casual diversions #1

I don't have much to say these days. By these days, I mean during the course of the Olympics.

Let's begin in what I hope to be a series of posts that are in reserve in my brain.

Writing lesson #1 (or maybe it's #5, but it's something basic): Write about what you know about.

Unfortunately for productivity, I am a connoisseur of addictive (but not too involved!) online distractions. Mostly in the form of flash games. :-)

These have to be a special kind of game. There has to be very comfortable natural breaks in the game (e.g. between levels) or the pause function has to be non-detrimental.

Let's just get to the good stuff. Desktop Tower Defense

Featured in the best of Web 2.0 2007 on Webware, and featured on NPR, this was bound to be a winner. As you can tell from the title, it's a tower defense game. :-) I think those I've introduced the game to will refute my claim that it is not TOO addictive. It is. But only if you let it take over your life. I find it really easy to get to a point in the game where you can pause and not have to retain any groove in your mind, and just pop back in, especially if you choose to play a casual game and don't rush the waves too much.

The tower defense premise is just that you lay down attack units in a set place, upgrade them in a variety of ways, and usually are able to sell them for a fraction of their invested value. Waves of enemies, or "creeps" come in at intervals. In this particular game, you have the option of sending waves early.

Desktop Tower Defense is very easy to learn, and very hard to master. You can create group scoreboards with no effort, and you can look at other people's final maps for inspiration. Just youtube "Desktop Tower Defense" and you'll find a lot of people who want to show off their skillz.

Here's a video that is neither too too long nor too too insane? Reminds me almost exactly of what I've done in the past though...hmmmm...
Anyway, it's sped up and the music's added. No worries.