Italian Playing Cards: Modiano Siciliane

The "standard" Anglo-French-suited playing cards have eclipsed many of the regional playing cards common throughout the world, along with the games played with those cards. Yet in certain places, regional decks are still very popular, and provide a fascinating (and largely unexplored) new wellspring of cards, games, and lore. I plan on diving deep into this wellspring, beginning today with a look at an Italian Siciliane deck produced by Modiano.

First off, you need to understand that there is no monolithic "Italian" deck. There are about 16 different regional decks, some with 40 cards, some with 52. Southern Italy favors the Spanish style which I'm about to describe, while the North has its own style. French and German suits are also used in certain regions of Italy. Even this is kind of fluid, and each regional deck has its own peculiarities.

The pictures below are from a deck common in Sicily. The most striking element of these cards are their unique suits. In the picture below (beginning at the upper left and going clockwise) we have the 3 of : Clubs (Bastoni), Coins (Denari), Swords (Spade), and Cups (Coppe). These replace Clubs, Hearts, Spades, and Diamonds of the Anglo-French deck.

There are no numbers on the cards, but there are 7 number cards in each suit, ranked 1 to 7, plus 3 court cards per suit. In many games, the 3 is of particular value, with cards ranking (high to low) Ace, 3, Courts, then numbers. (Numbers often have no value at all.) Here are what the aces look like. (Left to right: Swords, Cups, Coins, Clubs.)

Click to embiggen

Finally, there are the court cards, which are ranked Fante/Donna (a footsoldier, knave, or young woman), Cavallo (cavalier, or knight), and Re (King), the equivalent of our Jack, Queen, King.

The cards are small and slightly stiff, but the art is extremely appealing, with bold colors favoring yellow, blue, red, and green. The backs are ornate, featuring a Sicilian Triskelion (three legs around a head, usually Medusa). I bought mine from TaroBear's Lair, which provides prompt service and reasonable prices. I'm going to be talking about different games which are played with these decks, and even point you at some apps to help get you started. 

Board Game News for the Week (11/26)

Kevin Schlabach of Seize Your Turn continues to do an excellent Twitterstream digest, linking to all of the relevant board gaming news and reviews for the week. Check out the links for the final week of November.

Rabbi Simcha's Dreidel Spinning Tips

Rabbi Simcha spins a mean dreidel, so go and learn from the master.

When I was a kid, I attended a Jewish day camp during the summers, which probably wasn't a common occurrence for Catholic kids growing up Union County New Jersey during the 1970s.

To make matters even more entertaining, it was run by enthusiastic Zionists, so we began each day lined up in front of American and Israeli flags, first saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and then saying something in Hebrew which I always assumed was some kind of Israeli equivalent, but could have been a wicked recipe for kasha for all I knew. (The Jewish kids always complained because they had to attend Hebrew School. I just thought it was cool that they were learning a Secret Language none of us could ever penetrate. That's probably why I teach my kids Latin: it's the Secret Language of Catholics.)

I always wondered how the Jewish kids were consistently able to skool the silly goyim at dreidel spinning. Thirty years on, Rabbi Simacha finally provides the answer.

h/t: Kathy Shaidle.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Rabbi Simcha wrote a book with one of the greatest titles of all time: Up, Up, and Oy Vey: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped The Comic Book Superhero.

'Tis the Season

Tomorrow, I get back to blogging on my regular schedule. It was nice to have a week off, but it also made me realize that I’ve made this blog thing a part of my routine, and I kinda missed it.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the App O’ The Mornin’, as well as a new series on European-suited playing cards and the usual odds and sods. My Xbox is still in the shop, so I’m horribly behind on new titles. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood continues to sit there, mocking me.

On the positive side, I’ve been able to get Betrayal at House on the Hill to the table, and we’re liking it a lot. Plus, I’ve learned the Italian card games Briscola and Scopa, which are a blast.

With December comes Hanukkah and Christmas, both of which I’ll post about from time to time. I realize some people get bothered when even the mention of religion flickers across their consciousness. Some may well believe that faith should be shut inside a tiny little box and kept away from the eyes of impressionable types less they get the vapors, but it’s not a belief I share.

Judaism has played an important part in my life and forms the foundation of the Christian faith. My Jewish brothers and sisters begin Hanukkah at sundown on Wednesday, December 1st. My fellow Papists and I begin Advent tonight. Thus, for part of both this week and next, Catholics and Jews alike will be lighting candles in remembrance of miracles.

In addition, Hanukkah recalls the rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the oil, as mentioned in First and Second Maccabees. Although most Protestants consigned these books to "apocryphal" status during the Reformation, they remain part of Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, and thus these festivals have significance for us as well.

Holidays bring play, as well. I hope to get some directions for group games posted throughout the month, to help fill the longueurs in between the flurry of package opening and the moment when your eggnog buzz finally kicks in.

Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) lights a menorah

Black Friday Game Deals

Courtesy of boardgameoutlet.com. They scour the internet looking for deals so you don't have to.

Please remember to use the link to the right if you're shopping at Amazon.

Happy Thanksgiving & App Sales

First, the important stuff. May you and your families and friends have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving. Bring some games. It's a good way to pass the time and introduce people to something they've never played before. And may you have a fine meal of toast, jelly beans, and popcorn.

Second, the App Store is loaded with price cuts. TouchArcade has a good roundup of a the deals being offered. App Shopper is the best way to keep track of deals. They note price changes and updates in semi-real-time.

Third, TaroBear's Lair, a store selling import playing cards, is having a 30% off sale. I'm going to be writing about these amazing games in the upcoming weeks and months, including posts on playing with Swiss- and Italian-suited cards, as well as Tarot. The sale starts Friday and runs all weekend.

If anyone else knows about any sales or deals out there, post them or send them along.

Colonial Gaming: In Review

Several months ago, I started writing this series about games played in Colonial America after a family trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. I picked up a number of games while I was there, but noticed that very little had actually been written about what our ancestors were playing on the eve of Revolution.

In doing research, I learned that some areas of the country (such as Virginia and the south in general) were utterly mad about their games, while others (much of New England) were less so. I probably could have added one more piece on Whist (and still may), since this was one of the few games to find a foothold in New England. Whist is the mother of Bridge, so if you know Bridge already, then you have a fair sense of Whist.

It was fascinating to see the way games migrated from the old world to the new, building variations along the way. It was also interesting to see the way game materials intersected with the Revolution itself, in the form of the hated tax stamps placed on every deck of playing cards.

I've gathered much of my material into a long article that will run as the lead feature for the March 2011 issue of Games Magazine. This was an interesting test of the blogging process for me, as I researched and posted things in real time over a period of months, allowing me to learn and write at the same time. It worked pretty well, and I intended to do it again. In the future, I will be doing separate series about boardgame-to-app conversions and games played with European decks, such as French, Italian, Swiss, Spanish, and Tarot cards. (Tarot decks were invented for playing games, not for dubious fortune-telling practices.) If you have any thoughts about how all this came together, good or bad, please feel free to share.

