I’ve always loved sliding tile puzzles, from the simple number kind to distant relatives such as the Rush Hour Traffic Jam puzzles. There’s just something appealing about putting things back in order with only the one open square to work with. Cogs adds a new dimension to the idea.

Created by Lazy 8 Studios, Cogs was first available for the PC and has just been released for the iPhone and iPod touch. Both versions are fairly similar with some minor tweaks in the iPhone version. Instead of completing pictures or putting numbers in order, your challenge in Cogs is to build machines by sliding gears together or hooking up steam pipes. The steampunk theme is great and carries over to the timer, move counters, and menu screens. It’s an attractive game with all sorts of mechanical contraptions and wonderful animation, and the sound effects are pitch-perfect.

Some of the puzzles are three-dimensional cubes (such as the one pictured) which require you to spin the cube around to solve each face individually. There are also two-sided sliders (you have to solve both sides simultaneously) and cylinders, nontraditional shapes that will really get you thinking. Inventor Mode is the basic game: put together the machine using the least amount of times and number of moves. Challenge Mode allows you to replay the puzzles you’ve solved, either in fewer than ten moves or in less than 30 seconds.

The one disappointment on the iPhone version is that the initial purchase only gets you ten puzzles. There are five “puzzle packs” in all, each available for $.99 (with a bonus 51st puzzle at the end). After you solve the first ten puzzles there’s a button to purchase the next pack in-game. But $4.95 for the whole thing is not a bad deal, and half as much as the (still not so expensive) $9.99 PC download. The PC version, appropriately enough, can be downloaded from Steam.

I really enjoyed the app, particularly since I’m the sort of person who likes to go for all the awards and achievements. Once you’ve gotten all the achievements, though, the replay value goes down. The iPhone version is tied to Crystal, a system for tracking your position on leaderboards and achievements as well as integration with Twitter or Facebook. (I generally don’t use this sort of feature but I suppose kids may like the bragging rights.)

One nice touch for the iPhone version is a tiny spark that shows where you’re touching the screen: depending on the puzzle it helps to have that pinpoint accuracy. Also, I was told there were some minor tweaks for the iPhone version to “smooth out the learning curve and get players into the 3D puzzles faster.”

Fellow contributor Jenny Williams had this to say about the PC version:

You have to do the first puzzle to unlock more puzzles, then do those to unlock more, etc. Once you solve a
puzzle, it gives you an medal for finding a solution, for how much time it took and for how many moves you used. As soon as you click “Play” for a puzzle, the timer starts up so you better be ready!

This game adds a whole new level of complexity to conventional slider puzzles, because you have to design the system while you move things around. You have to have the design in your head, and then figure out how to get the pieces in the right places. Often, though, there are two or more possible pieces which could both work in one place. Definitely a thought provoking game.

Since there aren’t too many puzzles, you could easily solve all of them in a short period of time (my husband and I played about 15 puzzles in an hour or so). So it’s a good game if you like to try to beat your previous scores on things, but once you figure out how to solve a puzzle, the charm may be gone. (Not sure how much the PC version of this game cost.) It’s a great game, though, very different from a lot of what’s out there, so major points for that.

If you like puzzle games, it’s definitely worth a try. You can download a free trial for the PC, or just buy the first puzzle pack for $.99 from the App Store to get a feel for it. Visit the Cogs Game website for more details (and a really cool demo video).

Wired: Very cool steampunk look, nice take on sliding tile puzzles. Just an all-around pleasure to play.

Tired: iPhone version separated into five puzzle packs (still not expensive, but disappointing if you’re not expecting it). Loses some replay value after you’ve gotten all the achievements.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a free download code for each version for review purposes.

Bubble Pop

Kai-lan and friends are featured in a new game for the Nintendo Wii, Super Game Day. Like the TV show, the game is geared toward younger kids, and features the same voice actors as well. The characters and settings carry over pretty well from Ni Hao, Kai-lan and my kids really enjoyed playing it.

One of the great things about this one is that the controls are for the most part very simple, mostly just using the position of the Wiimote rather than the buttons, so my three-year-old was able to follow along for most of the games. For Bubble Pop, you hold the Wiimote sideways and tilt back and forth to move, pushing the “2″ button to jump. For Dragon Parade you hold it straight up and down, and jump over or duck under obstacles. Even the water balloon toss is a simple swinging motion and doesn’t involve pushing any buttons. I found this particularly nice because little kids have small hands and don’t necessarily have the ability to hold the Wiimote the way an adult hand can.

