KEM Playing Cards: A Closer Look

KEM is the king of cards for a good reason. They are well-made, insanely durable, and last forever. They are also incredibly expensive. The two-pack sets come in a plastic tray with a lid, and retails for about $30 per set. If you shop around, you can find them for less, but it’s still the most expensive card you can buy.

What makes them cost so much? I put the question to a representative of the company, and here’s what he said: “KEM is made from cellulose acetate, which is a specific blend of paper and plastic giving it the feel of paper cards but the durability of plastic The material which gives KEM its premium performance and durability is more expensive than paper or plastic alone. The material is also much harder to print and run through the manufacturing process. It takes over 2 weeks to complete a deck of KEM cards from start to finish.”

The result is a card that lasts forever. I’ve heard of people playing on a single deck of KEM for 25 years. No paper card would hold up that long, and no plastic card would feel as good.

How do they measure up to the Bicycle Premiums? I’d say the Bicycle is very, very good for a synthetic card, but KEM just feel a bit more natural. They’re light, have a good texture, and shuffle better than anything I’ve ever used.

Yes, they’re very expensive, but as I said about Bicycle Premiums, if you use them for heavy play, in public areas where there might be wet spots, or with kids, they might be cheaper in the long run. Put it this way: a single deck of KEM costs as much as five decks Bicycles, but they’ll last far longer.

Click to embiggen.

PUZZLE: Big Cross-Out Swindle

Here's an easier one. Martin Gardner made this for GAMES a long time ago.

Cross out nine letters in such a way that the remaining letters make a single word. 

N A I S N I E N L G E L T E T W E O R R S D

A reader later wrote in with an alternate answer, which was also correct, and unforeseen by Gardner or the editors. Each answer requires a different kind of logic: one requires more lateral thinking, while the other is more language based.

Puzzle Answer: Got a Problem?

I did not expect this one to be a poser. Here's the original problem:

Make an equation with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, +, =, with no more or less than 2 digits in each part of the equation, and each digit only used once. (eg: [2 digits] + [2 digits] = [2 digits])

One possible answer is 4³ + 1² = 65. (If you're not getting the character formatting the equation is 4-cubed + 1-squared = 65)

I know there are some others that work as well.

App O' The Mornin: Froggy Launcher Review

Of making many vertical jumping games, there is no end. Froggy Launcher is the latest to take bits of Bird Strike and Doodle Jump and make them again, only with a different character.

I’m already on the record expressing my approval of adding frogs to pretty much anything, including soup. (Unless, of course, that anything is a compulsion loop game, in which case people are just manipulating your froggy love and should be punished accordingly.)

Froggy Launcher is a perfectly decent riff on the vertical jumper, with a nicely animated ragdoll frog collecting coins, gems, and boosters as he tries to reach ever-higher. He is initially launched by a simple pullback input (just like Bird Strike), and after that you just keep the jump going by tapping him. Tilt controls shift him right or left, with the graphics wrapping around. (In other words, if he exits screen right, he’ll re-enter screen left.)

Along the way, he picks up different objects to help him, such as a laser that keeps him from falling off the screen, a rocket booster, balloons for floating, and soforth. It’s all familiar, but it works well enough.

Froggy Launcher also has a feature called “pimp my frog.”

(Let me just pause for a moment and beg everyone to please stop saying this. I know “pimping [some object]” is now part of the vernacular for customizing things, but it still has its origin in a fairly nasty profession based on the criminal exploitation of women. Every time someone says this, Henry Fowler weeps with the angels.)

Anyway, “pimp my frog” allows you to buy accessories for your frog, ranging from new outfits to gear that actually helps with the game.

Now, pay close attention. Froggy Launch is free, but it includes both in-games ads and in-app purchases. All the really cool froggy gear costs a lot of gems; more than a normal person could ever earn in the course of playing the game. You can, however, buy 255 gems for the low low price of $4. I really don’t want a hat for my frog so much that I’d ever do this, but obviously someone does or the business model would fail. And internet-based business models never fail, right?

Memoir '44: Winter Wars

If you haven't played Memoir '44 yet, you're missing one of the real treats of board gaming. It's easy to learn, fun, and incredibly flexible. I just got word from Days of Wonder that a new expansion is due in November. Called Winter Wars--The Ardennes Offensive, it covers the last major German offensive on the western front.

Here's what DoW has to say about it:

Packing a big punch, the Winter Wars expansion includes: 88 Winter terrain tiles; 20 Winter Combat cards; and most significantly in terms of game play – 80 new Command cards designed specifically for Breakthrough battles. This expansion also introduces new Winter Combat rules and new Troop badges representing the all new Tank Destroyer and Heavy Anti-Tank Gun units, and late war versions of an Anti-Tank Gun, Mortar and Machine Gun.

These will all be critical to fighting the ten scenarios contained in Winter Wars, all focused on those crucial two weeks in December 1944 in the Ardennes. The first six scenarios included are standard scenarios, playable with a single base game and this expansion. Deployment on a Winter/Desert board, while optional, creates a more accurate visual effect. The other four scenarios are gigantic Breakthrough renditions of the Battle of the Bulge. These scenarios will also require a single copy of the already released Eastern Front expansion and Breakthrough Kit board maps.

Winter Wars lists for $30.

And our next prize sponsor is....

Yep, those guys.

PopCap will be our prize sponsor throughout October, and I understand that a box o' PopCap games and swag is winging its way eastward at this very moment. I'm tingling all over just thinking about it.

This sponsorship thing has been easy so far, because both companies (first Bicycle and now PopCap) are ones I truly enjoy and admire. I remember talking to PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka about ten years ago when they were just getting off the ground, and it was clear they were doing something new: a fresh kind of casual game with a much broader appeal. I never dreamed it would get this big, and I frankly thought their pursuit of mobile gaming was daft. (Obviously, I got that one very wrong.) Ten years on, PopCap games are everywhere, and Plants vs. Zombie shows that they can still innovate in ways we never imagined.

I consider them one of the major forces in gaming today. About a year ago, I wrote a column in Maximum PC in which I suggested the future of PC gaming belongs to PopCap and the casual gaming revolution they ignited. I still think that's the case. On the short list of Games That Changed Everything, Bejeweled is near the top.

So, beginning in October, we start passing out the PopCap love. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Garth, Eric, and the PopCap family for their kind support.

Games Without Pieces: Ghosts and Superghosts

Open any book of decorum or household advice from the Victorian period and you’re likely to find countless tips on how the Good Hostess can keep her Guests properly entertained in order to avoid Crushing Shame and the inevitable Whispered Comments. These parlor games, as they came to be known, range from silly little time wasters to fairly intense brain scramblers.