Here's the entire series at a glance:
A Card Game for the Lower Classes: Put
A Card Game for the Upper Classes: Loo and How to Play Loo
A Pair of Abstract Strategy Games: Fox & Geese and Nine Men's Morris
Early Playing Cards from I. Kirk and I. Hardy
The Game of Goose: An Early Board Game
Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, and Other Board Games
"I catch you without green!"
Hazard: Colonial Craps
Introductions are here and here

COLONIAL GAMING: Hazard (Craps)

This Thanksgiving week, I’m concluding the series on Colonial Gaming with an item that would have gotten you stocked if you played it in front of our Pilgrim forebears. Hazard is, essentially, craps, and it was probably the most played “game” in both the New World and the Old.

Dice go back at least 5,000 years, and almost certainly much further. They were highly portable, easy to make, and provided a regular medium for gambling, which has always been a popular recreation. The Pilgrims frowned on dice not merely as part of their general prohibition on gambling and frivolous games, but because they would have associated them with the lots cast by the Roman soldiers for the garments of Jesus. Other regions of America, however, embraced dicing with a passion, and wherever common people gathered, dice appeared sooner or later.

There’s no telling just when the game of Hazard first emerged in Europe and England. Geoffrey Chaucer showed a ready familiarity with it, so we can place it in England at least as early as the 14th century, and almost certainly earlier. In the Pardoner’s Tale, Chaucer plays on the words “chance” and “hazard” several times, and makes an explicit reference to the game itself.

And if a prince plays similar hazardry 

In all his government and policy, 

He loses in the estimate of men 

His good repute, and finds it not again.

 And later:

And when he came, he noticed there, by chance, 

All of the greatest people of the land 

Playing at hazard there on every hand. 

And again, as part of a list of sins

O cursed sin, full of abominableness! 

O treacherous homicide! O wickedness! 

O gluttony, lechery, and hazardry! 

O blasphemer of Christ with villainy 

So hazard = not good. Check. (Although I'm pleased to see that "abominableness" is a real word.)

The word hazard comes to us from the Spanish word azar, meaning a “bad roll of the dice.” The word stopped off in France to pick up a final letter D before arriving in England via the French courts. Yes, our word “hazard,” meaning “potential danger,” comes from the name of this game.

Playing Hazard 
As with modern craps, Hazard is driven by bets placed on the likelihood of certain rolls. One player rolls at a time, using two dice.

Before the player rolls, he picks a main, which is a number between 5 and 9.

If he rolls the main, he wins. This is called throw in, or in, or nick.

If he rolls a 2 or a 3, he loses instantly. This is called throw out, or out.

The other combinations are contingent upon the main itself. They break down this way:

If the main is a 5, then 5 is in, and 2, 3, 11, or 12 are out.

If the main is a 6, then 6 or 12 are in, and 2, 3, or 11 are out.

If the main is a 7, then 7 or 11 are in, and 2, 3, or 12 are out.

If the main is a 8, then 8 or 12 are in, and 2, 3, or 11 are out.

If the main is a 9, then 9 is in, and 2, 3, 11, or 12 are out.

If the roll is neither in nor out, the number thrown becomes the chance.

On the next roll, the chance wins and the main now becomes a losing number. The roller keeps going until he hits the main or the chance, and then the dice are passed.

Wagering is done by the player and the observers at various stages and at various odds, with people betting either for or against the next roll of the dice. 

Craps

There is a straight line between Hazard and modern casino craps, so remember when you're sweating over the Pass/Don't Pass line that our forefathers were doing the same thing hundreds of years ago.

And if you’re utterly sure you have a foolproof system for beating craps … you don’t. No, really, you don’t. (And if your theory includes the names “Pascal” or “Fermat,” then you really don’t.) All of the odds set by a casino for each roll are set below the actual odds for the roll itself. The odds are better if you know what you are doing, but there is no casino game in which you can fully bend the odds in your favor. The house always has the advantage. 

Most "systems" are based on what's called the Gambler's Fallacy, which is this idea that someone who stays in a game long enough will eventually find probability turning in their favor. Probability is not cumulative. It resets itself with each roll of the dice. A gambler with a system always thinks he's "due" for a hit after a long series of misses. If the chances of flipping heads on a coin are 50/50 for the first flip, and you get tails, that doesn't mean they're 60/40 for the second flip. But that's the way many gamblers approach their games.

Here's an example just from yesterday. My daughter and I were waiting for people to join a game. We drew through an entire deck of cards, with high card winning. That's 26 draws for each of us. We "should" have each drawn 13 high cards. I drew no high cards. She drew 26. As Ralph Wiggums would say, "That's unpossible!" 

Consider this: I know games inside and out, and I never bet money in a casino unless I'm just enjoying the process of being there and willing to pay for the pleasure of a hyperoxygenated atmosphere and $10 beers. Skill does matter. Skill can improve your odds, but it never tilts them wholly in your favor. And casinos don't trade in games of pure skill: they trade in games where luck dominates. There's a reason casinos don't have chess or backgammon tables. It's the same reason that neither chess nor backgammon were all that popular in Colonial times. These are games where skill outweighs chance, and, like modern casinos, early Americans didn't favor games of skill. They only found real excitement when chance and luck were involved.

Thanksgiving Recess

I'm going to take a bit of a break from the blog this week, what with kids home and family visiting to be done and my tryptophan addiction to feed. So there will be no App O' The Mornin' and regular posting will probably be light.

The Swan of Elegance, A New Game Designed for the Instruction and Amuseument of Youth

(1814) 

Top-Ranked Chess Player Withdraws From Competition

Every generation or two, competitive Chess grips the imagination of the world outside of chess circles, and names like Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Deep Blue, and Josh Waitzken start appearing in headlines. If that was going to happen again in this generation, the top candidate would have been Magnus Carlsen, a 19-year-old genius from Norway.

Carlsen earned Grandmaster status at age 13, and earlier this year became the youngest person in history to hold the number 1 chess ranking in the world. His ELO rating (the standard measure of skill level), is 2801. Only 4 other people have ever exceeded 2800. Add to this books, films, and a modeling career, and you have a perfect storm for Chess celebrity.

But when you also add in the remarkably mercurial personality required to become a Chess champion, things can get strange. Morphy quit. Fischer quit and went mad. Kasparov quit, entered Russian politics, and is now making a concerted effort to be assassinated by Vladimir Putin. Even Deep Blue wound up dismantled and forgotten until a piece of it landed in the Smithsonian.

And now Carlsen has withdrawn from the cycle of games designed to name the next World Champion.