My kids playing Dragon Parade

Also, before each game Kai-lan gives a brief tutorial on how to play. (After the first time you can skip the tutorial.) Both of my kids were able to listen to the instructions, and my six-year-old usually didn’t need any help interpreting. The only two trickier games were Yeye’s Movin’ and Groovin’ (which involves holding the remote and then copying Yeye’s moves) and the Dragon Boat Race (neither of my kids has any idea how to row a boat, sadly).

I was a little disappointed to find that the game doesn’t incorporate any Chinese language learning. However, many of the games do have ties either to Chinese culture or to a specific episode of the show, so my kids were reminded of some of the episodes they had seen.

Playing the games unlocks new areas (for a total of three), and also harder difficulty levels. The number of times you have to play to unlock a difficulty level seemed a bit high at first, but pretty soon my kids were playing “Heavy Bubbles” mode on Bubble Pop, their favorite game.

Overall, I think they did a good job creating a game that really captures the feel of the TV show, and allowing the players to choose their favorite character to use is a great feature, particularly because the characters talk to you during the game. The games are fairly simple, so older kids may lose interest sooner if they aren’t already fans of Ni Hao, Kai-lan. But as a dad, I liked having a game that includes my younger daughter (even though she doesn’t get a whole lot of videogame time yet).

Ni Hao, Kai-Lan: Super Game Day is about $30 on Amazon. It’s also available for PS2 (and is a little cheaper) but I imagine the controls aren’t as kid-friendly.

Wired: Kid-friendly controls; play as your favorite character; animation and voice acting matches the show

Tired: No Chinese language learning; probably won’t interest older kids.

The game is from 2K Play: www.2Kgames.com/2Kplay/

Related Posts:

Learning Chinese with “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan”

“Ni Hao, Jade-Lianna”: GeekDad Interviews the Voice of Kai-lan

Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of the game for review.

Battle Blasters title screen and character selection screen.

The year is 3042, which of course means that there are death match tournaments. Fighters across the world strap blasters to their arms and shoot it out for fame and glory—or at least a high score on the Facebook Leaderboards.

Battle Blasters for the iPhone and iPod Touch is an arcade-style one-on-one shoot-out. There are six different unlockable characters, each with different speed, defense, power and abilities. The controls are pretty simple: swipe to the side to move, forward to shoot at the enemy, down to block, and tap your character to activate your special ability. The trick is learning the strengths and weaknesses of the various characters, and eliminating them as quickly as possible.

The campaign mode is reminiscent of old-school fighting games like Street Fighter: you pick a character, then battle your way through all the characters (fighting your doppelganger, of course), each with their own background setting. The last opponent is B.R.O.C., a massive robot who freezes you and then unleashes a hail of bullets. Each fight is best-out-of-three, and ends with the victor making some quip about the fight. (Some are more amusing than others, but with a limited repertoire they do get repetetive.) You also get very detailed stats about the fight for both you and your opponent: shots fired, accuracy, shots deflected, etc.

Quickplay lets you choose your player and opponent for practice. Multiplayer is interesting: since controlling your character only requires half of the screen, you can actually play against a friend on one iPhone. However, because it’s not a true top-down perspective, Player Two has to work upside down. (The biggest thing you’ll need to watch for is sharp fingernails!) I’ve been informed that Online Multiplayer is in the works for a future update.

Fight stage and post-battle quip.

You start the game with only Easy mode and one character, Jerett (that handsome bald guy in the blue armor). Beating the campaign unlocks a difficulty level and another character. So far I’ve beaten Easy, Medium and Hard, but Supreme has proven to be beyond my abilities; although it appears that B.R.O.C. will be the reward for doing so.

It really does feel somewhat like an homage to Street Fighter, with its colorful manga-esque in-game charcaters (and the more detailed portraits before and after the fights). However, unlike Street Fighter there isn’t any pretense of a plotline here. You have a blaster, you’re trying to shoot everyone else. Who needs a story?

It’s mostly kid-safe as long as you don’t mind the idea of people with guns where their arms should be. There’s no blood and gore, just glowing balls of light. But for kids who have grown up with first-person shooters, this may be a little too simple. It may in fact be more popular with people like me, nostalgic for old Sega games. (I did, after all, play it enough to beat three difficulty levels, and I’ll probably keep trying to beat Supreme.) The increased difficulty levels and unlocked characters add replay value, but it does start getting repetitive. I haven’t played much of the two-player version, but that would certainly add some interest to the opponent.