Ghosts (also called Ghost) was one of the more popular parlor games well into the 1950s, when James Thurber could still write about it as though it was a common pastime. The rules are very simple. A player thinks of a word, and says the first letter. The next player adds another letter, which continues that word without completing it. This continues, with each player trying to add a letter to the growing word without making a complete word. Proper nouns and abbreviations don’t count.

If a person adds a letter that forms a complete word, he loses the round and gets one point. The next player is allowed to challenge the previous player to reveal his word. If the challenged player can’t produce a complete, valid word, then he loses the round and gets one point. For instance, if player 3 adds a “Z” to create “TEZ,” player 4 can challenge him to produce his full word. Since player 3 was bluffing and has no word beginning with the letter “TEZ,” he loses the challenge. The loser of a round gets 1 point, and players are eliminated when they reach 3 points. Last player standing is the winner.

For instance, I think of the word FIRING, and say the letter “F.” The next person, building on the F, thinks of the word FERAL and says “E.” (“FE” is not a valid word under Scrabble rules, which is what people should use for this game.) The third person can’t think of a letter that doesn’t make a complete word, so he blurts out “B” and hopes his bluff will work. The fourth player challenges player three to produce his word. Unable to think of the word “FEBRILE,” player 3 fails the challenge and loses the round, earning 1 point. If he earns 2 more, he’s out of the game.

Although Ghosts is a pleasant game suitable for all ages and mixed company, Superghosts is an absolute brain sprainer. It preoccupied the mind of James Thurber so much that often he couldn’t fall asleep until he’d figured out all the words that could be made from certain letter groupings.

Superghosts is simply Ghosts in both directions. People don’t have to start spelling a word at the beginning, but can (and usually do) start spelling it at the absolute hardest possible place. I’ll let Thurber describe how this game haunted his mind:

I spent two hours hunting for another word besides “PHLOX” that has “HLO” in it. I finally found seven: MATCHLOCK, DECATHLON, PENTATHLON, HYDROCHLORIC, CHLORINE, CHLOROFORM, and MONTHLONG. There are more than a dozen others, beginning with “PHLO,” but I had to look them up in a dictionary, and that doesn’t count…

Starting words in the middle and spelling them in both directions lifts the pallid pastime of Ghosts out of the realm of children’s parties and ladies’ sewing circles and makes it a game to test the mettle of the mature adult mind. The Superghost aficionado is a moody fellow, given to spelling to himself at table, not listening to his wife, and starting dully at his frightened children, wondering why he didn’t detect, in yesterday’s game, that “CKLU” is the gusts of “LACKLUSTER,” and priding himself on having stumped everybody with “NEHE,” the middle of “SWINEHERD.”

The Oxford Guide to Word Games includes a few letter clusters as examples of just how maddening this game can get. Can you make words that include the letter groupings HQ, PK, XW, ADQ, EKD, GNP, PEV, SPB, and THM?

App O' The Mornin: Undercroft Review

Undercroft is one giant piece of vintage 1989 RPG cheese. Man, this baby has it all: stepped movement in a “3D” environment, flat sprites with a few frames of animation each, endless short corridors, gloriously over-the-top text, turn-based combat, party-based questing, skeletons, rats, spiders (what ever would we do without the spiders?), and all the rest. Playing this game is like being back on my 80286, banging away at Eye of the Beholder or Might & Magic.

And I loved every minute of it. Sure, it reminds you just how better RPGs have gotten in 20 years, but it’s still a great experience. This is old skool, baby, and it’s palm sized! That just gives me a certain kind of geek-thrill available only to people with a few decades of gaming behind them.

You begin by creating 4 characters, or choosing a random party. Stats are simple: strength, dexterity, and constitution. You can use some extra points to boost your stats, or, depending upon your class, buy some additional powers. Characters can be a warrior, mage, priest, summoner, or assassin, and if I have to explain what those classes are, then this game probably isn’t for you.

Soon after you begin, you find yourself in a basement killing rats, striking with each of your four characters in turn. Once you’re engaged in combat, you can swap items in inventory, use potions, change weapons and spells, and do everything but move.

The adventure follows the silly and predictable path of any late-1980s RPG. You pick up random tasks like delivering letters, catching chickens, or cleaning out monster-infested tunnels. These in turn help pump the levels as you get ready to take on gradually more serious creatures.

Undercroft is a free game, and its creators claim it has 20 hours of gameplay. Although I only have a few hours under my belt, I don’t doubt there’s probably 17 more hours lurking in there somewhere.

I’d say that, as an example of its kind, it’s well-nigh perfect. The only thing that bothered me were the healing mechanisms: either allow us to rest anywhere, or provide more health potion drops.There are some glitches, to be sure. A drop graphic might show one item, which the pickup menu shows another. Music keeps turning itself back on. Other rough spots simply add to the retro charm.

I have a feeling that not everyone will probably react to this game that same way I do. I’m viewing it through a gauzy scrim of nostalgia. My son didn’t like it at all. When I tried to explain that “This old school!” He said, “Yeah, real old school.” That hurts, son. That hurts…

This is a style of party-based first-person role-playing we just don’t see any more, and until Undercroft I hadn’t realized just how much I missed it. Your mileage may vary, but considering that the sucker is free, it’s not like you have much to lose by giving it a try.

Puzzle Follow-Up: Got a Problem?

Wow, no one took a stab at this one. 

Maybe it will help if I show how the easy one is done. The problem was to make an equation using only the following: 2, 3, 4, 5, +, =? (Each digit should be used only once.)

The answer is 4+5=3²
(In case that doesn't show up on your screen correctly, the answer is 3-squared.)

(Okay, I just realized how hard it is to do superscripts in a combox. The tag is SUP. This was probably a poor puzzle choice for a blog.)

The tougher problem was to make an equation with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, +, =, with no more or less than 2 digits in each part of the equation, and each digit only used once. (eg: [2 digits] + [2 digits] = [2 digits])

Update: Another way is to represent exponents as words: square, cube, zenzizenzic (fourth), surfolide (fifth), zenzicube (sixth), second surfolide (seventh) and Zenzizenzizenzic (eighth).

It has the benefit of being completely outmoded and wonderfully obscure, which are always nice features for me. They were created by the man who invented the equal sign. I know what you're thinking: "Someone invented that?" Why, yes he did. Apparently "=" was his only flirtation with brevity and clarity.

PUZZLE: Sporting Chance

Bill covers the sports beat for a local newspaper. Has to file a story on the results of several hockey games played over the weekend, but his notes are incomplete. Would he be able to figure out the all the results from the partial information given in the table below? Can you?

TEAM            A      B     C

PLAYED          2      2     2

WON             2

LOST

TIED                   1

GOALS SCORED           2     3

GOALS AGAINST   1      4     7  

Bee Club Special: A Closer Look

Bees are one of my favorite cards. They have history, style, and a good feel. Until USPC send me some plastic cards, I never used anything but Bicycle and Bee, and I still think Bee is perhaps the best paper card made.