As he states in his letter:

After careful consideration I’ve reached the conclusion that the ongoing 2008–2012 cycle does not represent a system, sufficiently modern and fair, to provide the motivation I need to go through a lengthy process of preparations and matches and to perform at my best.

Reigning champion privileges, the long (five year) span of the cycle, changes made during the cycle resulting in a new format (Candidates) that no World Champion has had to go through since Kasparov, puzzling ranking criteria as well as the shallow ceaseless match-after-match concept are all less than satisfactory in my opinion.

The man has a point. Similar irritations resulted in Kasparov splitting from FIDE, the organizing body for the World Championships, to form his own group, the Professional Chess Association. FIDE stripped Kasparov of his World Champion title, and the controversy sputtered until a "reunification match" in 2006. Now it's back again, and with the best player in the world opting out of the competition, FIDE stands to lose their credibility once again. After all, if the best doesn't compete, is "World Chess Champion" a valid title?

App O' The Mornin': Death Worm Review

Grade: A
Price: $1

I'll make this easy: every app and Flash clone of JTR's Death Worm is about 90% less entertaining than the real thing. Forget about Super Mega Worm, Effing Worms, and even the original Death Worm. Playcreek has created the definitive version, making one of the most unrelentingly addictive games in the app store in the process.

Death Worm is a bit tricky to describe. Think of it as Tremors: The Game. A giant, terrifying worm with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth burrows underground and occasionally breaks the surface to snatch people, cars, tanks, helicopters, aircraft, and UFOs from below. It moves in graceful loops through dirt and crest the surface like a dolphin ... deadly, disgusting, giant, man-eating dolphin.

You control this worm with your finger, directing its path in order to intercept targets. This isn't an automatic point-to-kill process. The worm has limits to its movement. It can only turn in certain arcs, and correctly lining it up with surface objects can be tricky. Most frustrating is the fact that you can't change your path once you've leaped in the air. This isn't a flaw, but part of the challenge. It just takes some time to get used to it and plan your surface jumps correctly.

Along the way, your worm can buy certain powerups, such as a fireball attack, a larger leap, thicker skin, faster movement, and so on. There are three environments, each with multiple levels of increasing challenges. Some of these can be pretty frustrating, such as the levels that require you to eat 10 people while remaining completely uninjured. Another level requires you to get 5 aircraft, but then runs out of the surface threats that provide the powerups which enable you to reach those aircraft. There's a workaround for this featuring underground snacks with some occasional powerups, but this particular challenge kills the intense pace of the game.

Those problems are rare, however. Death Worm is visually striking and  insanely addictive. Just get it.

Godzilla: The Game?

Okay, Toy Vault, you got my attention. I don't know a whole lot about their upcoming board game Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars, but I know that I must have it.

Kaiju is the Japanese term for movies in which guys in rubber suits stomp on little models of tanks and buildings, and I'm about as big a kaiju fan as one can be short of actually owning a Jet Jaguar suit.

There isn't a lot of info on this one, but a kaiju site does have an interview with Paul Blake, the Toy Vault designer who's working on it.

They're also working on a card game called Godzilla: Stomp.

HT: BGN

App O' The Mornin': Splinter Cell: Conviction Review

Grade: A
Price: $7

App versions of major console or PC titles always feel a bit like consolation prizes. They'll never be as flashy or as complete as their big brothers, but they can pack a lot of gameplay into a small package while still capturing the flavor of the original.

That's what the app incarnation of Splinter Cell: Conviction manages to do.  The full Splinter Cell: Conviction shattered the Splinter Cell stealth/action formula, and rebuilt it into something completely new. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends upon what you want in a Splinter Cell game, but it’s hard to deny that Conviction is a slick, fresh piece of work. 

Sam Fisher has been prowling the shadows since 2002, doing stealthy missions for Third Echelon, a “black ops” group working under the aegis of the National Security Agency. The game built upon mechanisms developed for Metal Gear Solid and Thief: The Dark Project, requiring players to stay out of sight and complete their mission without using deadly force. This odd inversion of what seemed to be the heart of action gaming (violent confrontation) proved to be an enduring addition, resulting in a new genre: stealth-action.

The key to Splinter Cell’s gameplay was Sam’s careful movement through each environment, using increasingly complex techniques to quietly take down guards, and then hiding the bodies to avoid detection. It required a slower pace and a careful evaluation of each environment, but returned residual benefits with a more enhanced sense of suspense. 

Well, most of that is gone now, and the series is striking out in a bold new direction that may or may not appeal to fans. If Conviction was your standard action movie sequel, the clichéd tagline would be “This time, it’s personal.” Fisher is out of Echelon and trying to put that life behind him, but he’s dragged back in by the promise of avenging his daughter’s murder.

Sam can still sneak around, without detection, and disappear in the shadows, but the game no longer provides the sophisticated series of interactions that made those elements so much fun. Lockpicking, split-jumps, moving bodies, and non-lethal takedowns are gone, replaced by a covering fire and movement system that doesn't work as well in the app as it did in the full game.

Once in cover, however, Sam is far more likely to kill an enemy with a single shot to the than he is to sneak around him or knock him unconscious. Each time you take down an enemy with hand to hand combat, you power up a special ability to tag multiple targets, and then execute attacks on those targets automatically, all at once.

The new flanking mechanic is more in keeping with the stealth theme of the prior games in the serious. If you’re spotted by a guard, you can move away, leaving a white silhouette or yourself at your last known location. The guards will move on this location, allowing you to sneak up behind him for a silent takedown. This creates an interesting tactical element, as you deliberately reveal yourself draw an enemy into a trap.

The app version is a seriously scaled-back version of the full game, but still manages to pack many of the features into a small package. Movement is mapped to an onscreen stick, with look-around/aiming mapped controlled by touching anywhere on the screen. This is a little bit better than dual-stick, and frees up the right corner for attack and context-sensitive action icons.

App conversions of major action titles are the dancing dogs of game design: it's enough that the dog can dance at all, even if can't do a pirouette. Splinter Cell: Conviction is a nicely compressed version of the full game, and that's just what it should be.

GAMES Magazine Electronic Game of the Year: Super Mario Galaxy 2

So you clicked on this post today and thought, "Are you on crack, McDonald? A sequel to a Mario game as the best game for the entire year? You really need to lay off the pipe and get yourself professional help."

Actually, that was what one of my writers said, but I managed to bring them around with commonsense arguments and minimal use of force.

The answer is actually pretty logical. The original Super Mario Galaxy was a victim of poor timing here at Games Magazine. First, it shipped at an awkward point in the year (November) which means we didn’t get it in time for the 2007 awards. Second, a little masterpiece called BioShock (one of the best games of all time), shipped a couple of weeks later, and shut out all contenders for the 2008 Game of the Year Award.

