Sparkie's Junkyard » game

Magicka

Sparkie — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:21:31 +0000

Do you like wizards, magick spells, blowing up goblins, blowing up your friends, reviving them, blowing them up again, stealing all their things then trying to work together to defeat a troll? Yes? Well buy Magicka then and play it with Adam, Priyan and me!

PS: This comic in no way represents Magicka

Boardgames night

Sparkie — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:01:08 +0000

With Sonya away conferencing in Florida, I made the most of my week off to tidy up, get plenty of work done, then get some board games out. Just a few photos, before the memories fade into a wine-veiled haze.

25th Birthday Party – Cranium

Sparkie — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:32:16 +0000

Participants: 8
Combined age: 194
Bottles of wine: 5
Mental age: around 12

On my way home…

Sparkie — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 06:19:38 +0000

That’s it – my time in Taiwan is over and I’m now at the departure gate in Hong Kong. It’s 2.30 pm here, but I need to get used to British time again, which is apparently 07.14 Worse, i won’t be back until gone midnight, which is over 17 hours away. Fun times. At least there is free wifi in the lounge, which gives me a chance to do this, and send in the turn for our latest Solium Infernum battle.

I’m flying through the day this time, so endless movies and books are the order of the day, rather than trying and failing to sleep. Although with a 6.45 am start (yes that’s 11.45 pm yesterday in UK time) and a frantic rush around Taipei – dragging 20 kg of rocks of course - to find the right bus to the airport I could do with a nap.

Right – boarding time I think, see you on the other side of the world!

He is Born

Sparkie — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:05:49 +0000

Following on from the excellent example in Rock Paper Shotgun, Priyan, Adam, Sam, Tom and I have started a game of Solium Infernum. This is a turn-based, play-by-email game from an independent developer, and is more of an electronic boardgame than anything else really, with the advantage that being unable to see what everyone else is scheming means that you’re in for some big surprises a lot of the time.

The premise is as follows: old Lucifer has gone AWOL, leaving behind a collection of angry, power-hungry, despotic, back-stabbing, cloth-eared, swivel-eyed, fornicating little gits to scrap over the spoils. However, Hell turns out to be a somewhat more structured place than the land up above, in that you can’t just go invading someone’s country without a good reason – you must earn the permission from the Infernal Conclave to follow up a diplomatic snub or insult. At this point you’ve entered into a Vendetta and pretty much anything goes.

Now at the moment the game is still ongoing, and I can’t go into much detail about anything because I’m sure that anything I say will be taken down and used against me (coughknickerscough), but I can introduce you to my character, Dr Monoculus.

Name: Dr Desmond Olivier Octavius Monoculus
Job Title: Duke of Hell (soon to be upgraded to Ruler, of course)

Likes: Snappy clothes, pulling the legs off spiders, arranging the skulls of his vanquished foes in alphabetical order.
Dislikes: Mess, short people, rain (so he’s in a bad mood at the moment)

Now, unfortunately, I have to remain silent until things finish, but in the mean time I’ll be preparing a series of battle reports to release once it’s all over…

Ski-free

Sparkie — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:31:50 +0000

When it snows, do like the Romans. Sit indoors and drink lots of wine. Alternatively, why not go skiing? I did, and it turns out I suck quite a lot but I have slithered my way down a hill in Halifax (yes, skiing in England) all afternoon and now it hurts a lot. Memorable moments include goinig superman over the front when I hit a snowdrift, smashing through a plank when I hit a sapling, and burying myself, my skis and my dignity in a fir tree near the bottom of the run when I had lost control and decided this was better than crashing into the house at the base of the slope. I did eventually manage to link a few turns together though, so some success in the end

Maybe I should stick to something else, which I last played on our 486 in about 1997.