Journal of Tormod Haugen

This was an interesting week. I’ve been home a couple of days, the ground is covered in what we call Steel Ice in Norway, and I’m breaking neurons on a work related task. Since I also want to get blogging some more, I kind of have to write something now. Or something like that.

Barring a few tiny ideas, I’m fresh out when it comes to blog post inspiration. Which makes Łukasz’ latest post coming like an inspiration. I’ll just say what he does so well: What games are you playing right now?

For me it is a a bit of this, and a bit of that. I’m mostly a PC person, but my computer isn’t built to handle anything that are sold out of bargain bins (err… or about that). I’ve logged quite a few hours the last month playing the Kakuro puzzles in Platinum Sudoku for the DS. I also plowed through Orcs and Elves by Id Software - a decent dungeon hack on the same platform, though it isn’t something I’d buy as a full-price item.

As I said in an earlier post; I’ve also played a bit of Spectromancer, but not more than a bit. I’m not sure I will play it more right now, but that is mostly because I play the actual Magic: the Gathering against living and breathing humans while drinking coffee these (Satur)days.

I also tried out the latest build of Cortex Command yesterday. I’m pleasantly surprised - both with its captivity and genius - and with its ability to run on my aging computer. I’m not sure why (oh, well - I am…), I’m longing for a good game of Worms with friends again.

What do you play?

Now, it is quite a while since Magic: the Gathering 4th Edition were released. That was when I started playing, a long time ago. At the time of writing, 10th Edition is the current base edition, it seems. I am suddenly feeling old.

I rediscovered MtG while having lunch at my favorite coffee bar one weekend. The next weekend I was bold enough to approach them, and soon I was playing a bit again. At the start I was content with letting the local master (I guess), Rune, create my decks. Or rather; it was a necessity. My poor deck constructing skills were worse than before - a major feat in itself. He created a black and white deck out of some of my remaining cards of old, and tuned a 40 card deck out of what I made for a sealed tournament.

I’ve bought a few extra cards, and tried my hand at construction myself in the last month, and though no great result has come from this… I’m improving. Next weekend will show if I have improved enough.

A related discovery, coincidence I guess, is related to this latest craze of mine. It seems that Richard Garfield, creator of many games including MtG, has been working with Skaff Elias (as Three Donkeys LLC) and Apus Software to create an online card game called Spectromancer.

I’ve played the demo of Spectromancer a bit - it is intriguing, but currently undergoing my indie game test; I’ve uninstalled it. If I install it to play some more - I’ll buy it.