Battle Blasters is $2.99 at the Apple iTunes Store.

Wired: Fun old-school shooter game; two-player mode on one device; nice variation in character abilities; easy-to-learn controls.

Tired: May be too simple for your kids (but that means they won’t be stealing your iPhone to play it, right?); until online multiplayer is available, it might not keep replay value for long.

Disclosure: GeekDad was provided with a free download of Battle Blasters for review.

Screenshots © Armor Games; used with permission.

The beauty of many, if not most, video games lies in their ability to distance players from the real world by taking them into a fantastical alternative reality. So imagine, if you will, that you live in a world covered with elaborate castles made from wood, iron, and stone, but that are held together without mortar or indeed any sort of connective material between pieces. Further, imagine that it was your task to kill all the inhabitants of these castles armed only with a trebuchet and various projectiles.

It is to this world that the game Crush the Castle for the iPhone/iPod Touch takes you. The mechanics of the game are simple: You simply tap the screen once to start the trebuchet in motion, and tap again to release the projectile(s). Should you want to change ammunition, two more taps will take care of that. Your task is to crush the castles, as the name states, but most importantly to kill any and all the people in each castle.

These people — who are meant to look like kings, ladies of various kinds, and guards — don’t fight back, and won’t even move as giant boulders or bombs streak through the air, raining doom upon them. If that makes the game sound easy, it isn’t. Sure, you’ll earn a gold medal on some castles on your first try (the kind of medal you earn depends on the number of shots you need to kill all the people, and is based on each castle’s difficulty). But some castles will have you tapping Reset to start over again at zero shots, and desperately trying different trebuchet release points until you find something that works. One castle took me well over twenty tries to crush, and then I only just managed to earn a bronze medal.

Screenshot © Armor Games; used with permission.

I leaped at the chance to play the iPhone game, because I’d played the original Flash game and its sequel online, and thoroughly enjoyed both. The iPhone game has many very different castles from the online versions, and at least one new projectile type as well (I have yet to finish the iPhone game, so can’t be certain it stops at one). So even if you’ve played the originals, you’ll find lots new with the iPhone version, but the fundamentals are still the same.

It’s a great game for kids, too. Yes, you’re trying to kill people, and yes, when they die there is a little splatter of blood. But the people never move on their own, so it’s unrealistic enough that it’s not likely to traumatize or desensitize anyone. And the mechanics are so dead simple that any kid who understands how to tap the iPhone screen can play.

Crush the Castle is $1.99 from the iTunes App Store, and will provide hours of entertainment. If you’re unconvinced and want to try it out before spending money on it, there is a limited free edition of the game available as well.

Wired: Way more fun than it has any right to be, really, and well worth dropping $1.99 on.

Tired: Some of the castles were a bit more frustrating than necessary, I thought. But if it weren’t challenging, it wouldn’t be much fun, would it?

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of the $1.99 version of the game.)

Chrononauts. Image: Looney Labs

What would you do with your very own time machine? Go back and forth in time, collect a few artifacts, make some changes to history that will result in a better present for you … same as everyone, right? But then, what if there are several other people with time machines, zipping around and fiddling with the timeline too? Well, then you’d get something like Chrononauts.

Chrononauts is a card game from Looney Labs (the folks behind the Fluxx series and Icehouse games, among others) which pits up to six players against each other as they manipulate history. The basic game’s timeline runs from 1865 (Lincoln’s assassination) to 1999 (Columbine High School Massacre), with 32 significant events.

The view of time travel here is something between “Back to the Future” and “12 Monkeys”: you can change the future, but only bits at a time. There are Linchpins which you can change which then affect certain Ripplepoints down the line. Saving Honest Abe, for instance, creates a paradox in 1868, Andrew Johnson’s impeachment. Causing too many paradoxes will destroy the space-time continuum, though, so Chrononauts are careful to patch them: for example, by playing 1868′: Abraham Lincoln impeached.

The trick is, all the Chrononauts are from different timelines. One way to win the game is to get back home by adjusting the timeline to match your ID. Each ID comes with three important dates and shows whether they are the current version (which conveniently matches the timeline we live in) or the alternate version; there’s also a short story about each character, and these make for wonderful mini-scifi tales.

