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The Art of Making Nonograms

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I have posted a few times about playing Nonogram apps.  They are technically puzzles and not games, but check out these previous posts: this one from Nov 2020 , my post on completing Picross Survival , and my recent post about Nonogram Katana . Focusing on Nonogram Katana, they have over 100,000 puzzles submitted by users, suggesting that you can create your own puzzles.  About two years ago, I did one black & white puzzle with a pattern shaped like Florida, but since then we've been doing a lot more of the colored puzzles, so I thought it would be fun to try designing some of those.  The app is seamless when it comes to adding your own content: just go to My Nonograms, click + to add a new one, choose a size and color scheme, then you can use the palette to choose colors and use the controls you're already familiar with to fill out the pattern.  Here is a simple one of mine: It's just a basic spiral with four colors.  Once you save it, you can play it and s...
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Escape from the Aquarium

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We found Escape from the Aquarium on the way home from our Sedona trip.   It looked cute and we didn't notice at the time that it was an escape room game for kids.   Or main issue with escape room games is that the pieces get marked up or ruined during the course of the game,  so it's hard to play them a second time.   And knowing the outcome spoils the replayability.  Escape room games are not really games, they are sets of puzzles. The art is bright and friendly.  The story is a bit silly: you get turned into a fish while visiting the aquarium and have to swim around looking for clues to get magical ingredients to get back to human form.   Okay. There is an answer book and hint book, both of them with scratch off spaces, so there's the main component that can't be restored to its unplayed state.  There are four folders full of clues but you have to dump all four folders together, since the stuff you need to solve puzzles in o...
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Jackbox Games: Weird TV Fun

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We stumbled across an unusual game platform on New Years Eve ... a set of Playstation question-and-answer games where players log in on their phones and actions are all pushed to the right phone at the right time.  These were from the makers of the You Don't Know Jack party quiz game. The game developers made it easy.  A four-letter code is shown on the big screen, and you go to jackbox.tv on the phone to enter the code then add your player name and make all the moves.  It was almost seamless.  A few times a player got disconnected.  Otherwise, it was a fun, reasonably social event. # First we tried the host's favorite game of the batch: Trivia Murder Party.  There was some minimal story about being trapped and having to answer questions to break free, and how only one player cold possibly survive the ordeal.  The host had a perfect smooth creepy horror voice and puts the players through a series of grim challenges with morbid relish.  The writing...
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Chessmen - Everything is a Game?

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At our New Years Eve gaming night, I tried to bring game-related snacks.  I found some Pokemon goldfish crackers and Pepperidge Farms Chessmen cookies. There was a brief moment where I saw a game built around those Chessmen cookies: my rook could beat Doug's bishop, or a simple high/low draws.  Then I wondered if each bag has some random selection of pieces, or if maybe there's a full set of pieces in each bag.  I saw a queen, a bishop and a pawn (I think), and the bag shows a queen, a king and a knight. but it seemed unlikely that they would fill half the bag with pawns.  Luckily (or not so luckily since this is the crap I think about when I'm trying to sleep), I took a picture, which says there are 24 cookies in each bag.  But there are two rows of 8 = 16 in a set of chess pieces. So, a game could be made out of this.  No worse than a card game where you get random cards.  Such a game would be pointless and leave a lot of crumbs, but have a yummy but...
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Flip 7 for the New Year

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We always get together with the Leggs for New Year's Eve, and there's always a game going when we get there.  Tonight it was Flip 7, a fairly simple card game that I've seen mentioned on Facebook a few times recently.  Like any card game, you either get cards you need or you don't, but the fun is what happens along the way.  We had six players and the rounds went quickly. The basic idea is that players take turns being dealt a card, and they can "hit me" or "hold" like in blackjack.  There are number cards ranging from 1 to 12 and bonus/extra cards like Freeze (your hand is done), Bonus Points (+2 to +10 and a x2), Take 3 (take 3 more cards from the dealer) and a safety card that can save you from going bust once.  There are supposed to be one 1, two 2s, up to twelve 12s in the deck, and if you get a number card you already have, your hand is busted.  So it's interesting that the cards have obvious levels of risk and rarity, and there were some a...
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Uno Without End

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I don't really take Uno seriously as a game.  It's a funny card-dumping time.  It's more about the players than the game, which is fine.  I previously wrote a bit about the Minecraft edition of Uno that we keep at our house.  But the game has been around for decades and almost everyone knows how to play, so it's good for a game night, or in between bigger games.  Or ... everyone THINKS they know how to play it.  Here's a fun episode of rule bending: We had a not-so-quick game of Uno on Christmas Eve that went a bit off the rails.  We started with three players, and when Anne could not play a card and the rulebook said to draw one card and play it if you can, that just did not ring true for me.  We were never big Uno players growing up, but I guess we used to play the variation where you draw cards until you get one you can play.  It does make the game last a lot longer when there's a fair chance that you will end up with ten or twelve cards t...
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That Hook & Ring Thing

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The Ding Tea that we go to every few days had this strange new thing on one of the tables.   They also have two different Jenga boards to play with, so they try to make it a fun environment. This thing is clearly a game of some kind,  with scoring pegs at the top.  We asked two different people who work there what is called, and they both said, "the hook and ring game." I had a vague feeling that I had seen something like it before.   Online searches showed a surprising range of different game by that name.  There are versions for one, two or four people. Here is a large wall mounted one available on Etsy for bars or man caves. Here's a Tiki Toss game  on Amazon that comes in 12" and 5" versions I found a quick video showing two players going as fast as possible  moving the scoring leg toward their opponent each time they hook the ring. We tried about thirty times each and never scored.   The length of the string is just right to...
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