ScottVee Gaming

We were at an automotive museum today (Dear Park Winery, Escondido, CA) and in one corner were some very old arcade games.  Drive Coast to Coast had a map of the USA with a few numeric displays and details, while the game itself was just moving a metal car left and right on a dial with a road painted on it.  The road had some obstacles drawn, but I couldn't think of a mechanism for actually detecting the player's performance. Next was this Steam Shovel game .  On the back is a big scale saying "How many tons can you load in hopper?"  The little labels at top left say: "Raise Shovel to Red Mark on boom to clear hopper.  Empty Shovel by operating shovel lever to right."  The rules at the bottom are: "Move Levers to Operate Steam Shovel.  Empty each shovel of material into hopper. Material loaded into hopper registers on scale.  When two or more play, highest number of tons registered on scale determines winner."  For only 10 cents you can feel ...

A cousin of Anne's had a board game afternoon, so we went to visit and played two rounds of Horrified then a funny game of Bananya. Horrified is an odd game.  It's a cooperative game where your team tries to defeat some number of classic movie monsters.  It's SO collaborative that everyone pretty much plans out your move for you by the time your move comes around.  Each player gets a character card.  Each character has 3, 4 or 5 actions plus a special ability.  The actions are (from memory here): - move your hero one space - move a villager one space - make one attack on a monster - pick up all chips on your current space - trade some number of chips with another player on the same space Chips are placed on the board throughout the game.  The chips each have a color, some number of points, and the name of the space where they are placed. Each monster has its own quirks and different ways to defeat them.  For Dracula, you have to wipe out all four of hi...

I tried a few more Suika games and they were so similar I uninstalled them after a few runs.  Juicy Fruit by Yermex, Fruit Drop by Alpha Creative.  Not bad, they do what they need to do, but they stop at the basics. But this one -- "Watermelon Merge Game" by Brilliant Games -- went way beyond.  The game itself has a fun feel to it.: bouncy and an extra element where the fruits almost try to burrow down and find each other.  You earn stars that you spend on filling in a city build with many other scenes listed for later on.   You can also spend points on new art sets for the fruits,  a new skin for the dropper character (including a ghost and a flying saucer and a dog that farts rainbows), and Buy more power ups. The power ups are: break one fruit, shake the box,  remove all fruits that match the one you click on,  and a sec that falls and boasts all fruits up one level. There's also a PVP "Battle Mode" option that we tested out.  I made a ro...

I stumbled upon an odd category of games while looking for new stuff in the Google Play store ... fruit drop games.  More specifically,  games where you drop merge fruits leading up to the ultimate watermelon,  and if they reach the top of the box the game is over. Apparently these are all clones of Suika Game, where suika is the Japan's word for watermelon.    See the Wikipedia page . Now, you would think they're all the same exact boring thing,  but it turns out there is a lot of variety in the game play and physics.  The dropped items might be bouncy or squishy to varying degrees.  You might have to drag the drop line and then let go, or one touch anywhere well drop the next item.   The top of the box might trigger the end immediately or let you overflow a little, or have a few seconds of countdown before ending.   And some of the games came up with ways to extend past the original number of objects,  add levels and ski...

On the way home from work, I keep trying more obscure back roads to avoid traffic.  Driving through Furniture Row in San Marcos, I saw that these roads went for many blocks behind the big stores.  I googled the area and found a possible game shop (Knowhere Games and Comics), a possible dog boarding place for Dory, a huge consignment/antique shop Anne already knew about, and a cider/mead brewhouse that wasn't open yet. It turns out that Knowhere did have a good assortment of games.  There were shelves of D&D books and other RPGs.  There was a reasonable selection of  about 100 different board games, but mostly not our style.  Then there was a big back room setup for D&D and Magic the Gathering games and tournaments.  Along the back wall was a shelf packed with games.  See here: Players are welcome to come over if there's no big game event going on, and try out those games.  That sounds great, since buying so many games only to have abo...

Anne wanted tots.  Tater tots.  Where was that place on Grand that had those yummy tots?  Of course all of Grand was under heavy construction so we had to park blocks away and walk.   It was Burger Bench.  Anne took Dory and sat down while I stood in line to order.   A guy came in and urgently started saying hello. After about 20 seconds I realized it was Chris Legg, long time gamer friend (2nd generation in fact).  Really long time.  We first met him back in 1990 when their parents were playing D&D and other games at Doug's house. We had not seen him in about 2 years.  They were eating at the restaurant right next door when Carol had seen us walking by.  A truly random tot encounter. Nice to see them again.  We got a bit caught up they said we could come over for some games after 4.  We were planning to go home and play some board games anyway, so that was perfect. We ended up playing Modern Problems ...