Consolidated-Dougherty started printing Bees in 1892, which explains that mysterious "92" on the Ace of Spades. USPC aquired the company soon after, and they've been printing them ever since.

They're a popular casino brand, and sometimes you can find them in discount stores with casino logos on the backs. They're also apparently a popular card for counterfeiters, as this site amply demonstrates.

The most striking aspect about Bees are their borderless backs. The diamond pattern on the back extends all the way to the edges, and creatives a distinctive down the sides of a stacked deck.

Face designs have been standardized in line with Bikes, but the Ace and Joker remain distinct.

Detail (Bee Joker)

Detail (Bee Ace)

App O' The Mornin': Tafl Review

Yesterday I continued the Colonial Gaming series with a look at Fox & Geese. There’s no version of Fox & Geese in the app store, but I did find a compilation of Tafl games, which are closely related.

Simply called Tafl, this app is the work of Machine Codex, which has done a good job at translating these games to mobile formats. The features are different for iPhone/Touch and iPad. The version I tested on my Touch includes Brandubh, Fidchell, Ard Ri and Tablut, while the iPad version adds Tawlbwrdd, Hnefatafl and Alea Evangelii as well.

The visuals are appealing, and the touch inputs are as simple as you can get. You just touch a checker and move it. It works perfectly well.

The four games are all variations on the classic Tafl gameplay, in which each side has a different number of pieces and different victory conditions. The first three are played on a 7x7 checker board, which creates an odd rank and file at the center of the board. This is where the “king” player usually begins. Tablut is played on a 9x9 board. The white side is the defender, while the black is the attacker.

Brandubh is a an Irish form of the game, and the name means “raven black.” This may be a reference to the color of one side, to a bit of lore suggesting that the game is about ravens attacking a king, or to something else entirely. No one really has any idea, since references are limited to a couple ancient poems and even the reconstruction of the game is hypothetical.

In Brandubh, the white player has four regular pieces and a special king piece called the “branan” (or “chief”). The black player has eight regular pieces. Both sides may move along the rank and file any number of spaces, like a rook in chess. Any piece surrounded on either side is captured and removed. The goal of the white player is to get the king from his starting place at the center of the board (the “Throne”) to one of the four corners, or “Keeps.” The goal of the black player is to prevent this.

Fidchell is a similar game with sketchy origins, and any modern version is pure guesswork. The version in the Tafl app simply doubles the number of checkers in play: eight white plus a white kind, and 16 black, although it’s still played on a 7x7 board.

Ard Ri is Fidchell played with a different configuration. In place of the cruciform layout of Brandubh and Fidchell, it groups the nine white checkers in a block at the center.

Tablut is the best known version, and for a very cool reason. Biologist Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, discovered people still playing the game in 1732 during an expedition to a remote area of the Laplands. They used boards made of reindeer hides, featuring 9x9 grids. Since he didn’t speak the language, Linnaeus sussed out the rules by observation, referring to the white pieces as Sweeds and the dark as Muscovites. The version in the app is played on a 9x9 board with 9 white versus 16 black.

At $3, the app might seem a little high for an abstract strategy game, but it’s a hybrid iPhone/iPad version with a good AI, and is the only worthwhile electronic version of these games that I’ve ever played.

PUZZLE: Got a Problem?

Can you make an equation using only the following: 2, 3, 4, 5, +, =? (Each digit should be used only once.)

How about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, +, =, with no more or less than 2 digits in each part of the equation, and each digit only used once? (eg: [2 digits] + [2 digits] = [2 digits])

Sorry Revenge Review

I’d have to say that any game of Sorry is revenge enough. Much as I love ancient games, Pachisi is one I could live without, and it doesn’t get any more enjoyable by adding slides and squaring the board. Race games, as a rule, are not that interesting without the introduction of some unique gameplay mechanic or theme. (One example is the German game Hexentantz, which hides the color of each piece under a witch’s hat, making it a far more interesting experience.)


Thus, it was with some reluctance that I picked up Sorry Revenge, one of Hasbro’s many “expansions” to their core franchises. Sorry as a card game didn’t really seeming like a particularly brilliant idea, but I wound up liking it for a simple reason: it has almost nothing to do with Sorry other than it’s visual elements.

Sorry Revenge mashes together elements of 21 and Uno to create a pretty entertaining game. Up to 4 players each have 4 2-sided pawn cards, which are laid in a row in front of them. These begin the game with the “Start” side up. The goal is to flip all 4 cards to the “Home” side. The first person to do so, wins.

Each player is dealt 5 cards for a hand. The goal is to play a number card so that the running total adds up to 21 during your turn, without exceeding it. For instance, player A puts down a 7, the player B puts down a 10. If you can play a 4, you get to turn over a pawn card. If, however, you can only play a 5 or more, everyone else but you turns over a pawn card.

Once 21 is met or exceeded, the count resets to 0 and begins again.

There are a lot of special cards that allow you to switch direction, take two cards, play two cards, block someone’s pawn, counteract a block card, or slide the cumulative score to a specific number.

This was obviously an attempt to come up with something like Uno, and it partly succeeds. All the elements are there and it’s a perfectly enjoyable game. It just doesn’t seem to have that something special that makes a game a classic. This might have something to do with the constant addition and running totals, which can slow the game down a bit.

It works okay with two players, but is a lot more entertaining with 4. (There's no reason why two decks can’t be put together for an 8-player game.) It’s a good little family game or warmup game. Although it’s not going to replace Uno, it might make a nice little alternative.

COLONIAL GAMING: Fox and Geese

Fox & Geese is another ancient game that followed a winding road to the New World. It’s usually classed as a “Tafl” game, which is a category of games in which the sides are unevenly matched. The games derive their name from a cluster of Icelandic games related to Hnefatafl, but in fact “tafl” just means “board” or “table.” It’s a word found in various Germanic languages, and is often used as a suffix in games as diverse as Halatafl (an early version of Backgammon) and Skáktafl (a kind of Chess).

Over the years, “Tafl” just came to mean any game where one side outnumbers another, with the weaker side having different movement rules or victory conditions. Technically, they're called "asymmetrical abstract strategy games." These are classed as “hunt” games, and usually feature some kind of force (fox, wolf, king) trying to elude or eliminate a larger force (geese, hare, soldiers). The first reference appears in the Icelandic Sagas around 1300 AD, but the games are no doubt older than this. The earliest English reference to a game like Fox & Geese comes from the household inventory of King Edward IV (1461-1470), where his account books list an order for “two foxis and 26 hounds in silver overgilt.” It was not unusual for the "geese" to be called "hounds." (There's also a game called Fox & Hounds, but that's a different beast.)