So when 2010 rolled around with a sequel to a game-of-the-year caliber game which improved upon the original in every way, it seemed like a natural choice for the top spot. This isn’t just a consolation prize because we couldn’t give the original the award three years ago. Super Mario Galaxy 2 has earned its place at the top of the heap by the sheer mastery of its design.

Red Dead Redemption, StarCraft II, Mass Effect II, and Battlefield: Bad Company II were all considered, while late shippers like Fallout: New Vegas, Halo: Reach, and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood would have certainly been contenders had they arrived in time. In a depressing sign of the times, only one of the contenders was an original game, while the rest were all sequels.

All of the best elements of the original have been carried forward in this sequel. This is the same engine, visual style, control scheme, and design elements that made Super Mario Gallery such a breakthrough pleasure. The first game took Mario’s familiar platforming gameplay—the jumping, bouncing, spinning, and soaring traversal of puzzle-like levels—through a dazzling array of inventive landscapes in, on, and around planets and other celestial bodies

The sequel smooths over the rough spots, eliminates what didn’t work, and expands upon what did. Galaxy 2 begins in a the 2D world familiar to players of Super Mario Bros. for Wii, then gradually introduces more complex controls and environments until the player finds himself traversing lavish 3D worlds with shifting gravity, or soaring through space from one planet to another.

To accomplish this, Mario has some new abilities in Galaxy 2, such as a Cloud Suit that allows him to create fluffy, temporary platforms, or a Rock Suit that allows you to use him like a bowling ball. Yoshi is also drafted into the space program, where he can use his tongue to grab objects or his glowing power to illuminate hidden platforms. Players can even have a friend help out, with a more fully developed co-op mode that allows another player to hop in and help grab stars.

This is just a pure delight, with nary a single element out of place. Thanks to the more gradual learning curve, an in-game helper, and co-op play, this is a good pick for the whole family, even younger gamers. There is joy in here, and families with a Wii shouldn’t pass this one up.

App O' The Mornin': iTrials Review

Grade: B
Price: $1

No one, in either Flash or app form, has managed to quite capture the bike trials format as well as the original Trials series from RedLynx. Thes 2.5D games blending elements of racing, stunt riding, physics, and side-scrolling action to create a fresh kind of action/racing/puzzle hybrid.

iTrials is the first game to really nails this formula for the mobile devices. It's not as complete or polished as the products from RedLynx, but it's a darn good imitation and the best we've seen so far.

Trials-style games are 3D games played on a 2D plane. That is, they use 3D-style graphics, but the player can only move forward, backwards, up, or down. The player needs to navigate a course as fast as possible with as few errors as possible.

iTrials does it just right. Motorbike handling feels great, albeit just a little bit bouncy. Controls are go, stop, and a slider for lean forward/backward. I wound have rather seen the tilt slider on the side than on the bottom, but you get used to it after awhile.

Courses are terrific, with 27 levels spread across 3 difficulty sets. They with straightforward ramps and jumps, and soon add seesaws, walls, spinny-things, reverse loops, stairs, sliding blocks, and other crazy obstacles. Animations are smooth and professional, with some great ragdoll effects for the rider. Visually, the game delivers the goods, although some edges could use a bit of smoothing.

This is the best Trials experience in the App Store, and at $1 it's a steal.

APP OF THE YEAR: Carcassonne

This was the first year we added mobile games to the Games Magazine Games 100 awards We chose to focus on Apps, rather than on other mobile devices, because only Apps can make a legitimate claim to being a new gaming format, with unique mechanics and design elements. Certain games are Wii games and can only ever effectively be Wii games. And certain games are Apps, and can only ever effectively be Apps.

To become a new format, a device must offer a unique language, a core vocabulary that it shares with every other item in that genre. There are distinct qualities to PC, Wii, DS, and Xbox/PS games, primarily based upon control, ergonomics, and aesthetics. Apple mobile software can make a similar claim, due to its unique blend of portability, size, multi-touch controls, and a 3-axis accelerometer (enhanced by a gyroscopic sensor for the iPhone 4).

Apps are of particular interest to Games readers because they are a natural format for all manner of puzzle, board, and card games. There are a huge variety of classic games, Eurogames, card games, and abstract strategy titles for the format, often with multiple versions of each. Many of these have multiplayer elements built-in, and also include teaching tools, variant versions, other features to give them added appeal. And all if this rarely costs more than a few dollars. It’s creating a mini-renaissance of classic gaming and puzzle play.

Our normal criteria for inclusion in the Games 100 is a title released within the current year (roughly October to September). For the inaugural edition of the App section of the Games 100, we choose the 25 best Apps in the App Store. The focus was heavily tilted towards the kinds of games our readers would prefer: heavy on board games and puzzles, light on action games and fart apps. If we'd done the list now, after having several more months of serious app gaming under my belt, there may have been some add/drops, but I'm pretty comfortable with the way the list turned out.

Had the awards come three months later, however, I might have considered Cut the Rope for the top spot of App of the Year, but it's hard to say. The winner, Carcassonne, is a time-tested favorite among Eurogamers in general and our readers in particular. The feature-set for the conversion of Carcassonne reads like a wish-list of everything you’d want in this kind of App. There are 8 different AI players, a new solitaire mode, local network play over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, Internet multiplayer via live-gaming sessions or email, a matchmaking service, an Elo ratings system, and in-game chat.

The implementation of the game itself is also quite strong. Carcassonne was always going to be a tough fit for the small screen of a mobile device. Its tendency to spread across the table makes it though to fit in a small space. The App version does a fair job of managing this by zooming in and out, and clearly marking any block where tile placement is legal.

The result is a pitch-perfect implementation of a complex boardgame design. This no small achievement, and clearly marks out Carcassonne as the App of the Year. Runner's up were Helsing's Fire and Catan.

App O' The Mornin': Finger Physics: Thumb Wars Review

Grade: C
Price: $1

Finger Physics never really knocked me out with its brilliant puzzle gameplay. It's okay, I guess, but the objects, their arrangement, and their behavior always just seemed to fall on the wrong side of the dividing line between "interesting" and "meh."

The first sequel, Thumb Wars, brings the "meh" in spades. This is a new mix of stacking and dropping puzzles that feels like an extended add-on for Finger Physics. As with its predecessor, the puzzles seem kind of random, with object behavior that requires plenty of guesswork. Even if a trial-and-error approach is fine with you, you may well find many of these just a bit stale. I'm not fan of stacking puzzles, but even if I was I'd like something a little more interesting that you'll find on display here.

I puzzled a bit over the title, assuming there were battling thumbs somewhere in the game, which would have made the experience 27.3% more interesting. No, apparently PressOK thinks that people play these games with their thumbs. Am I alone in thinking that's not really the case? I use my index finger for almost all puzzles, and I've never actually witnessed anyone doing puzzles with their thumbs. I understand that "Index-Finger Wars" isn't exactly a snappy title, but something called Thumb Wars should have, y'know, more thumbs in it.

