My daughter's first video game obsession? Nimblestrong, an iPhone game that teaches you how to bartend as you select, drag, and time your pours of various drink recipes into appropriate glasses - complete with garnish. All the while, you are encountering strange and exotic patrons as you train to become a hero master bartender.
It's actually one of the better examples of a video game being used to teach a specific skill that I've come across, with a good balance between twitch, recall, and narrative. There's just something deeply compelling - and rewarding - about successfully completing a complex drink and getting high scores from that anime vixen who thought you would screw it up.
The best part is the sound effects, and the particularly retro vidgame score. That, and the fact that my five-year-old now knows how to make 57 drinks.
Sega Arcade: Pop-Up History [Read Only Memory] is a beautifully-illustrated hardcover book about six classic Sega “body sensation” arcade cabinets – Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run, After Burner, Thunder Blade and Power Drift – complete with pop-up cardboard models. Accompanying this 3D showcase is a written history from Guardian games writer and best-selling novelist, Keith […]
The broken ASCII-art “FUCK EPIC GAMES STORE” wasn’t placed intentionally by Steam to show up as the store’s description in Google search results, but there it is, all the same. Google and its algorithmic gods picked the phrase, a comment left by a user of the site, for reasons known only to itself. [Rock Paper […]
Love Hultén, who makes retrofuturistic game consoles, built this thing called an EvoBoxx, which lets you play mathematician John Horton Conway’s Game of Life, a cellular automaton he devised in 1970. “The game is a zero-player game,” writes Hultén, “meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts […]
Whether you love cooking at home or you swore this was going to be the year you curbed your DoorDash addiction, you know you can’t get the job done well without the proper tools on hand. For all your recipe and meal prep needs, this 3-piece Sukasu Osami Chef’s Knife set will do you right […]
It may not rank up there with climate change or personal debt, but confess…isn’t it the worst when you’re trying to put a food container in the fridge, but can’t find the right lid to fit? Hey, not everything has to be a global crisis to be irritating to the core. But still…it’s even more […]
Assembling a truly autonomous smart home is getting closer and closer to reality every day. But for every new smart bulb, thermostat, home security system and appliance we set loose within our walls, there are still probably a half dozen “dumb” items we’d still love to replace. But whether they’re too costly or too big […]