Although there’s no written or archeological record for either the origin of Tafl games or their migration to England, we can always speculate. The Viking raids on Britain ended, oddly enough, in the very busy year of 1066, when the Norsemen were defeated at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Once the Norse were shoved out the back door, the Normans came in the front door, and stuck around a little while. (Like, forever.) Since the Normans were descended from the Norse, we can speculate that Tafl games might have found their way to Britain through either source. Either way, it’s wholly possible that Halatafl, the game most like Fox & Geese, might have been in Britain as early as the 11th century.

Some of my own ancestors (the de Suttons) arrived with the Normans, and their descendants found their way to American soil in the 17th century. This is how folk culture migrates. The Norse conquer Northern France, intermarry, and create lots of little Normans. The Normans conquer Britain. The English colonize America. The Americans drive off the English. Along the way, they carry their games with them to pass the time, transmitting them across the space of a thousand years to the point where I buy a small portable set in a gift shop in Williamsburg and play the game in a Colonial tavern with my kids while waiting for our meals to arrive. Cultural migration and transmission is not particularly mysterious, but it is fascinating.

In any case, by the 18th century we find Fox & Geese well and truly entrenched among the colonials. It was a popular board game, although one generally favored by children rather than adults.

Colonial children also used their Fox & Geese boards to play Solitaire, a jumping game in which a marble is placed on every space save one. The goal is to eliminate as many marbles as possible by hopping. If you've ever eaten in a Cracker Barrel, you've probably played a version using golf tees on a triangular piece of wood.

How to Play
The rules of Fox & Geese evolved over the centuries, but the version played in Colonial America was probably the 1 fox, 13 geese version, which is the one most popular today. It’s played on a cruciform board with 33 spaces. Most boards use marbles for pieces and an indented playing surface to keep them from rolling all over the place. The geese are arranged on one side of the board, with no gaps between the pices. The fox is place near the middle. It can also be played using 17 geese.

The player controlling the geese needs to surround the fox so that he can no longer move. This is commonly done by cornering him and surrounding him on all sides. The player controlling the fox has to avoid being cornered long enough to reduce the number of geese to the point where cornering is no longer possible.

To accomplish this, each side has different movement rules.

The fox can move one space in any direction. If he is capable of jumping over a goose, that goose is “killed” and removed from the board. He may also double-jump, capturing two or more geese in a sequence of jumps, just like checkers. There are no forced jumps.

The geese, on the other hand, may only move forward or to the side. They may not move backwards. They also cannot capture. (After all, they’re geese. Their much feared Honking and Nipping Attacks really don’t bother a fox all that much.) Their strategy is to herd the fox into a corner before he can escape or jump.

Most commentators consider the goose to be the favored side, with the fox unable to win if played correctly.

Halatafl board discovered in Viking ruins, Ballinderry, Ireland

App O' The Mornin: Splode Review

This has been free for a couple of days, so check the app store. Otherwise, it’s $1 It's back to $2.


I’m not quite sure what to make of Splode, since it’s really not the kind of game I normally like. In fact, I wouldn’t call it a game at all, or even a puzzle. It’s more like a kind of soothing activity with a bit of physics puzzling squeegeed across the surface.

Splode is so minimalist it’s more like a zen meditation than a puzzle. The entire game is made up of the same single screen puzzle repeated over and over again, with the most minute variations for each new level. The input is a single touch on the screen, and everything else is chain reaction.

I’m not saying that you set something up and touch the screen to trigger it: I’m saying that you literally only touch the screen once.

Each level begins as a black-and-white image of the night sky, framed by pine needles and flowers. Floating through this scene are “splodes,” which are little puffballs that slowly bounce off the edges of the screen and each other. When you touch the screen, any splodes nearby will activate, turn from black-and-white to color, and move away from the shockwave.

This begins the chain reaction, as each triggered splode travels a short distance, explodes, and triggers more splodes. The goal is to clear a minimal number of splodes from the screen, the changing day to night and black-and-white to color.

There’s no strategy that I could discern, and no real trick to solving each screen. The only variations are the increasing number of splodes on the screen and the number of them which need to be cleared.

The game also includes a “score attack” mode, which is basically just a continual version of the regular game with increasing splodes and a fixed number of taps.

This is not a game at all, but more like some kind of strange meditation aid. The calming harp music, the soothing graphics, and the nonexistent gameplay are clearly meant to create a mood to be enjoyed rather than a puzzle to be solved.

Strangely enough, I did kind of enjoy it. I played 40 levels in minimal time, mostly because I kept expecting something to, y’know … happen. (I’m funny that way.) When it didn’t, I just went with the flow, and enjoyed watching the little puffballs float around and change color. I guess it’s kind of like a lava lamp, which raises the distinct probability that someone using mind-altering substances would probably think This is the greatest thing ever, man. Anyone looking for an actual game, however, should probably look elsewhere.

This Week in Review

Chinese checkers at the beach. (gettyimages.com)

Posts
A Closer Look: Hoyle Maverick
What's Been Coming to the Game Table?: A few early impressions.
Labyrinthe Aventure: The world's largest natural maze. (Frozen Jack Nicholson not included.)
Robert Abbott's Alice Mazes
Friday linkaround.

Apps
Trivial Pursuit
Reiner Knizia's Poison
Underworlds
Pocket Frogs
Aftermath
 
Puzzles
Race Results
Logogriphs: The original post and the answer

This was a pretty light week for State of Play. Writing the February issue of Games, completing a newspaper story, and dealing with a bad asthma flareup consumed too much time. More to follow next week, including, perhaps, an announcement about our next contests.

Friday Linkaround--Items of Interest

Go. Now. Watch.: The most amazing ten minutes of game video you will see this year. Period. Subject closed. (M-rated content.)

What Has It Got In Its Pocketses?: Well, a brand new game from Reiner Knizia, that's what. The designer of the co-op Lord of the Rings game is tackling The Hobbit in a new title from Fantasy Flight. A more complete description of the game is found here.

This is Why You Don't Play High-Maintenance Games: I remember thinking what an awful idea Tamagotchi was: when gaming becomes work it ceases to be gaming. Will Farmville gamers learn the same thing from the Great Crop Failure of 2010? Probably not.

This Day in History: Hardcore Nintendo fans probably already know that the company began as a playing card manufacturer in the 19th century, but for those who don't, Wired has a good summary of its origins. This week marks their 121st year in business.

Man, That Guy Must Have Had a Lot of Resource Cards: Catan champs rolled the bones in style at the Worldwide Catan Championship Tournament, which was held this year in Burg Wildenstein Castle, Leibertingen, Germany.

Chess: The week in Chess.

App O' The Mornin': Aftermath Review

As I'm writing this, Aftermath is still in the app store for free. I'm not sure how long it will stay that way, so scoop it up while you can.

