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December 2, 2013

The Genius: Rules of the Game

The Genius: Rules of the Game is a South Korean reality TV game show that pits players against each other in various games of wits and strategy. The show debuted in April of this year, so it’s still super fresh, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is into smart TV. The game starts off with 13 players, some are fairly well-known celebrities, others are simply bright minds, but all are selected for their particular talents and skills which might be useful in the game. Each episode focuses on a different game, in a segment called the Main…

November 5, 2012

Murder in Small Town X

Last year at MAGFest, I got to talking with a friend of a friend about mysteries, puzzles, and reality TV. All hopped up on caffeine, I gushed about the perfection that is The Mole, and he told me about Murder in Small Town X, which aired in late summer 2001 (shortly after The Mole season 1). It sounded great, and I found a means of watching it, but hadn’t gotten around to starting it until last week. The basic premise of the show is that a family has been murdered in the small town of Sunrise, MD. Fifteen of…

October 22, 2012

Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator

Well, we finally did it. We played Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator! Artemis is a multi-player networked computer game where each player mans a station on a spaceship, very Star Trek-style, completing missions in space. It’s kind of like a more realistic video game version of Space Alert, my favorite board game. For my birthday, my husband went ahead and bought the game for me and organized a get-together of enough friends to play the game! The big thing about Artemis is that it’s not a particularly accessible game. You need at least three players, each with their own computer (plus one…

July 13, 2012

Games About Something

I’m super busy today, so I need a post I can write quickly. I write quickly about things I’m feeling fired up about. Today I’m feeling fired up about game design! I hope this topic is still interesting to some of my readers, even if it isn’t exactly puzzle/mystery-related. (Maybe I should just formally extend the genre of this blog to include games and game design in general…) I have never designed and built a game, but I’ve been thinking about it more and more. Games have always been a part of my life to a certain extent, growing up…

June 25, 2012

Space Alert

I’d love to post about mysteries and puzzles today, but honestly all I can seem to think about is Space Alert, a real-time collaborative board game by Vlaada Chvátil. Last weekend, a friend of ours brought over Space Alert with the sales pitch “It only takes about 30 minutes to play.” Fast forward three hours later, and we had only decided to stop playing because it was 3 a.m. and our engineer was falling asleep at the terminal. This game is addictive. Here’s the basic concept: You and your teammates are recruits for a space research initiative. A ship aptly named…

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