depending on the color of the triangle, the DM determines which monster to place on the new tile’s bone pile. The first time this occurred, I had players roll initiative, then kept them acting in initiative order for the rest of the encounter, even when no monsters were present.

Like the board game, this method of tile placement creates a random dungeon with often inconvenient turns or dead ends. More often than not, as players work their way toward the exit, their path will be forced to meander. They can intentionally reset a tile either by making an Arcana, Wisdom or Charisma check (difficult DC) while adjacent to a tile to discard it, or by moving away from it. If there are no monsters or players on a tile or on an adjacent tile, that tile is discarded and shuffled back into the draw stack.

This setup created a dynamic, but lengthy encounter with 5 standard monsters and about 14 minions. The experience reward was significant, but they deserved it for defeating the climactic battle of the adventure.

The Rewards:

Of course the party’s actions were appreciated. So much so that the Lady of Pain made a rare appearance, accompanied by her Dabus minions, to grant the players their wish: a blade from her headpiece that functions as a single-use key to the Planner Weavers. Once used, the key converts to a powerful magical dagger.

I’ve been on vacation in upstate New York for a friend’s wedding which is the main reason for my lackadaisity in updating this site. At the SF airport on the way out of town I picked up a copy of “A Feast for Crows,” book 4 in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” series. I powered through the first three books several years ago. “A Game of Thrones” was one of the most intriguing and gritty fantasy novels I had ever read. I petered out around the middle of book 4 when my friend asked me to return his copy and didn’t pick it up again for 3 years. Now, I find myself lost in a net of intrigues and alliances as I try to pick up the dimly remembered threads of plot and piece out the tapestry that Martin wove in the first 3 books. I am supremely jealous of all you with HBO or onDemand cable and the ability to watch the much-lauded live-action miniseries staring Borimir (that’s his name, right?) as I’m sure that would help me get a better grasp on what is happening three books later.

The Round-Up

Here are some things that have been distracting me from work lately.

Peter Jackson has been slowly releasing pictures of the 12 dwarves in full costume and makeup. The producers of the Hobbit are playing their cards pretty close to the vest so any little scrap thrown to the hungry masses makes a bit of a stir. And this is a pretty big scrap… One of everyone’s main concerns with the production of the Hobbit has been how to make the 12 dwarves distinct and recognizable without having the epic movie degrade into some CG extravaganza of Snow White.

These pictures show that they’ve done a great job keeping the production from looking like a garden gnome infestation. But hey, did we expect anything else from the gurus at WETA? Thanks to theOneRing.net for bringing us the pics and all the latest Hobbit news!

There are shenanigans over at everyone’s favorite casual gaming company. Congratulations to all our friends at PopCap games which was recently acquired by EA. Here’s to keeping it real. Also, they have a fun new blog, written mostly by the always entertaining Jeff Green. Check it out for a good laugh.

I spent a good 3 hours playing Tower Defense games on kongregate.com last night when I could have been doing something productive. My fiance accused me of wasting my time on one silly TD clone after another (“They’re different, I swear! In this one I use monkeys to pop balloons and in this one I use gems to smash little bug things…”) while railing against formulaic writing in novels and T.V. programming. Touché my dear. But Tower Defense still rocks and the butler did it.

At one point, not too long ago, I was a voracious (if painfully slow) reader. Sadly, a string of not-quite-interesting books and a slew of distractions all but killed my reading for the last year or so. It’s a sad turn of events that I decided to resolve with some good high fantasy. Being removed from my favorite genre for so long made the towering fantasy aisles of a bookstore and the vast untamed Amazon into treacherous places of unfamiliar names and covers. Luckily, I found a reliable guide in the gentlemen over at Penny Arcade, whose always insightful blog and comic pointed me in the right direction. Tycho’s endorsement eventually led me to pick up a copy of Patrick Rothfuss’s  ”The Name of the Wind” and I haven’t put it down since.

I figured any novel (the author’s first I should note) to garner the unabashed praise of such storied fantacists as Ursula K. Le Guin and Terry Brooks deserves a good try and I was not disappointed. From the beginning I have been captivated by the tone and pace of the story. I was first struck by how real it feels, a difficult thing to achieve in fantasy. It is easy for me to get lost in a fantasy novel, but there is usually a part of me that remembers that what I’m reading is a fictional story in a fantastical world. “The Name of the Wind” reads more like a history than a fantasy, due in large part to the unique frame the author has created for his narrative.  The tale itself is a story within a story, told by the protagonist, Kvothe. At times another story is told within this frame, creating a rich historical background in which the story unfolds like a great play. I find myself living alongside Kvothe, through his worst times and his triumphs. It is a true testament to Rothfuss’s mastery of language and pacing that, in a scene when Kvothe was to perform before an audience, I felt myself grow clammy and light-chested, the exact sensation I used to feel before going onstage with my bass. I won’t speak too much more about “The Name of the Wind” for fear of spoilers, but if you haven’t already read it, do so. Now.

It is my great fortune that, while enraptured by Kvothe’s  tale, Gamefly delivered a game that I can play without playing, thus allowing me to revive my old hobby of reading insatiably, while continuing to play video games. Gran Tourismo 5 arrived the other day, and while I’m not a huge fan of racing games, it is lots of fun to purchase an old clunker, supe it up and blow away the competition. There is a mode in Gran Tourismo 5 that allows you to create an AI driver and issue commands to him while he races in your car. There is supposed to be some strategy to the orders, but put the driver in a hot enough car and the machine does all the work. Sit back, read your book, and wait for the prize money to roll in. The mode is a blessing for people who love video games but don’t want to play them, which means it will be perfect for me, at least until I finish “The Name of the Wind” and the recently released book 2 in the series, “The Wise Man’s Fear.”