I've been done with zombies for a long time now, but they're in vogue again and just won't seem to go away. Well, I guess that's zombies for you: always just outside the door, scratching to get in while you pretend not to be home. They're so popular someone even removed George A. Romero from deep freeze and gave him actual money to make some truly horrible new zombie movies, thus reminding us all that Dawn of the Dead was a really long time ago.

Zombies crowd the App Store like it's the Monroeville Mall and there's a sale on ironic post-modern commentary about American consumerism. They've already gotten the kiss of death for any movie monster: they've become overly familiar. Yet they can still rise to the occasion and deliver a few shocks given the right trappings.

Aftermath gets zombies right by doing a few simple things. The developers made the zombies fast, dumb, and plentiful; they keep the lights down low, the music moody, and the gore copious; and they ditch any pretense of narrative fuss and get right down to the shoot-'em-in-the-brain part.

This is a spin-shooter with a bit more finesse than most. In fact, it's not so much a spin-shooter as a running game. You actually don't fire your weapons at all: you just point your light in the direction of the shambling dead and back away while Mr. Automatic Weapon does all the heavy lifting. The twin stick control works just fine, and the entire game boils down to keeping your distance from the zombies while controlling the direction of the fire.

The game is full of weapons, but you really only wind up using a few of your favorites. It also looks quite good, making the most of its simple 3D structures through moody lighting. The only problem is its brevity. It can be knocked out in no time at all.

I'm guessing that a sequel is in the offing, so TwoHeads Games is making the original free in order to drive up the brand recognition. It's a smart move for them, and it gives you a chance to play a bloody good spin shooter.

Logogriphs (ANSWER)

I didn't post yesterday's piece on Logogriphs as a "puzzle" because it was just too obscure for modern readers, but I did hold back the answers in case anyone wanted to take a stab at it. Here is the poem again, with the answers at the end of each line. The Master word is LARGE.

What to the king alone pertains; [REGAL]
And what respect in gen'ral gains; [AGE]
A title English nobles bear; [EARL]
And what a farmer's horses wear; [GEAR]
What fictituious ne'er can be; [REAL]
With what betokens poverty; [RAG]
A word that has an angry cast; [RAGE]
Another, that we use for last; [LAG]
What in a dish of souse is good; [EAR]
A limb, when lost, supply'd with wood; [LEG]
A wind, of brisk yet gentle fame; [GALE]
A Yorkshire river's ancient name; [ARE]
And 'last, not least,' the spacious whole
Will lead you to the wish'd-for-goal. [LARGE]

Robert Abbott's Alice Mazes

Robert Abbott has done some great work for us at Games. Although he has created a number of card and board games, he's probably best known the inventor of the "logic maze." This is the basic "maze with rules" that's a popular feature at the magazine. It adds a depth and complexity not found in standard mazes.

Some of Abbott's best work is found in the Alice Mazes, shown in an example above. You start at the red square, and follow the arrows to reach the goal. These start out deceptively simple, but can get incredibly complex. Some have 60 or more moves, any one of which can send you down the wrong path.

Abbott designed and programmed a set of 20 of these mazes in Java (included the one shown above), and they're playable at his web site.

App O' The Mornin': Pocket Frogs Review

Some things will forever remain a mystery to me, and social network gaming is one of them. I'm certainly not alone in my contempt for We Rule, Farmville, Mafia Wars, Zombie Farm, and all the other "freemium" social games, but for some reason I keep reading otherwise sensible people who think, "Oh, but Pocket Frogs is different!"

Not, it's not different. It has frogs, which makes just about anything 19% better. It also has frogs mating, which makes just about anything 8% less better. Look, I have a tank full of frogs (African clawed frogs, if you really must know) and mating frogs are not cool. They're actually kinda gross.

But I really can't see how the admittedly impressive production of Pocket Frogs overcomes the fact that this is, at its core, a bog-standard compulsion-loop game.

The game certainly has a greater aesthetic appeal than any similar title, and makes an effort to break out of the strip-mining gameplay of its social networking cousins by adding some slight minigames and other features. You begin with a frog in an environment, which can be customized as you level up and earn more coins. (Coins again! Couldn't it at least have been ReptoMin pellets or flies or something less closely associated with the the sulfuric cloven-hoofprint of Zynga?)

It's possible to take this frog to the pond, where you make him hop from lilypad to lilypad catching dragonflies until he's "trained," and then catch more dragonflies and sometimes pick up nicely wrapped presents (??) left behind by benevolent Froggy Gods. Every once in a while, you'll come across another frog. It will play hard to get and jump away, but if you pursue it insistently you'll wind up with a little froglets (just like real life!), and thus begin the whole bleedin' process all over again. Hatch frogs, bring frogs to pond, sell frogs, decorate your little terrain, buy more frogs, on and on, world without end, amen.

The only part that might be considered passably interesting is the frog breeding element. Frogs are distinguished by color, pattern, and pattern color, so if you mate frogs with various patterns, the offspring will have a distinct color palette. And if that's the kind of thing that excites you, please drop on by my house any evening and sort my tube socks by toe-thread color. (Some have blue threads, and some have red. Maybe if I put them together I'll get socks with purple threads!)

Something like half a million people downloaded this sucker in five days. Why?! I mean, I understand the power of a compulsion loop. That's why it's called a compulsion loop.  What I don't understand is why anyone willing enters one.

As with all "fremium" games, you have the option to play for free and just let the game slog along at a snail's pace while you catch flies and watch frogs snog. Or, you can give the publisher a handy credit card number and buy more (wait for it .... WAIT FOR IT!) coins in order to speed the process.

This is what game reviewers will be doing in hell.

Logogriphs

A logogriph is a kind of anagram puzzle. Clues are given to words that can be made from the letters of a single master word. The goal is to uncover that master word.

Here's a simple example to illustrate the concept. Both the clues, their answer, and the master word are provided:

• anger (IRE)
• personal pronoun (ME)
• desperately urgent (DIRE)
• hitchhiker's goal (RIDE)

The master word for this would be MIRED. (RIMED is also possible.)

A masterpiece of this form appeared in The Masquerade, A Collection of New Enigmas. Logogriphs, Charades. Rebusses, Queries, and Transpositions, a popular book of puzzles published in 1797. I did not solve this one (my version had all the answers embedded in the lines), and I believe some of the references are archaic or obscure enough to make solving a long shot for any modern puzzler. There are at least two lines in this which I know I would not have figured out unaided.

I considered giving the answers outright, but I thought ambitious readers might just want to take a stab at it first. I'll post the whole solution tomorrow if no one gets it.

Remember, each line is a clue to a word, and all the answer words are made from the letters of one other word. The last two lines function as a couplet, and provide a clue to the whole puzzle.

