ScottVee Gaming

Here's a game that doesn't fall into any of the categories I talked about last time.  Just when I thought I had worked out a good set of labels to help split all the subtopics.  While I have no interest at all in golf, I always got a kick out of miniature golf.  Just don't take it so seriously ... get some fresh air, putt the ball around, and enjoy yourself. For us, half the fun of miniature golf is the meta-game of people watching.  See how many different ways other people approach the same problems.  See parents showing their kids a thing they enjoy, and how some kids love it, some kids cheat every chance they get, and there's always a kid who gives up by Hole 12 and has a tantrum.  Then there are the young couples on dates, sometimes just laughing and being supportive, sometimes more competitive and mean to each other and you wonder why they're even together.  We also saw two groups of three or four men: one group who were screwing with each other, ...

Here's an odd tangent into the world of games ... there's a country store a few exits up the highway from where we live, and they have a really odd diversion to get customers to come back. As you walk in, there's this quaint sign challenging you to find Millie the Cow, which is a little plastic toy that they move around the store from day to day.  So, it's a kind of scavenger hunt.  Very simple, but when we're in the area we just think, "Let's stop and find that little cow again."  So we scour the shelves, finding some groceries we need along the way (so it succeeds are a marketing trick), and it's just fun looking for the thing.  I don't know why, but we almost start whispering, like it can somehow hear us and hide.  That's nuts.  It's a tiny plastic cow.  But here she is, hiding in the pickle relish ... FOUND IT! So we go up to the counter and tell them where we found Millie.  And they have to offer us a lollipop, but neither of us ca...

Lottery tickets are an interesting kind of non-game.  I got a few Scratchers today as an odd holiday challenge, and I have to start off by saying I do NOT recommend buying these Scratchers for any reason.  They are designed to tickle any kind of gambling genes you might have.  They give you the illusion of choice, make you feel like you almost won, and give minimal wins to make you feel like you have more of a chance than you actually do. They are not games by any stretch of the imagination, but they do a good job of capturing the iconography of games and social trends.  These crossword and bingo styled cards give you a set of letters or numbers that you have to scratch off, and in the end you have to count how many words you made (or some other pattern) to see if you "won" or not.  These cards really make you work for it.  Along the way you feel like you are actually playing a game, but you are just unveiling the things that were already printed on the car...

A while back I heard about some new auction app and skimmed some listings and found these little wooden peg games. They made me think of the times I would be out on a road trip somewhere and stop at a little diner, and they would have games likes these.  Though the diners usually had variations of simple peg solitaire ("golf") and no dice to roll. These were all simple racing games, dressed up in sport themes.  Just roll dice and move.   They each came in plastic wrap with a red and a blue peg and two dice. The football one was playable.  The golf one was unplayable because there were more negatives than positives, especially -3 spaces for rolling a 7; but Anne did roll a two on her second roll and got a hole-in-one win.  For the next 10 minutes I don't think either of reached the halfway mark before getting sent back.  The derby game was just going around in circles, and we used an extra die each to track which lap we were on.  The rules for tenn...