It’s actually a long weekend here in Canada, although the name of the holiday varies slightly depending on what part of the country you live in. In most of the country, it’s Victoria Day, as in the Queen. However, since my adopted province of Quebec isn’t exactly down with Her Majesty it was officially changed to as “la fete des patriotes” within the province in 2002 and is celebrated to commemorate la rebellion des patriotes, which allegedly started with a dispute over a pig wrestling contest. No. Really.

We’ve been keeping things pretty chill since Rick needs to travel again for work tonight, but we still managed to see Star Trek: Into Darkness and I recorded a guest host spot on Sound on Sight for it. I’ll leave my review for those that listen to the podcast.

The rest of the weekend was spent dealing with Gatsby’s ill-health. He’s prone to tummy upsets, but when we woke on Sunday to find him uncharacteristically hiding under the bed and spots of blood throughout the house we understandably panicked. After a $35 cab ride to the emergency vet clinic we were given an all-clear, but he’s been on 24 hour watch ever since. Next steps are twice daily antibiotics and a change in food, and I’m pretty sure he’ll be fine. But it’s put a rather nerve-wracking dent in what I’d assumed would be an extra-relaxing day off work.

Your Inspiration:

By Therese Sennerholt.

Your Vegan Recipe:
Bulgogi Style Tofu We tried this last week and holy smokes is it YUM! Definitely a keeper.

Your Smile:
Your new favourite cat.

The post Monday, Monday appeared first on Gamerwife.

Pitfall by Rob Osborne available on etsy

Heya!

How was your week? Ours was actually quite good. Managed to get back on the healthy eating wagon with some help from awesome Montreal business Lufa Farms. Every week we get locally sourced, essentially organic produce delivered to our building at work for convenient pickup. I can’t wait to figure out what to make with the sorrel & sunchokes in this week’s basket. Rick didn’t even notice that everything we ate this week was meat free. What?!

On to the link love:

Like writing letters? Wanna meet people with similar interests around the world? There’s still time to sign up for round 4 of International Geek Girl Pen Pals match ups!

In Take My Money Tuesdays news, A.N.N.E. and Among the Sleep both made their initial goals this week, but Magnetic By Nature and The Realm still need a little help.
Have a game you are crowd funding? Send me a line.

Need some new tunes? Powerglove’s amaze-balls soundtrack for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has been rocking my world all week.

Wanna know where your money really goes when you buy from a megacorp? Buycott lets you scan barcodes to make conscientious consumerism that much easier.

Speaking of consumerism, anybody wanna buy this for me? I’ll be your best friend… via The Geeky Hostess

And finally, these Post-Punk/Super Hero mash-ups are so spot on and amazing I just had to share them.

The post Friday I’m In Love appeared first on Gamerwife.

Let’s blame Rick for this one, since’ he’s the one who forwarded me the Kotaku review of Bake450′s Bread Kittens.

Despite the reviewer’s own admission that he was hopelessly addicted to the game, I really wasn’t expecting much. I really like playing games on my iPad mini, and I’ve been known to go on weekend long Robot Unicorn Attack binges. But, I already had a couple games I was playing regularly and let’s face it. Bread Kittens sounds really stupid. Really. Stupid.

Yes, there are baked goods. Yes, there are kittens. Yes, there is an obsessive collection component to it (my casual game kryptonite). And yet I too thought I would be immune from Bread Kittens’ life-sucking powers.

Oh how very wrong I was.

The game is deceptively simple, the art is average at best and the animations aren’t even on par with most flash games. But I cannot. Stop. Playing it. It’s basically an ultra simplified mash-up of Cooking Mama & Pokemon. As the player you find yourself in Catlandia, a sort of Disneyfied version of Europe broken into districts that are unlocked as you progress. You are a kitten trainer and you need to tame ferral cats using “capture bread” and then battle them against other cats to capture more cats, level them up and outfit them with armour. I mean bread. I mean… oh whatever.