What to the king alone pertains;
And what respect in gen'ral gains;
A title English nobles bear;
And what a farmer's horses wear;
What fictituious ne'er can be;
With what betokens poverty;
A word that has an angry cast;
Another, that we use for last;
What in a dish of souse is good;
A limb, when lost, supply'd with wood;
A wind, of brisk yet gentle fame;
A Yorkshire river's ancient name;
And 'last, not least,' the spacious whole
Will lead you to the wish'd-for-goal.

Labyrinthe Aventure (Evionnaz, Switzerland)

Mazes are tough to do on a blog, but when I find something tool cool to ignore, I'll try pass it along.

The "Labyrinthe Aventure" of Evionnaz, Switzerland is beyond cool. In fact, it lives up to its claim as "est la plus grande maquette du monde" (the largest model in the world). It is the world's largest natural maze.

The official site is in French, but it's easy enough to see that this is a kind of maze/theme park setup, with massive slides 100 feet long and plenty of activities for children. The thing sprawls across a mile and a half and the maze itself is made of 18,000 Thuja trees, which are a kind of cypress.

I love mazes, but this just gives me the willies. All I can think of is being frozen to death while chasing my family with an axe.

App O' The Mornin': Underworlds Review

I’ve been avoiding writing about RPG apps until I had really spent some time with them. I’m an RPG player from way back. The first game I ever wrote about was Eye of the Beholder, and I’ve kept apace of the genre for the past 20 years. I came of age along with the original D&D and SSI Gold Box games, and I still think it’s probably the most potent genre in all electronic entertainment. Not all of the developments were to my liking (Diablo never quite twirled my baton), but it’s one my favorite types of game.

I wasn’t quite sure about app RPGs when I first started playing them. The form-factor seemed incompatible. By that I mean the physical structure of the device and the primary control input (onscreen touch controls using your thumbs) took a little time to get used to. I’ve gotten used to it, but it still doesn’t feel like a natural way to interact with this kind of game. This, along with the reduced size, is one of the trade-offs with mobile gaming. I get that.

Although I’ll eventually write about some other RPG apps, I’m starting with Underworlds because it’s the one I’ve spent the most time with. This is a Diablo-clone, with no pretentions to being anything else. PC gaming has been full of them for years now (my favorite is Torchlight) and they’re almost a genre unto themselves. The pattern is essentially action-RPG: push a button to kill, grab the stuff that drops, and move along. It’s a loot and level formula that has a simple, visceral appeal, and its very simplicity makes it a good fit for mobile devices.

Underworlds is developed by a company called Pixel Mine, based in Austin, Texas, which is the former home of Richard Garriot’s Origin Systems. I would not be at all surprised to learn that some people from the Ultima team worked on this game, since it has that kind of visual style. It looks good for an mobile isometric RPG, with a wide field of view and nicely detailed levels.

You work your way through the game by picking up quests, defeating monsters, and gathering stuff. There’s some dialog and a rough stab at a narrative, but this is mostly just to provide color and context for the slash-n-hack gameplay. It does its job by providing the atmosphere and then staying out of the way. It’s not a particularly long game, but it should provide a few hours amusement.

The real problem is that it’s locked into a fairly narrow format for an RPG. There’s really no class or character development, and no ranged weapons. This in itself reveals a problem with the smartphone format, since I haven’t really seen an RPG that handles ranged weapons well. Solomon’s Keep does an okay job, but it still has an awful lot of “spray-and-pray” thanks to the dodgy aiming of its ranged combat.

Underworlds compensates for this lack of class diversity by providing state upgrades for strength, dexterity, constitution, and intelligence, and a set of “feats” which give you special attacks. By deciding where to spend your points, you customize your character to fit your play style. It may only be a choice between a character with high health who can endure longer skirmishes, and a character with a better kind of attack, but it’s something.

Pixel Mine has made an interesting first step into the world of RPG apps, and I’d like to see them take it further. Underworlds is entertaining but limited. Along with some other strong titles, it shows the potential for RPG games on this platform. I’m hoping they’re working on a sequel that’s longer and has a more full-blooded character and class system, but for now, this is a darn good way to get a taste of RPG action on the go.

PUZZLE: Race Results

Six people ran a race: Agatha, Bertie, Cyril, Daphne, Edwin, and Freddy. Can you tell what order they finished from the following clues?

• Bertie was behind Florence.
• Edwin was behind Cyril.
• Agatha was ahead of Cyril.
• Cyril was ahead of Daphne.
• Agatha and Bertie were tied.
• Edwin was behind Agatha, but ahead of Daphne.

A Few Early Impressions

No, this isn't the point in our blog in which I bust out my killer impersonation of Apu from The Simpsons. I've just been cranking through a lot of games lately, but not in the depth needed to deliver a full verdict, so here are a few quick glimpses of what's been coming to the gaming table.

Funglish

I really wish Hasbro would contact me before naming their games. That way, I could have warned them that this sounded like "Fungus," and that people generally don't like to play games they associate with something you need to get rid of with an ointment. The game is mostly a giant box of 120 tiles, each one bearing a single word, with words divided into different categories by color. You place these words on a frame to describe a person, place, or thing, and everyone else has to guess what you're trying to describe. It's charades with words, and it actually has the makings of a pretty good party game. I've only done a couple of small sessions with this one, but it's been fun, and not just because I'm one fungi. (I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry for that one.)

Sorry Revenge
I hate hate hate Sorry. The only thing I hate more is Trouble, and that's because the sound of a Pop-o-Matic is the Devil's own heartbeat. With that out of the way, I can now do my deep breathing exercises, calm down, and move along to say that Sorry Revenge seems okay. It's a card game with a bit of 21 and a dash of Uno tossed in for good measure. It's slight, but seems enjoyable. Again, I've only done this with two people, and I plan to try it with 4 before I write more about it.

Castle Ravenloft: The Board Game
I did one pass through the first, solo adventure. I like the mechanics. A lot. So far, however, the solo game seems to be "spawn monster, move to new tile, kill monster, repeat." I suspect this pattern shifts radically when more people are added to the mix, so I'm eagerly awaiting a chance to recruit a Coalition of the Willing to test this more fully. Stay tuned.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
I'm just plain enjoying this one. It has a very tight comic-book look, with bold lines around the edges of objects, a vibrant color palette, and a four really distinct visual styles for the four different worlds. With a few exceptions, Spider-Man has always had good fortunes in his video and computer game adventures.

Batman: The Brave and The Bold
Yeas: Great approximation of the look, sound, and style of a great TV show. Nays: Feels like a really elaborate Flash game. More play is required to be sure.

Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
If you put a bunch of random words and letters into a computer and had it come up with a title guaranteed to make my skin crawl, it would look something like the above. I haven't even cracked the shrink wrap on this one, and thus far I'm keeping it sequestered from the other games just in case its taint is contagious.