Another way to win is by getting the right Artifacts, according to your mission card. For instance, you might need to collect three live dinosaurs, or maybe your mission is “Stuff from the Future” which includes the Sports Almanac from the Future and the Cure for Cancer. Just watch out for the “Get There First” card, which allows somebody to steal an artifact from you. Or worse, “It Never Existed,” which discards it.

The game shares some similarities to Fluxx, so if you’ve played any of those you’ll have a grasp of at least part of it, with the added dimension of the time travel. But it’s not too difficult to pick up even if you’re totally new to it. It’s recommended for ages 11 and up, though older players may be more familiar with the historical events on the timeline. That said, it’s a fun way to teach a little history, too. Andrew Looney has helpfully written up the Mysteries of the Timeline in which he explains why a Zeppelin factory would stop the Korean War and other links between linchpins and ripplepoints.

It’s also a really funny game and the time travel riffs are great. The Sports Almanac is a nod to “Back to the Future,” but one of my favorites is the Videotape of the Creation of the Universe (on Beta), and the fact that the Brontosaurus is named Emily. (Work it out, folks.) One of the cruelest cards you can play on an opponent is “Your Parents Never Met,” which discards their identity and forces them to draw a new one.

Version 1.4 of Chrononauts (the second published version, as far as I can tell) was just released in December. If you already have the first version there’s not much of a change other than a new box, a few added cards (the Beatles Reunion Album is one) and an updated rule sheet which is much easier to read. Released at the same time is the Gore Years expansion, which adds five more timeline cards (from 2000 to 2008), a couple identities and patches.

If you like the idea of time travel, Chrononauts is a fun way to play with it. There’s also a solitaire variant, as well as a simple Fluxx-like variant which does away with the timeline, but I would reserve that only for younger players who don’t quite understand the time travel portion yet.

You can buy Chrononauts from Amazon or your local games store for about $20, and the older version will run you about $15 if you can find it.

Wired: Changing history, collecting live dinosaurs, what’s not to like?

Tired: Not much, other than those other pesky Chrononauts who keep thwarting your plans.

Disclosure: Looney Labs provided a copy of the game for review purposes. However, I did own a copy of version 1.0 that I’d previously purchased myself.

The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton features glowing illustrations by Tony Persiani

Everyone knows the story of the invention of the airplane, the telephone and the light bulb.  But there are a million little things around us that we never even notice which didn’t exist until somebody thought them up. Take Day-Glo colors. We see them every day on Blaze Orange traffic cones and hunter’s caps, Signal Green sticky notes, and Saturn Yellow highlighter markers. But did you ever stop to think why some pinks look rosy while others are actually hot?

Like most people, author Chris Barton didn’t give Day-Glo colors a second glance until he happened to read an obituary of Robert Switzer, who with his brother Joe turned an interest in magical illusions into an industry — and along the way created hues Nature never dreamed of. The Day-Glo Brothers tells about Joe’s fascination with ultraviolet lamps, which he wanted to use to make objects in his magic shows glow in the dark. Poking around in their father’s drugstore, they found chemicals which they used to create the first fluorescent paint. Then Bob got the idea to make glow-in-the-dark ink for store signs and billboards. It was an accident that some of the paint they developed also glowed in the light. World War II made the brothers rich selling glowing paint for buoys, signal flags and safety jackets. Psychedelic posters and bright green tennis balls came later.

The Day-Glo Brothers is a picture book aimed that younger kids will easily follow. The illustrations by Tony Persiani naturally make generous use of the glowing colors. And publisher Charlesbridge has a web page with links to an animated explanation of how Day-Glo works, interviews with the author, and the original obituary that started Barton on the project. There’s also a teacher’s guide with activities — but the best activity is to give your kids a black light at your local hardware store and let them see what might glow.

The Day-Glo Brothers, by Chris Barton with illustrations by Tony Persiani, retails for $18.95 but can easily be found for less (or, like me, you can borrow it from the library).

Kathy Ceceri’s book Around the World Crafts! is now on sale (enter discount code 9U4UFFGK to save $7).

Cover image © Lucasfilm Ltd. and Klutz

The Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series is by most accounts much better than it has any right to be, considering the lousy live-action trilogy and animated movie on which it’s based. One of its better characteristics is the high quality of the art and animation, and if your kids are anything like mine, they’ve tried their hand at drawing the characters themselves.

