I’m not a gamer. I don’t want to run around shooting people or killing aliens; I can’t find my way through labyrinths, and am bored witless by sims.
The number of games I have, and play, on my Mac has tripled though over the last year or so.
Bejeweled
Bejeweled, unending game.
I did come to enjoy Bejeweled from PopCap Games a few years ago. I like the music; I enjoy the plaudits when I make a good move; and the explosions as gems are removed are fun.
The aim is to swap gems until you have 3, 4 or even 5 in a row or column. When you achieve a match those gems are removed, gems above fall down to fill the now empty places, and new gems appear at the top.
When I play against the clock it takes a lot of focus. The time counts down quickly and it can be hard to spot the best potential alignments. Hesitate as the game advances and you’re lost.
In fact, I find even pausing the game to deal with some real-life event is likely to destroy any hope of advancement when I return.
The absolute focus required to play against the clock makes this a great game for those times when I feel bogged down in whatever work I’m doing. I put my work aside, play a round or two of Bejeweled and come back to my task refreshed.
The screenshot shows the timeless version of the game.
Web Sudoku Deluxe
Web Sudoku Deluxe.
A year or more ago I added Web Sudoku Deluxe to my games collection.
This is the standard Sudoku where you have to enter numbers from 1 to 9 in each larger square so that ultimately every row and every column contains one of each digit.
There is a timer on the game, so if you complete the puzzle quickly you’ll achieve the best time, but you’re not playing against the clock in the same way as in Bejeweled.
This is a fairly ‘mindless’ game as really you just have to look at possible digits for each blank slot and then figure out which ones do or don’t fit.
Bookworm
Bookworm.
My most recent acquisition is Bookworm, also from PopCap.
It works a lot like Bejeweled, but you have to click adjacent tiles to make words.
From time to time ‘burning’ tiles appear at the top that gradually work their way to the bottom, consuming tiles beneath them. If a burning tile stays at the bottom for more than one turn the whole board ‘burns’ and the game stops.
After initially thinking the music a bit annoying, I find I’ve grown used to it. Bookworm doesn’t have Bejeweled’s satisfying explosions though.
I’ve been playing the untimed game as I ease in to identifying possible words snaking across the board any which way. This is fatal as I’ve found I can play for a long time. Maybe it’s a disadvantage of an extensive, if dormant, vocabulary.
It feels good to play with words again. Decades ago I used to do cryptic crosswords and was always good at spotting anagrams. These days, with all the plain language writing I do, my big words don’t get out to play very often.
These 3 games aren’t the shoot-em-ups that garner all the publicity, but I like them.
What Mac games do you enjoy?
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I’m on a p.c. so don’t have access to Mac games, but I’m totally addicted to playing Wordscraper on Facebook (and must admit to occasional bouts of Free Cell when I could be doing something else).
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