Yes, I've heard that it's based on a popular young adult book series about owls wearing armor or something, but that's such a catastrophically stupid idea that I hoped someone was pulling my leg....

Nope, there's an owl wearing a helmet on the cover of the book. It looks every bit as dumb as it sounds. Is this the new formula?: animal [cat, bear, owl, three-toed sloth] + cheapjack ersatz Tolkien nomenclature and fantasy hoo-ha = BESTSELLER FOR 12 YEAR OLDS! At 12, I was reading Conan Doyle, Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Poe, like any American boy with his head on straight.

Gamespot gave it a passable review, so I'll give it a shot. Since I have a pair of YA readers in the house, maybe I'll recruit their expert opinions. They haven't read the books, but they have a good eye for cynical corporate-manufactured media tripe.

App O' The Mornin': Reiner Knizia's Poison Review

Reiner Knizia’s Poison, a 2005 card game later re-themed as “Baker’s Dozen,” has been given a fairly plain port by Griptonite Games.

The game is solo-only for one player and 4, 5, or 6 AI opponents. Right off the bat Griptonite missed the boat by leaving out multiplayer elements, which are precisely what this game needs to give it some spark. The AI only has a single setting, and that setting is “always choose the right card.”

The game is played around three cauldrons. Each player has a clutch of cards in red, yellow, and blue, each with a number value: 1, 2, 4, 5, or 7. The goal is to shed all your cards to the cauldron by playing on matching colors, without pushing the total number value over 13. If you do exceed 13, then you claim all the cards in that cauldron, earning one point for each card. Since the game is won by the person with the lowest score, you want to avoid taking piles whenever possible.

There is also a green “Poison card” which can be played to any pot. It has a face value of 4, but counts as 2 points when calculating the score.

This is an interesting riff on Hearts and other trick avoidance game, and a has similar strategic element. As he often does with Rummy games, Knizia has taken a familiar theme and put an interesting spin on it. The app version is a competent implementation of the game, but it’s rather short in the feature department. It's certainly a good way to play an interesting game: it just doesn’t play like a $3 app.

WIN!: Custom Bicycle Playing Cards

This is the final prize in our month o' Bicycles. The fine folks at the US Playing Card Company have provided us with 2 sets of Bicycle Personalized Cards. Each set comes with a code that allows you to create a FREE deck of Bicycle cards with any card-back image you want. Standard poker or jumbo index faces are available. Each deck normally sell for $20.

The process is the same as before. Please note: if you already follow us on Google, RSS, Twitter, or Facebook, just let me know that you'd like to enter, and please do a retweet or some other kind of link share.

All you need to do to be eligible is:

1. Follow State of Play and/or share a link via:

• Facebook 
• Twitter 
• RSS Feed 
• Google Follow (found at the bottom of the sidebar)

AND

2. Let me know you entered. Do this in one of the following ways:

• Tweet me @StateOfPlayBlog
• Post a message on the State of Play Facebook Page
• Send an email to "games=at=aptopub.com" (replace the =at= with @) to have your name entered.  
• Please don't forget to do one of these things or I won't know you've entered!
• You may enter multiple times, but no more than once a day.
  

The deadline is next Friday, September 24th, 2010.

And don't forget to visit the Bicycle web site and follow them on their Facebook page.

I'll choose winners by the scientific process of writing names on little pieces of paper and pulling them out of a hat.

ONLY NORTH AMERICAN ENTRIES PLEASE!

Prizes have been provided by the United States Playing Card Company.

Hoyle Maverick: A Closer Look

Mavericks are another brand that USPC acquired from Hoyle, and one of the few that's not made in the USA. These come from China, and are generally not up to the quality of other USPC cards. They just feel ... ordinary.

The reason I'm including them is because they really are an odd cultural relic. When I first started looking at them, I noticed they had a western theme, from the Maverick font, to the horse on the Joker, to the stylized Ace.

That's because Mavericks almost certainly entered the market as a tie-in (either official or unofficial) to the James Garner TV show of the same name. Since Bret Maverick was a card sharp, cards featured heavily in the show, so it was natural tie-in.

The show began in 1957 and went off the air in 1962, which means that this is a pop culture artifact that survived 48 years longer than the show it was based upon. I just think that's cool.

Brand loyalty is the reason decks like Aviator and Maverick remain in print. As a company representative told me, "Each brand we manufacture has a deep history and avid followers. People remember playing with specific brands growing up and want to continue that tradition."

App O' The Mornin': Trivial Pursuit Review

I’ve been pretty pleased with most of the big boardgame adaptations coming from EA. In fact, it’s gotten a little monotonous. I love to kick a big-ticket title around now and then. It makes for a more interesting review.

I was hoping Trivial Pursuit would provide an opportunity for a little bag work, but it didn’t comply. It turned out to be a perfectly fine, feature-rich version of the mother of all trivia games.

Trivial Pursuit just keeps coming back, age upon age. Hasbro recently sent me two new editions: the new Master Edition and Bet You Know It, which adds a bidding element. I’ve put in my TP time (wait, that sounds wrong…) and every new edition seems to include way too many questions about some hit song I’ve never heard of from some pop diva I’ve never heard of. (I remember playing a 1980s edition once, and every other answer seemed to be either “co ndoms” or “Michael Dukakis.” Actually, that pretty well sums up the 1980s.)

The Trivial Pursuit app actually works dang well. The gameboard is simple roll-the-dice-move-your-mice stuff. Questions are answered via multiple choice, with an option for limited or unlimited answer time.Wedges ensue.

Single Player mode let’s you just move around the board answering questions all by your lonesome, or add an AI opponent. Yes, there’s only one opponent. At least I couldn't find a way to turn on more opponents. Since Trivial Pursuit is largely about the questions and not the competition, I didn’t have a big problem with only one AI opponent. Who wants to sit around waiting for 4 imaginary people to figure out what Britney Spears’ 2001 hit was. (No, I have no idea if Britney Spears even had a 2001 hit.)

The new addition is "Pursuit Mode," which offers a game board with a beginning and end. The goal is to make it to the end while missing as few questions as possible. This seems like a larval idea for another, better game. They got the basic premise correct by stealing a page from Mario Party's book: landing on certain tiles triggers special effects that can double your rolls or move you to another part of the board. It's a good idea, but something more interesting and colorful could have been done with it. As long as you're creating a TP Mario Party, go all the way and have some TP minigames or powerups.

Multipayer is perfectly fine via pass-and-play or Wi-Fi, but some internet matching service would have been welcome.

I like that new question sets are available as an in-game purchase for only 99 cents. I never play straight up TP any more, but with the right group I’m still willing to bust out a special edition focused on insanely obscure questions about, say, Lord of the Rings. This is because I know who Ghân-buri-Ghân is, and like any opportunity to lord this useless knowledge over people with actual lives. We take our pleasures where we find them.