So I was very excited to receive a review copy of the new Klutz book Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars. My wife, who’s a far better artist than I am, sat down with my kids to try out the techniques the book teaches. It instructs you to follow a step-by-step process, working from the inside of each character to the outside, which is good advice (according to my wife) for drawing any sort of figure, whether Star Wars-related or not.

The book includes a set of colored pencils, a “Star Wars”-branded automatic pencil and marker, and a good eraser. Tracing sheets are interspersed with instructions on how to draw the various characters, droids, and accessories, making the process even easier to follow. There is a very good variety in the figures chosen, from humans like Obi-Wan and Anakin to “big, sloppy” creatures like Jabba the Hutt to Battle Droids and Droidekas. The text is well-written, containing plenty of story-oriented detail along with the drawing directions — I particularly liked the page that allows you to customize and name your own clones.

I heartily recommend the book for anyone who enjoys or whose kids enjoy the TV series. I, even with my lack of drawing talent, was able to create a few drawings that were, if not great, at least identifiable as what they were intended to be. And my kids have been having a blast drawing the characters they like — Yoda is their current favorite.

Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars, by the Editors of Klutz and the inestimable Bonnie Burton (whom if you’re not following on Twitter, you should), retails for $16.95, though it can easily be found for less. You can also be entered to win a copy of the book by leaving a comment on this post before noon PST tomorrow (December 1), telling us who your favorite character on the Clone Wars TV series is. The giveaway is only open to U.S. residents (or those with a usable U.S. mailing address).

Wired: Very easy to follow instructions with great step-by-step guides. Enough detail about the story and characters to make the book unique, but not so much that it isn’t useful as a tool in learning good basic drawing skills.

Tired: They do include Ahsoka and Jar-Jar, which as a parent I understand are there for the kids. But I don’t have to like them.

(FCC Disclosure: I received a free review copy of the book.)

The app starts, as it should, by asking for your name, having you find a suitable wand, and then sorting you into a Hogwarts house. The Sorting Hat does not, as I had thought it might, automatically put you in Gryffindor, which I would guess to be most kids’ desired house, but seems to choose mostly randomly: I tried eight times, and the only house I wasn’t sorted into was Slytherin, which could well be purposeful on the part of the game’s programmers. After that, you have to learn your spells.

The game has fourteen spells, including the ones you would expect (e.g., Expelliarmus and Expecto Patronum) and a few you probably wouldn’t (e.g., Episkey and Oppugno). Each is cast by holding the iPhone (or iPod Touch) parallel to the floor and making a particular gesture, unique to each spell. This I found to be the hardest part of the app, primarily because the tutorial did not adequately explain how the gestures were to be made. It had seemed to me that the gestures were supposed to be made as though seen from above, whereas they’re actually supposed to be made as though the iPhone were chalk and you were writing on a blackboard. Once the folks who made the game sent me a video explaining that, it made things significantly less frustrating for me.

Casting "Incendio"

Once you’ve learned all the spells (you have to learn them one at a time, as each unlocks the next), you can practice them or engage in a duel. If you have a second device, which I sadly do not, you can duel between them, firing attack spells to defeat your opponent or using defensive and healing spells to stop your opponent defeating you. If you don’t, you can duel against a computer-controlled opponent, which is fun for a few times but quickly gets a bit tiresome.

Learning and practicing the spells shows some neat animation, unique to each spell, and makes the device speak the spell’s name (as though it were being cast). In a nice feature, the app lets you record your own voice saying the spell if you want to, though you can just use the default voice, which is a female voice with a British accent. This is the same voice that tells you when you’ve cast the spell correctly each time in lessons or practice, or gently tells you that “you failed” (which I got really tired of hearing before receiving the casting advice, let me tell you).

The Harry Potter Spells app (iTunes link) goes for $2.99 on the iTunes App Store, and you can find out a lot more information (including a spell-casting help video) at the official website.

Wired: The ability to cast spells with the iPhone was, perhaps, the only thing iPhones had been missing. Dueling with another person seems like it would be a lot of fun. My kids, who are huge Harry Potter fans, had a great time playing with it.

Tired: The instructions included with the app lacked clarity. Without a second device (with a second $2.99 copy of the app, of course), dueling gets boring quickly.

(Screenshots used with permission of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. FCC Disclosure: I received a free review copy of the app.)