The "Wars" title comes from the competition element that's been slathered across the surface of Finger Physics, much like old Hollywood cameramen used to spread Vaseline on their lenses to make aging stars look less wrinkly. It doesn't work as well here. The competition amounts to international leaderboards, so you can compare your "team's" scores to those of other countries around the world. I surely could care less how many stars were earned by Team Edward in Canada for solving puzzle #3.

By the way, there are some are thumbs in the game.  They're anthropomorphic little guys who occasionally introduce levels. Let me tell you something about a cartoon thumb with a helmet and a face: it bears an unfortunate resemblance to a certain part of the male anatomy. And once you get that image in your head, the game either becomes unplayable ... or absolutely hilarious.

Battle Cry: Back in Print

Before Richard Borg's Memoir '44 (Days of Wonder), Command & Colors (GMT), or Battle Lore (Fantasy Flight), there was Battle Cry. Borg created Battle Cry for Avalon Hill back in 2000, introducing the appealing and accessible system for military gaming that would power those later designs.

Battle Cry has been unavailable for a few years, but Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast are republishing it later this month. That's really good news for gamers. And if you don't know what Battle Cry is, just think of this: Memoir '44 ... set in the Civil War. MSRP is $60.

Civilization: The Board Game

A few years ago, Eagle Games took a stab at converting the classic PC game into a tabletop experience with Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame, and made a mess of it. It was flawed, unwieldy, and thoroughly unenjoyable.

Now Fantasy Flight is tackling this formidable task, and as this video shows, they have some intriguing design elements.

Shark Bites Helicopter

I'm sure some people might find Sydney Shark aggressively tasteless.  As for me, I have to appreciate a game in which a shark can leap from the water, bite a helicopter, and drag it into the water while an outraged, muscle-bound koala bear angrily shakes his fists. Also: you eat scuba-divers, cruise ships, and horses.

Mausland Entertainment also did a version of this called Miami Shark. Both are free flash games, but Sydney Shark does have a stylin' Panama hat. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.

App O' The Mornin': SteamBirds Review

Grade: A
Price: $1

Aerial strategy games usually have a niche appeal. Although there have been a number of board games tackling the subject, only a few computer games, such as Flight Commander and Over the Reich, spring to mind. That's probably because the tactical aspects of air-to-air combat are hard to capture quite right. We know how to take down the Red Baron when we're in control of a 3D sim and can perform an immelmann after a strafing run, but converting the knowledge into a turn-based tactical simulation can be tricky.

SteamBirds does a fair job of capturing these tactical elements, but it's not really a wargame or tacsim. This is a casual strategy game with an aerial combat theme. The premise offers an alt-history WWI/II in which steam-power aircraft do battle with a variety of souped-up tech and weapons. Frankly, other than giving it a nice veneer of steampunk, the alt-history aspect doesn't actually affect gameplay very much. Since all the aircrafts' powers are relative within the game world, you might as well be flying von Richthofen vs. Brown.

The gameplay itself is one of puzzle-like maneuver. You set a path or action for your planes with a little arrow, and then advance the clock a bit. The aircraft turn, speed up, reverse course, or perform other special functions in approximately 3-second intervals, and then you adjust the paths again.

Battles thus become a matter of choreography, as you jostle for the best position on an enemy six without overshooting them, or make slashing hit-and-runs on larger, slower-moving targets. It's a terrificly entertaining--and often remarkably challenging--combination of elements, and I can't really think of any other app quit like it.

The visual style is very appealing, and the designed translates almost perfectly to the iPhone format.The only tricky part is the occasional lack of precision when grabbing an arrow. They can fall fairly close to each other, making selection a little challenging. That's neither a large nor a widespread problem, but it crops up enough to be worth noting. The Java version, which has become something of an indie classic, is a more natural fit for the design, but the app works just fine.

SteamBirds is an easy one to recommend for strategy gamers, but if you have any doubts just play the game itself, for free. The entire thing can be found at steambirds.net.

Shopping at Amazon

Amazon's Associate program is the only financial support this site has. (Yes, there are also Google AdSense banners on the page. I expect those to generate some actual income around the time the sun finally gutters out and the last man on earth is left staring into the lonely void.)

If you plan to shop at Amazon for Christmas or Hanukkah this year, please consider accessing the Amazon site through my links, such as the one below. It doesn't cost you anything extra, and I get 4%-6% on each sale just because you click through from this page.

Thanks.

RPG/ADVENTURE GAME OF THE YEAR: Mass Effect 2

Role-playing and adventure games each used to have their own category in the Games 100, back in those crazy days when Roberta Williams roamed the plains and gold boxes stuffed with floppy treasures and code wheels were stacked on every shelf. 

I'm pretty sure I remember my predecessor/boss, Burt Hochberg, even having separate categories for different kinds of adventure games, such as "humorous" and "science-fiction," but the again Burt was always pretty specific about his game categories. This may merely be a gin-induced false memory, but I swear I remember him asking me once, "Tommy my boy, do you think we should give an award for Best Puzzle Game Played With Marbles"? (In my memory, Burt always sounds like Jackie Mason for some reason.)

Well, "RPG" has become a remarkably fluid category. It's almost de rigueur for action games nowadays to have some element of role-playing (achievements, skills, leveling), thus blurring the lines. Meanwhile, the graphical adventure genre cratered about a decade ago and never really recovered, no matter how hard Telltale Games keeps trying to bring it back. I have so few in each category that they wound up being combined. 

Meanwhile, "Action" games have grown like the giant fungal mats of Oregon. RPGs are becoming more actiony and action games are becoming more RPGish. What is Red Dead Redemption? Clearly there is a role-playing game at the heart of it, but the part of me that finished every Gold Box, Baldur's Gate, Ultima, Might & Magic, and Wizardy game balks at calling RDR a real RPG. It's just ... not. 

My dividing line is usually stats. If a game is has character building, races, classes, stats, skills, experience points, leveling, narrative, and questing, then it's an RPG. If it's missing any of those features, then it's probably not an RPG. Unless I think it is. It's pretty confusing. 

Well, this year was kind of a no-brainer for the RPG award. BioWare is one of the finest purveyors of RPGishness around, and Mass Effect 2 is a wonderworld of riches. The second outing sharpens the gameplay, expands the universe, and delivers a new, even more compelling storyline. Although the original had the look and control of a third-person action game, it was an RPG in its particulars. The sequel streamlines the combat and pushes it a little more to the forefront, but does so without sacrificing any of the character and narrative depth that made the original such a hit.

2010 was also the year I got serious about digging deeper into DragonAge, and I have not yet reached the bottom. It's a truly beautiful piece of work.

App O' The Mornin': Flight Control Review

Grade: A
Price: $1

If, like me, you hadn't pick up Flight Control because it looked like a boring traffic-pathing game, go ahead and rectify that error right now by springing for the1-buck download. You will not regret it. You can come back and finish the review later.