This Week at a Glance

This image comes from Project Mah Jongg, an exhibit most awesome at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. (Warning: automatic audio at site.)


Posts
Castle Ravenloft arrives: one big box o' D&D fun
Insensitive jerk makes offensive game. Also: water found to be wet. 
Games Magazine: November issue now on sale
A Closer Look: Aviator Cards
A Closer Look: Hoyle Playing Cards
Media incompetence and gaming: perfect together! 
Review: Scrabble Flash
Off-topic post: a look at the Arkangel Complete Shakespeare audioplays.
This week's contest. 
Friday linkaround: items of interest

Apps
Word Squares--word puzzle
Isaac Newton's Gravity--physics puzzle
iBlast Moki--physics puzzler
Mancala--abstract strategy
Spikey's Bounce Around--physics/arcade puzzler
A note on App coverage

Puzzles

Word Squares
Sir Edwyn de Tudor

WEEKEND O/T POST: Arkangel Shakespeare

From time to time I run personal or off-topic posts on weekends.  The following review is something I wrote about the amazing Arkangel audio versions of the complete works of Shakespeare. I'm a complete Shakespeare nut, so when I discovered this series in the library I just devoured it. Thanks to my blogmother Julie D. for originally publishing a longer version of this at Catholic Media Review.

The genius of William Shakespeare is on full and glorious display in one of the most ambitious projects in recording history. In the 1990s, television and film producer Bill Shepherd (husband of actress Eileen Atkins, who turns in some great performances on the set) spearheaded the complete recorded plays of Shakespeare. Over 3 years and at a cost of $3 million dollars, all thirty-eight plays, complete with some 600 speaking parts and including a wide range of sound effects and music, were produced under the direction of Clive Brill. From the loftiest heights of Shakespearean majesty (Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth) to the furthest and most forgotten corners (Pericles, Timon of Athens, Cymbeline), every word of every play was committed to tape with a full cast of seasoned Shakespearean talent and even a few marquee stars.

It would be impossible to cover the entire set in any depth, but some performers and plays stand out. The greatest actor to work on the Arkangel Shakespeare was Sir John Gielgud, who was 94 when he recorded his two roles. Gielgud plays the narrator-poet Gower in Pericles, as well as “Time, the Chorus” in The Winter’s Tale. His fading voice in the Time soliloquies lends a particularly bittersweet poetry to the role. The speeches are long, and Gielgud is clearly at the end of his life. His majestic voice has lost much of its plummy tone, but he still delivers note-perfect performances.

The London Independent was present when the Gielgud recording was made, and noted how Sir John (who was paid a single day-rate like everyone else) asked if could also do the Chorus in Henry V. He was turned down because Brian Cox had already done it. “Oh well, he’s very good,” replied Gielgud. Although Cox is probably still best known to moviegoers as the original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter, he’s also one of the premiere Shakespeareans of his generation, and turns in solid voice work on several of the discs.

Fans of Shakespeare in Love, in which Joseph Fiennes played Shakespeare playing Romeo, will be delighted to hear Fiennes in a complete production as Romeo, opposite Maria Miles as Juliet. Like most Romeos, he’s too old for the role, but he does a respectable job, only rarely letting some of the play’s more sticky sentimentality overwhelm him. Just watch out for the kissing scenes. They sound like someone got his lips caught in a bottle.

Simon Russell Beale does excellent work as Hamlet, with a performance reminiscent of Kenneth Branagh’s in his own film of Hamlet. No complaint there, since Branagh managed to bring out the bitter humor of the Prince without getting lost in the world-weariness that can easily overtake the character. Beale handles the play’s many abrupt shifts in tone with finesse, and he’s matched by excellent performances all around. Shakespeare’s finest play is the jewel in the crown of the set, as it should be.

Cieran Hindes (best known as Caesar from the HBO miniseries Rome) tackles the incredible poetry of Antony and Cleopatra with remarkable skill, playing a passionate Antony to Estelle Kohler’s steamy Cleopatra. Hinds also turns in a touching performance in the role of Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, handling the shimmering, mystical finale in whispered, delicate tones that would be impossible on a stage. For those who are less familiar with this, one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”, the Arkangel disc is a great place to start.

The unity of the recording project gave the producers an opportunity for some interesting casting choices. Julian Glover plays Bolingbroke/Henry IV and Jamie Glover plays Prince Hal/Henry V throughout the history plays (Richard III, Henry IV 1 & 2, and Henry V). The father/son team might seem like stunt casting, but both are veteran Shakespeareans who acquit themselves expertly throughout. Jamie, in particular, makes a convincing transformation from the callow youth of Henry IV Part 1 to the stirring hero of Henry V. Some other notable performances include Rupert Graves in the difficult role of Richard II, Adrian Lester as Antony in Julius Caesar, Trevor Peacock as Lear, and Bill Nighy as Antonio in Merchant of Venice.

Not every performance works, but given the vastness of the project it’s surprising to see how few duds there are. I’ve listened to Harriet Walter’s Lady Macbeth many times, and the performance still doesn’t sit right with me. Her voice seems to high and quirky to pull off the role. Everyone around her, however, does a fine job, including Hugh Ross as Macbeth and three pitch-perfect witches.

The low point of the series is what should have been one its centerpieces. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a mess. The fairy voices are digitally processed and hard to understand, the music is terrible, and the Caribbean accents for Tatania and Oberon are reminiscent of too many gimmicky modern productions. If you want to experiment, Dream is not the place to do it. Bad artistic choices abound, from sound effects, to casting, to music. Brill got most everything right elsewhere in the cannon, so he must have saved up all his mistakes for Dream.

That’s really the only dud in the batch, however. The production values are spot on throughout, with Brill and his engineers creating an incredible sonic setting for the plays. A full range of sound effects is brought to bear, and these help flesh out the action which you normally either see in performance or read in the stage directions of the text. Whether it’s the opening storm of The Tempest, the battlefield of Henry V, or the grotesque torments of Titus Andronicus, the effects play a crucial role in bringing the plays to life. All of the productions are fully scored, and while some of the musical choices are simply puzzling, most nicely compliment the drama.

The cumulative effect of the entire endeavor is astounding. Perhaps the most exciting part is getting to explore those lesser known gems that are never performed on stage or in film. (For example, Cymbeline, a fairy tale with an absurdly labyrinthine plot, is a fascinating find.) The series is a treasure unequalled and, for many, still undiscovered. I only stumbled across them two years ago in the library, and was able to hear all 38 through the interlibrary loan system in my county. The complete set is available for $360 on Amazon, with individual plays going for about $14 (for 2 discs) to $17 (for 3 discs). More information can be found at arkangelshakespeare.com.

The Arkangel Complete Shakespeare is a Globe of the mind, where you can disappear into the words and performances any time you like.