Play Time

Impasse comes without instructions. You learn each round by playing, and the simple gameplay becomes increasingly difficult yet remains totally accessible as you continue. Enjoy!

Impassable Whidbey Island.

Pathways

I don't remember where I found this great game, but I thought you'd enjoy playing Entanglement.

Brambles of Whidbey Island.

Sugar, Sugar

Sugar, Sugar is a new puzzle game, quite fun. Draw lines to pour the sugar where you need it. Enjoy!

Found at The Presurfer.

No Cane or Beets on Whidbey Island.

Drench

I found another game. Drench is an interesting concept, and you pretty much have to play and lose to learn how to play and win. You start with a game board filled with random squares of six different colors, and switch the color of your starting square to match surrounding squares. Each time you do, you add those squares to your 'blob' of control.

You begin the game with 30 color changes, and each level you get one fewer change of color. For such a simple game, it's quite challenging. Hope you enjoy it.

Drenched on Whidbey Island.

Pumpkin Remover

Pumpkin Remover is another of the type of games I like. Levels 13 and 20 are especially difficult. Hope you enjoy playing, too. By the way, why am I still finding all these Halloween-themed items all over? It's November, shouldn't we be getting flooded by Christmas stuff?

Found at Bits & Pieces

Pumpkins on Whidbey Island.

Crush the Castle

Crush the Castle is a nice bombardment game. Simple, with just enough challenge to keep you occupied for a while. Get to the end and you can build your own castle to blow up! Have fun.

Castles of Whidbey Island.

The Majesty of Colors

This is an interesting little game. You can find five different endings, depending upon choices you make in the game. 8-bit graphics and a limiting interface are part of the fun. Check out 'I Fell in Love With the Majesty of Colors'.

Found at Didn't You Hear?

Colors on Whidbey Island.

Geneology of D&D

Here's one for us geeks. This is the family tree of D&D, and includes all the editions I play. My campaign is stuck in the era before Gary Gygax left TSR, right in the middle of the chart. James Mishler has done a nice job of documenting the history of this great game.

Found at Wil Wheaton's blog.

Dungeons, but no Dragons on Whidbey Island.

Puzzles

Okay, it's not Tuesday, but then Tuesday is for comics anyway! This is a game. I found this at NotDoppler.com There are always an interesting mix of shoot-em-up, strategy and puzzles games there.

This game is Enigma. It reminds me of those wooden block puzzles I had when growing up. You know the ones, various shapes, circle square, and so on that only fit together one way, and often you had to wiggle pieces in just the right combination to get it to fall together. In much the same way, you'll find yourself wiggling and shifting the pieces around the screen to fit them into the desired shape.

If you like puzzles, give this one a try! If you tire of strictly puzzling, there are challenges along with the puzzle, some silly and mindless, some designed to make you think. Overall this is worth a few minutes of your time.

Games on Whidbey Island.

Factory Balls 2

A sequel to the first game, Factory Balls 2 works just like the first, with some new twists. Good Luck!

I featured the first game here, in case you want to start at the beginning.

Games on Whidbey Island.

Duck! Think Outside the Flock

Duck is a great game. Can you complete all the levels? Don't bother trying to figure out the directions -- each level is different, and they all require you to think outside the box. Enjoy!

Ducks on Whidbey Island.

What does YOUR computer do when you're sleeping?

I just had to ask. You see, my computer has a serious job to do while I sleep. When it's not busy defending itself from hackers and whatnot, it's busy crunching numbers. I have been participating in a couple of projects that use distributed computing to come up with solutions. The first project is for SETI@home. This project is sponsored by the University of California. I'm on the team "SimTechs With Time". So, for part of the free computing time my processors have, the SETI project uses my computer to search for intelligent life out in the universe. (Think "Contact" via the World Wide Web!)

The other project I participate in is a bit more down-to-earth. The Rosetta@home project, has my computer busily folding proteins which will help scientists get on with the real work of finding cures for things like Aids and Cancer. This project is sponsored by the University of Washington. My team on Rosetta is "More SimTechs With Time". If you're interested in helping with this worthwhile project, please join my team, even if you're not a Sim Tech!

Finally, if you're into puzzle-type computer games, but tire of the mindless and useless time-wasters, the Rosetta project has come up with a new game, Foldit! It starts out simple, with a series of puzzles to teach how to use the program. After finishing the tutorial section you move on to actual proteins, and, if you're into the competition, compete for the high scores. New 'puzzles' are added, and you can work solo or as part of a team. It's kind of an open-ended puzzle, in that you don't so much complete the puzzle, but find a solution that is most effective (reflected in the point value given). Still a mindless time-waster, but in the process you're doing something to help scientific research!

Now you know. Even when you're not using your computer, you can be using your computer. A CPU is a terrible thing to waste, especially when you've gone to the expense and effort of a tricked out machine. There are a number of projects you can attach to that are interesting and worthwhile. Just download the BOINC software, and pick a project. Happy computing!

Crunching numbers on Whidbey Island.

Hedgehog Launch

This is a fun game -- use the slingshot to launch your hedgehog into space. There are lots of upgrades available for your space program, choose them wisely.

Space race on Whidbey Island.

Conquer Club

Update: The servers crashed, and my games also timed out -- if you joined before, you have to join again. See the new game numbers below. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Do you like to play Risk? There's a fantastic, free, on-line implementation of the game Risk, called Conquer Club. Not affiliated with Hasbro or the game Risk, Conquer Club has all the features of the classic game, and much, much more.