Flight Control might not seem like a hot purchase, since it appears to nothing more that a dry air traffic control game. Although it is an air traffic control game, there's nothing dry about it. Everything is crisp and professional, from the appealing graphics (done in the style of those hilarious Emergency Landing Cards that inform you of the most comfortable position in which to meet your fiery doom) to the cocktail lounge soundtrack. I'm not sure where the developers, Firemint, came from, but they sure now how to make a game.

The gameplay itself is so perfectly wedded to the touchscreen format that I can't imagine it existing on any other platform. The games is based around 5 different single-screen landing field layouts. Planes and helicopters of differing sizes, speeds, and colors enter the map, and must be sent to the correcting landing spot without plowing into any other aircraft. This is done by drawing a path, which the aircraft will follow.

The action starts slowly, but soon gets fairly tense as the skies crowd and different kinds of planes enter the patterns. You'll have to juggle intersecting paths and suddenly-appearing aircraft while trying to get everyone lined up and on the ground safely. If two planes crash into each other, the game ends. The goal is to land as many planes as possible before this (inevitably) happens.

There's a WiFi/Bluetooth mode that lets you handled the traffic duties with a friend, as well as a number of special achievements, such as keeping an aircraft airborne fore 5 minutes straight.

Flight Control is on the short-list of must-have apps for any serious app gamer.

SPORTS/DRIVING GAME OF THE YEAR: Split/Second

The flu interrupted my ongoing series about the Games 100 issue, which is an annual supplement in Games Magazine dedicated to the best games in any given year.  The first two entries were on Action Game of the Year and Strategy Game of the Year.

Sports and Driving are two genres that leave me cold, so I usually rely on my crack team of advisors, led by Lawyer to the Stars Eric Neigher, to steer me right. You can tell I really respect sports and racing games, because I shoved them into a single category and limited them to 10 or fewer titles per year. 

The reason for this is simple: they are almost always repetitious iterations of previous games with annual changes that are of interest only to people who follow this sort of thing religiously. I've worked on this guide for years, and I have run out of interesting ways to say that Madden Umpteen-Umpty-Ump has new rosters, slightly improved graphics, and a fresh control system that allows the midline field rule to be applied to the puck while in motion, or whatever it is these people do in between grunting and sweating.

As is now probably obvious, I know nothing about sports. I cannot think of an area of popular passion that is of less interest to me, other than Lady Gaga's wardrobe, or perhaps that new band you like, the one with that video. The only exception, oddly enough, is golf, which I know pretty well and covered from a gaming perspective for many years. Heck, I even wrote a museum exhibit about golf sims for the World Golf Hall of Fame. Since I understand that golf is considered the most unwatchable game on broadcast television, I'm sure this says something awful about my peculiar psyche. I just don't know what. 

On the positive side, it means I've had tea in the private dining room at Royal St. Andrews--the one overlooking the first hole--and actually touched Sean Connery's locker. (His golf locker. Man, you people have filthy minds.)

But I digress.

This year we rolled out the usual allotment of notices for NFL, MLB, UCF, MILF, and whatever other annual $60 patches made the cut. We considered the professional sports field quite seriously ... and then gave award to Split/Second, a driving game in which an airplane lands on your car while your incredible drifting skillz make you so powerful you can literally make the track explode.  

Top that, Madden.

App O' The Mornin': Scrabble Review UPDATE

Update: 11/10/10

EA rolled out a big update for their Scrabble app, adding some new features and redesigning others. How does it measure up?

Well, it still loads like sludge, but at least now it supports multitasking, so you don't have to keep doing a reload every time you move. That's a huge time-saver for people who keep multiple games going throughout the day, and the prime improvement I would have asked for.

The menu system has been given a complete overhaul, providing a more stylish look and sleeker design. It's simply easier to get games started and customize features. Heck, the redesign even reminded me of features I'd forgotten about. (I don't recall ever noticing that you could choose your own music.) The layout of the solo setup, in particular, is much more natural. 

After a quick read of the update reviews in the App Store, I see a lot people disagree with this, and think the new look is ugly. Since App Store reviews are to quality commentary what Budweiser is to quality beer, I won't let this trouble my sleep much.

The "teacher" mode is now available for all play modes, but I admit to being a little iffy on the idea. It's certainly a nice way to improve your game, but I've always found that its availability in multiplayer mode makes it a tempting way to cheat. (It can you show you words with letters you still have on your rack at the end of the turn, allowing you to use that word next turn.)

The bad news? There's still no retina or Game Center support, pointless sound effects have been added (and can be turned off), and the scoring bug doesn't appear to have been fixed. People are lining up in the App Store to protest the lack of retina support with the mightiest arrow in their quivers: the Fearsome 1-Star Review. Because, you know, nothing demands cutting edge graphical blandishments like a game designed to played with cardboard and wood.

It's a good update, and would have been worthwhile if only for the multitasking.

Original Review: 8/18/10

With the demise of the unofficial "Scrabulous," the official EA/

Hasbro version of Scrabble became the only online version of this classic game. It's already a huge hit on Facebook, and has also made a successful jump the the App store, featuring multiplayer support that is among the best for any turn-based game.

The support for play across multiple platforms is, in my experience, unique among Apps. (And, no, I am not counting Farmville and Mafia. If you consider those “games,” you’re probably at the wrong blog.) I can start a game with the App, invite players via Facebook, and then anyone playing can continue the game either via Facebook or the App. This is a fantastic feature that needs to be implemented in more games. Unfortunately, there's a scoring bug that deducts the same amount of points from both sides, and can declares the wrong winner.

The software passes the new moves fairly quickly, and App connection failures are rare. (The Facebook side of the equation is a little more fussy, often requiring repeated screen reloads.) This kind of offline multiplayer is ideal for mobile devices, since it allows people to make moves at their own pace. Because of this App, I now play Scrabble every day, and it’s so easy to use that a move never takes more than a minute or two.

On the downside, it could use a more diverse set of customization options and faster load times. Although the app will send push notifications when a new move from an online opponent is received, you have to restart the app, sit through the logos, and wait while it finds your games. Updates seem to have improved this since the initial release, so we can hope that it will get even better.

Those reservations aside, it’s still a fine implementation of Scrabble for $5.

Summa Contra Sims

Sims 3 just made a nicely symmetrical leap to PlayStation 3, so now PS owners can relish in the tedium in HD. Me? I'd still rather play Prototype, which is now available as one of 360's Platinum Hits for only $30, and it's still worth a look. Here's a spot I wrote last year about both games, and my remarkable indifference related to all things Sims. 

Long ago, I came to the conclusion that The Sims was designed for Someone Else. I don’t know who. Hottentots, perhaps.