On Monday I shared some of the Flash projects I developed in my effort to learn AS3.0. They were not so much games as studies of code that will be integral to almost every game I make on my own. Today, I’d like to share my first true game; a game with a defined objective and win/loss conditions. Again, this game was written from a tutorial in the book Foundation Game Design with Flash, by Rex van der Spuy , so I can’t take full credit, but I am happy to say that I made a few improvements on the game as presented in the book, including the hangman graphics and a few minor functionality details to make the game play more smoothly.

The game should be pretty self-explanatory. Just try to guess a random number between 1 and 100. You have ten tries, which should be plenty!

Don’t think that my silence has been out of idleness! One of the many things that has kept me busy of late is my plan to add an entire new section to this site dedicated to reviews of board games (and maybe video games but there are plenty of video game review sites that will be hit up before this humble blog). Partially inspired by the delivery of Mansions of Madness, Dassance and my first wedding present, I’ve decided to create a page on this site where I can discuss different board games and maybe get some recommendations from you in the comments!

But board games and website redesigns are hardly the main thing keeping me busy lately.  As many of you may know, I’ve been learning AS3.0 and game design in Flash. I’m most of the way through my first Beginner programming book, and the next one is in the mail. I also found a nifty little WordPress plugin that allows me to easily insert SWF (Flash movie) files into a post for all of you to waste some time on! So here are a couple of projects I’ve been working on. Neither is a proper game. Instead they are studies in techniques that will be invaluable when it comes to designing and developing a real game.

First is one of the earliest projects from the book, Foundation Flash for Beginners. It has a couple of flaws and could benefit from a restart button. The only way to restart the “game” is by refreshing the entire page. But go ahead! Use the buttons to explore the cute kitty’s (modeled after our own Domino) little world and even meet a new friend!

It’s a far stretch to call this next one a game, but you do get to play the part of a space-faring pig exploring Phobos which you must admit is pretty cool! Again, there are a couple of problems with this one, but the main purpose of the project was not to create a perfect game but to get the player to move across the stage, then once it reaches a certain point on the stage, have the background move to create a sense of continued motion. Anyone who has played a video game knows that these two aspects are fundamental to 95% of games out there. You will need to click on the game before the arrow keys will control the game file.

I’m still having a blast learning how to program and while these are just baby program with very simple code, it’s not too shabby considering I didn’t know what a method or an argument or even a class was two weeks ago.

In my next post I’ll share my first true game, a tiny little thing, but playable from start to finish with defined objectives and the ability to win or lose. What is it? You’ll have to wait until next time. For now, enjoy Phobos and the cat-infested pastures of my Flash projects!

Just a quick post tonight about some of the games I’ve been playing lately. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had much time for gaming. My Gamefly queue is stagnant, and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood remains unbeaten in my Xbox tray. Between designing Ismia and learning Flash game design, I’ve been eeking in precious minutes of gaming and I’ve found myself drawn back to the wonderful world of PopCap. In particular, I’ve been hovering around Zuma Blitz, PopCap’s frenetic facebook version of the classic Zuma. It never ceases to amaze me that the simplest of game mechanics can yield the most addictive of games, a trait of gamer psychology that PopCap has mastered. In both Bejeweled and Zuma, two of their most addictive games, the central mechanic is simply “match the colors,” and it keeps the user enthralled for hours on end.

Zuma Blitz is, dare I say, nearly a perfect game for me right now for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it is time limited. It won’t allow you to play for more than a few minutes at a time, before having to wait for your turns to refresh, giving me plenty of time to return to the things I should be doing. But even better, it incorporates a system of character advancement, making your little colored-ball-spitting frog more and more powerful the more you play. I read a study of game psychology that showed people play games not because they are fun, but because of the sense of accomplishment they feel when rewarded for completing objectives. The system of leveling up in Zuma Blitz taps right into that part of my brain. If you haven’t tried it on facebook yet, give it a shot. It’s a blast. See if you can beat my top score. Or better yet, see if you can beat my best friend (and PopCap employee) Joey Trimmer’s top score. Good luck with that.

Another game I just started dabbling with today is the newly released XBLA game Daggerdale, the first Dungeons & Dragons 4e video game. I’ve been looking forward to this release for a while because video games provide one of my few opportunities to experience DnD as I usually end up being the DM in any campaign I’m involved in. I haven’t gotten far into the game but so far it’s been enjoyable. I look forward to playing co-op with some of my XBL friends to see how the multiplayer game differs from the solo campaign. There are some unfortunate aspects of the game, though. The gameplay is fun and intuitive, but it’s a bit buggy. At times the cut scenes don’t display properly and often the enemies don’t fall to the ground when they die. Unfortunately, these flaws in minor details detract from an otherwise well made game, but hey, what do you expect for a $15 game on XBLA. It is far and above better than most other XBLA games I’ve downloaded at a similar price point.

Well, I’ve been writing for a while now, and I’m sure some of my turns have refreshed on Zuma Blitz, so it’s time to try to take Joey down!