One of the main features is the wide variety of interesting maps created by the Conquer Club community. Since joining Conquer club, I've played Malta, US Senate, Philosphy, Discworld, American Civil War, Asia, Canada, Ancient Greece, Italy, France, New York City, a college campus, South America, Texas Wars, Middle Earth, the New World, and a dozen others. The variety is amazing! There's even a game shaped like a Crossword -- each 'word' is a country.

Not only are the maps interesting, but the different options for play are fascinating. The players turns can proceed as normal, one-at-a-time, or everybody can play at once. You can also play with 'fog of war', meaning you can only see who owns what in adjacent countries.

Conquer Club is free to play 4 games at a time, but the games can take weeks to play, since to make sure everyone gets a chance, each player has 24 hours to make their move. If you want to play unlimited numbers of games, set up your own, and access the many other features of Conquer Club, it only costs a few dollars per month for premium membership. Are you interested in playing? I've set up 4 private games, exclusively for readers of Rockhoppers Daily Grind.

Game 2661504 is a traditional Risk map, played just like the Hasbro game, set up for 6 players with normal turns.
Game 2661524 is the Age of Realms, control castles, towns, and resources. Play is freestyle, so all 6 players at once, sets are worth a flat rate, and fortifications are unlimited.
Game 2661534 is the Cairns Coral Coast, with 8 players.
Game 2661544 is a fictional college, 6 players, with fog of war.
Password for all is: Rockhoppers

Register at Conquer Club to play all four games, or up to four others of your choosing, for free. It will only take a few minutes a day, and should be a lot of fun! May the Dice be with you.

Risk on Whidbey Island.

Games - strange but fun

I once owned an Atari, you remember... the black box that had those funny boxy controllers and you could play cool arcade games? Okay, I confess, I still have the thing. I haven't used it in quite awhile, but being the pack rat I am, I can't bear to part with a perfectly good game console. Besides, some of the games are downright fun to play, and are not available today.

Well, it was a quiet night, so I was doing a little surfing. Not my usual past time, but I happened across this site that had games to play online. This one is really a hoot!

Pongout

You remember "Pong" of course, don't you? And "Breakout", who could forget that? Well, this is the best of both worlds, not only can you play Pong again, and Breakout, but you get to do them both at the same time on a split screen!

Have Fun!!

Games on Whidbey Island.

Coke Zero Game

Coke Zero has a new flash game out. There are 4 challenges, and the design is impressive. The game takes forever to load, and I can't get past the 2nd challenge, (anybody know how to kick the ball?) but it seems like a lot of fun. Definitely worth checking out.

The designers put up a huge graphics and video-filled site documenting the behind-the-scenes work on this game. Pretty impressive.

Zero Coke drinkers on Whidbey Island.

Bird Watching

How good are your powers of observation? This game from the Audobon Society tests your photo comparison skills.

Try the game at 30 seconds -- if you get better than 20, I'll eat my hat! Even after playing it a few times I can't beat the 10 second version. The differences in these photos are so well placed that I had great difficulty finding them all without a time limit! It took me about 5 minutes to find the last detail on each of the photos.

Quite a fun game. I've included my own version in this post. There are five differences in these two photos. First to comment with them all wins something. Again, I'm not sure what, but something cool.

Bird Watching on Whidbey Island.

Pie Face

How did I never hear of this toy? It's clearly from the right timeframe. Very odd that I never heard of it before.

This looks like fun! I wonder if I can still get one?

Pies on Whidbey Island.

Ball Game

I found this cute little game. You have to manufacture the balls to specifications. I got all the way through on the second try, but it's pretty tricky.

Factory Balls.

Very few ball factories on Whidbey Island.

Mahjong anyone?

Hi every. Well it is getting a bit busy here at Rockhopper Central. First of all I promised I would put this question out there in the blog. We had a customer come in who is really interested in putting together a MahJong group. If you are interested would you please contact Rockhoppers so we can forward your name and info to her?

Next, for all of you out there who are small business owners in Clinton, The Clinton Chamber is holding a "meet and Greet" at the Dan Porter Park in Clinton.If you own a small business or are self employed please consider coming to the park and meeting with Chamber members to discuss how we can help you in your business.

If you are a democrat or are interested in joining a moveon.org community group we are starting one here on Whidbey island. There will be a once a month meeting here at Rockhoppers and there will be occasionally events to participate in. For more information please (once again) notify me and i will pass on the information.

Starting in July, we will be hosting a 2nd Saturday and 4th Saturday breakfast at Rockhoppers. If you are interested in joining us for breakfast please RSVP. I have 20 openings. That is it so you will need reservations for these breakfasts.

Finally, we will be doing our theater troupe. It will begin this Thursday at 5:00PM. We have 5 of us that are interested and we can accept three or four more people for this group. We are hoping that we will have 10 people who would like to do this. We will be doing Shakespeare, Balzac and a few other playwrights works but we will be adding improv and doing a variety of character bits. This group should be a lot of fun and I truly am excited about it. I love the idea of a group of friends getting together to do regular shows. My goal is to have a dinner theater at Rockhoppers one time a month. This will be a small group (20 max) and then after a small performance from the troupe. There wont be stage lights, a stage or wardrobe and any sets will be very minimal. So if you want to try acting and just have some fun please join us as we become the Rockhopper Moppets.

Life is busy here at Rockhoppers on Whidbey Island.