I played through The Sims 3 with awe, respect … and profound boredom. It’s a brilliant piece of work, and if God is kind I’ll never have to play it again this side of Purgatory.

Meanwhile, I’ve been returning to Prototype. I like Prototype. I also liked it when it was called Spider-Man 2 and Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. If a game is worth playing once, it’s worth playing two more times with different character models.

Games are all about wish-fulfillment and power fantasies. Some people are content to wield their mighty power to get three gems in a row. Others would prefer to jump ten stories in their air and punch a helicopter out of the sky. If you have the opportunity to do the former, I have no idea why you’d choose to do the latter, but people are strange.

Adult male gamers tend to follow the groove of their childhood fantasies into adulthood. As a kid, my daydreams ranged toward Conan, Professor Challenger, the Six Million Dollar Man, and G.I. Joe. (Also: I wanted a pet werewolf.) If someone makes a game in which a muscular Cimmerian gets fitted for a cybernetic arm with kung-fu grip and leads his Adventure Team into a jungle swarming with dinosaurs that time forgot!, I’d never leave the house. Until then, Prototype will do fine.

My childhood fantasies never ran toward being, say, an interior decorator, or a guy who humps his way to a crummy job and home to a barely furnished tract house every day. That’s actually the polar opposite of “fantasy.” Some people call it “reality,” or perhaps just “life.” Others call it The Sims 3.

I’m baffled when people deride a certain piece of art or entertainment as “mere escapism.” What the hell else is it supposed to be? You may escape into high-minded flights of the intellect or emotional insight, or into a place where a man in a loincloth chokes a T-Rex with his mighty pneumatic hand, but you are escaping. I’d rather not spend those precious moments of escape redecorating someone else’s make-believe house.

App O' The Mornin': WackyLands Boss Review

Grade: B
Price: $1

Although it's saddled with a flaky control system, WackyLands Boss still managed to pack plenty of fun into its hero-stompin' gameplay.

We've all spent way too much time fighting boss battles, so WackyLands Boss turns the tables and puts you in control of the Big Bad. Your boss is incredibly customizable, with even more options unlocked as you progress through the game. You can change eyes, limbs, torso and accessories to create the custom boss o' your dreams, and then equip him with a stone fist, chain mail, and a pretty bow in his hair.

The gameplay is simple side-scrolling combat, as you meet and destroy wave after wave of tiny enemies who seem to think they're "heroes" such as nights and archers. Once in a while, a princess in pink will come fluttering helplessly into the scene. This is your chance for a quick frilly snack, which also helps restore health.

The control scheme for all this would seem to be pretty straightforward, but it doesn't work so well in practice. Everything is done with swipes and taps: hold left or right to move that direction, tap for a light punch, swipe across for a heavy punch, swipe up to grab an object or princess, and swipe down to roll. That's all very nice, but the game moves to fast and simply doesn't correctly interpret your input. These leaves you fighting the interface rather than the enemy at certain points. It's not a consistent problem, but it's enough of a problem to cost you a few losses.

Nonetheless, there is plenty of gameplay here, with a number of levels and some minigames to stretch things out. It's possible to get used to the erratic interface, and the payoff is fun little bit of monstrous payback to all those nauseating little heroes.

Heroscape: 2004-2010, R.I.P.

Here at Casa McD, we're big Heroscape fans. It's really one of the great gaming systems of all time, allowing players to create wonderful custom playing surfaces using interlocking plastic tiles, and then fight battles with miniatures representing various historical periods and fantasy settings. Thus, you may find a Roman Legion and a dragon facing off against lizard creatures and samurai. The combat system is quick and easy, but with enough details and special abilities to provide interesting tactics. It's highly collectible, wonderfully entertaining, and dead.

That's right, Hasbro/Wizard of the Coast pulled the plug on the Heroscape line. Here's the official statement:

After a thorough evaluation, we have made the decision to discontinue our Heroscape line in order to focus our efforts on our core brands. While this decision means that we will no longer be developing new content for the game, existing Heroscape products will still remain available from Wizards of the Coast and sold in the hobby game channel while supplies last.

The next and final Heroscape expansion, Moltenclaw’s Invasion, will be released on November 16, 2010. This final assortment, which is playable with the Heroscape D&D Master Set, will include the best and most iconic creatures from the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. Orcs, bugbears, dragons and frost giants will all come together to join the greatest battle of all time. 

It's a shame to see the series going away, and I hope someone snaps up the rights to it. Scoop up those remaining set while they last. Once the stock is gone, that's it.

Ecarte: Poe and Doyle Play Cards

"The game, too, was my favorite écarté!"

Edgar Allan Poe, "William Wilson" (1839)

Card games have been such a popular pastime for so long that it's not at all unusual to come across references to specific games in literature, such as Ombre in Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock, or Speculation in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. 

In Edgar Allan Poe's classic doppleganger tale "William Wilson," a major plot point turns on a card game in which the narrator is caught cheating. The characters are playing a French game called Ecarté, and although it's no longer popular, it was a common gambling and casino game in the 19th century. Observers, as well as players, often bet on the outcome.

There is no solid evidence that Poe was a serious gambler. Biographies usually only mention a single period of his life, when he was in school and near-penniless, when he turned to gambling to supplement his income. That he was able to do this shows he had some skill with cards, but of the many sins (both real and imaginary) laid at the feet of Poe, card-sharping was not one of them.

Nonetheless, he showed a ready familiarity with certain cheating techniques, as William Wilson explains when he is exposed during a game of Ecarté:

In the lining of my sleeve were found all the court cards essential in ecarte, and, in the pockets of my wrapper, a number of packs, facsimiles of those used at our sittings, with the single exception that mine were of the species called, technically, arrondees [rounded]; the honours being slightly convex at the ends, the lower cards slightly convex at the sides. In this disposition, the dupe who cuts, as customary, at the length of the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honor; while the gambler, cutting at the breadth, will, as certainly, cut nothing for his victim which may count in the records of the game

But the literary pedigree of Ecarté doesn't end with there. The works of Arthur Conan Doyle contain at least 9 references to écarté in various stories and novels.

In Hound of the Baskervilles, for instance, Watson remarks:  "Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played écarté afterwards." 

Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories are full of Ecarté references. For example, in The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, the narrator says: "I took up the cards from the table where Morat had left them, and I tried to work out a few combinations at écarté. But I could not remember which were trumps, and I threw them under the table in despair." (This passage doesn't really make sense.)

And that's not even the end of it. A quick keyword search of just the books on my Kindle show écarté popping up multiple times in the writing of Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Andrew Lang, J.S. Le Fanu, Gustave Flaubert, Honore de Balzac, W.M. Thackery, and Mark Twain.

In 1895, the Lumiere Brothers filmed a short which shows two Frenchmen playing a five-card trick-taking game. Given the time period and the fact that it's a two-handed game, they are probably playing Ecarté. This is interesting for a simple reason: it's the first time a card game appeared in a motion picture. You can see the clip as part of the Lumiere compilation here.  It begins at the 3:40 mark. 

One of the fascinating things about the clip is the speed with which the old men play. The onlooker doesn't even finish pouring the drinks before the game is over. This speed is what made it a popular game for people to watch and wager upon.

How to Play Ecarté

Ecarté is a simple trick taking game with a unique scoring mechanic. It's related to Euchre, and descended from the French game Triomphe.

Preliminaries

The game is played with 32-card deck, with all the cards from 2 to 6 stripped. (This is your basic Piquet deck.) 

The rankings are K, Q, J, A, 10, 8, 9, 7.

The cards are shuffled and dealt 5 to a player. The standard deal is in packets of either 3 + 2, or 2 + 3, but any agreed-upon deal is fine. Stock is placed between the players

One card is turned face-up as Trump. If the card is a King, the dealer immediately scores 1 point.

Exchange

Non-dealer can request an exchange of a certain number of cards. The dealer may refuse this request. If the dealer refuses the card exchange, then he commits himself to making 3 tricks and play commences. The non-dealer may come back with another request to exchange a different number of cards, with the same conditions: if the dealer refuses, he must earn 3 tricks.

If the dealer accepts the card exchange, the player discards the agreed-upon number of cards and draws replacements. Dealer must discard and replace at least 1 card.

Play

Play is straight trick taking, with high-card or high-trump winning. 

If either player holds the King of trumps, he may show it and score a point before playing the first trick.

Players score 1 point for taking 3 or 4 tricks, and 2 points for taking all 5 (this is called a vole).

However, if the dealer refused the exchange and then failed to win 3 or more tricks, the non-dealer does not score his own tricks. Instead, he earns 2 points automatically. 

Play continues to 5 points. If the loser only scores 1 or 2 points, the pot is doubled. If he scores no points, the pot is tripled. 

App O' The Mornin': Floop Review

Grade: B
Price: $1

Floop is an uneven physics puzzler that isn't always easy to love. The goal is to get an object into the mouth a critter on the opposite side of the level. At the beginning, the critter in question is a squirrel, and the object is an acorn. As you earn earn stars you also unlock a mouse with his cheese, and a gorilla with his banana.

The control is a simple touch/pullback combination. When you touch the object, a line shows the path it will follow. Draw your finger back further for a more powerful, set the angle, and let 'er rip. It's a pretty common ballistic mechanism, and it works fine.

The puzzle element comes from a combination of the environment and the physics modeling. There are plenty of obstacles and environmental modifiers. Some are fixed, and some can be slightly repositioned when hit by the object. Some surfaces slip or cause modest chain reactions, while others destroy your object.

The weirdness comes from the behavior of the objects, which feels kind of wonky. Everything is a little too bouncy, with reactions akin to Jelly Car. This is not really a problem, but it takes a little time to get used to the way each item behaves in the world. Adding to the challenge is the fact that each object behaves differently depending upon its shape. The cheese is square, the acorn is kind of oblong with a hat, and the banana is ... banana-shaped. The shape effects the way a shot will bounce and roll, and creates a different dynamic for each level.

It takes a bit of time to warm up to Floop, and there's a random trial-and-error element that I don't usually like to see in my puzzlers.

Also: I don't know why, but I don't like angry-looking animals in my apps. I like cute. I like Kiko and Starcat. I'm sure this was attempt to capture the Angry Birds vibe, but it doesn't work here. That squirrel looks like he's about to foam at the mouth, run up my pants leg, and do something awful to me. (By the way, squirrels? Not cute. Squirrels are lawn rats, and no amount of Cute Overload pictures will convince me otherwise.)

That said, I did wind up kind of liking Floop. It has plenty of levels and decent production values, and it certainly offers plenty of gameplay for a buck. If the notion of a ballistic puzzler with Jelly Car physics sounds interesting to you, then have at it.

PUZZLE: The Pebble Game

This is a classic from Henry Dudeney:

"Here is an interesting little puzzle game that I used to play with an acquaintance on the beach at Slocomb-on-Sea. Two players place an odd number of pebbles, we will say fifteen, between them. Then each takes in turn one, two, or three pebbles (as he chooses), and the winner is the one who gets the odd number. Thus, if you get seven and your opponent eight, you win. If you get six and he gets nine, he wins. Ought the first or second player to win, and how? When you have settled the question with fifteen pebbles try again with, say, thirteen."

Turns Out It Wasn't a Cold...

... it was the flu. If a cold on immunosuppressants is unfun, then the flu on immunosuppressants is double-super-plus unfun. I'm going to be going slow this week, so thanks for your patience. I managed to get an App review up this morning, but since my head is all floaty and woozy, I may well have said that Reckless Racing was the best aardvark gromit mowing fish of 1989.

So, hey, maybe this will be a fun week for readers after all! Watch the loopy writer try make sense on heavy medications.

App O' The Mornin': Reckless Racing Review

Grade: A
Price: $1

I waited to pick up Reckless Racing until the price dropped, and for a very good reason: I'm cheap. At $1, Reckless Racing is a steal, but even if the price goes up you should grab this one.

Even if you don't normally like racing games, you may well like Reckless Racing, since it's not your ordinary racer. The top-down perspective gives you a wide view of the track layout, which makes it almost like playing with slot car racers. I'm not a big fan of 3D racers, but there's almost a puzzle-like quality to top-down racers.

Visually, this is one of the best apps in the store. The races play out across detailed terrains with great lighting effects and animation. There are five tracks total, and each one has a reverse version that can be unlocked. It would have been nice to a see a little more diversity in the track style and layout, but that's a pretty small problem, and may well be rectified with updates.

The game allows for 3 kinds of control: standard (left, right, gas, and break buttons), tilt, and tank (autogas with left, right, and break buttons). All of them are responsive, and the game controls quite well. Is it a realistic racer? Great Uncle Jessie's Ghost, boy! What are you talking about? This is a Redneck Racing kind of game, channeling the spirit of Bo, Luke, and the General Lee. You drift around corners, spin through mud puddles, ram opponents into the river, hit randomly-placed ramps, and then move along.

The main game is a standard dirt rally against 5 other AI racers, who all seem to be on guide-rails. Or lithium. Or both. The hot lap mode is a nicely executed solo race that records each turn around the track and then lets you race against a ghost version of yourself. Delivery is a fun mini-game in which you pick up and drop off various objects around a track.

Even more impressive is the multiplayer, which has completely integrated internet matchmaking support. It only takes a few seconds to log in and start racing against other gamers.

The entire game is steeped in deep south cliches, and people who are offended by Southern stereotypes should probably give it a pass. The only thing it's missing is Boss Hogg and Cooter.

That's about the only caveat that I'd give with Reckless Racing. This is just a good little game, even for people who don't normally like racers.