So this is where the Cooking Mama stuff comes into play. In order to better prepare your kittens for combat you have an array of baked goods you can prepare using the flour you receive upon completing battles. Different types of baked goods confer different types of buffs. Wheat bread gives a boost to attacks, whereas custard buns increase the likelyhood of critical attacks. Pancakes enable HP steals, etc. New recipes are unlocked each time you finish an area, but you still need to purchase the recipe in order to actually use it. This can be done for a typically ludicrous amount of flour, or the paid currency, called “Meowbux,” which I guess is how they get you.

Battling is done by tapping on a moving meter, the precision with which you do so determining the strength of the attack and the number of stars you get for that battle. Levels can be replayed with any of your cats, which is good for grinding to level up your stable and to 100% the gold stars for each area. Each area also has different cats to be captured, 161 in total, with various breeds raging from common to ultra-rare, which also affects how easy they are to tame. Sure you can expedite the process by using paid currency, but there is a certain satisfaction to tossing 30 pieces of “capture bread” at a cartoon spinx before finally adding him to your collection.

There is a competitive multiplayer aspect to the game as well, where you can play against your friends over local wi-fi, or battle random strangers online. Not knowing anyone else sad enough to download the game I opted to try the online mode late one night and quickly regretted it. The matches are completely random, so my poor level 12 tabby with nothing but a slice of rye bread found himself against a level 20 Ultra-rare General Meow with pizza armour. Realizing my error after only one punishing blow from my foe’s gold-line supercat, I opted to forfeit and leave the online play to the big spenders.

I should be embarrassed about how much time I’ve sunk into such a deceptively simple game, but I’ve already named a couple of my in-game battle cats after Gatsby and Kala.

And Kala is wearing a bagel.

That in itself would justify the cost of the game to me. But it was free. So. Yeah.

The post Mobile Game Review – Bread Kittens appeared first on Gamerwife.

Welcome to Take My Money Tuesdays, a new feature where I highlight a different video game crowd funding campaign that I think looks interesting or deserving of extra attention.

Not to be confused with prehistoric MMO The Realm Online, this week’s pick, The Realm, is aiming to be a sort of next generation point and click adventure game with some of the most gorgeous, painterly art I’ve seen in a video game.

Oh, and did I mention it has a female protagonist? Not really the sort of thing I’d need to point out in most storytelling mediums, but considering the state of affairs in the video game world, I think that attempts at increasingly diversity when it comes to subjects and characters should be highlighted and supported. Touchstones for the tone of the game include Machinarium and Ico, so lovers of arty-emotional games take notice.

You play as Sarina, a young girl on a quest to find a mythical flower to cure her ill mother. While on her journey she meets a stone gollum named Toru who becomes her friend. Rather child-like and naive, Sarina must teach Toru in order to unlock new parts of the game. I like the idea of a simple, but heartfelt story supported by innovative teaching mechanics and interactions that don’t rely exclusively on trying to figure out how to combine random inventory items together. As I’ve mentioned before, “adventure game logic” is one of my biggest pet-peeves with these types of games, so I’m glad that developers Atomhawk Design and Lantern Interactive are drawing inspiration from contemporary game design to make things more intuitive for today’s players.

I guess what really impresses me about this project is the art and the scope. With only seven days to go and only 33% funded, this is a game that needs our help to see the light of day.

The post Take My Money Tuesdays: The Realm appeared first on Gamerwife.

Hi!

How was your weekend? Mine was very good, filled with brunch with friends, a trip to the farmer’s market and lots of nerding out. We even managed to almost catch up on Game of Thrones. Oh man, I mean, I already know what’s going to happen because we’ve been reading the books, but I have to say this is probably my favourite season. People are going to lose their minds at the end of this one.

We also watched a little Doctor Who, but so far this season has been kind so-so. Seems like they’re saving everything for the big 50th anniversary special, so even episodes with great names like “Journey to the Center of the Tardis” are sadly underwhelming.

The rest of the weekend was spent prepping for the week ahead and watching some beauty YouTubers. I think I have a girl-crush on Bubbi from bubzbeauty. She’s just so cute and perky, I can’t help it!

Feeling really good and full of good intentions this week. Made up “smoothie packs” on Sunday full of fresh fruit in single servings to make healthy breakfasts a breeze. I even got Rick to make some healthy breakfast cookies for himself. Boy is becoming quite the little baker!

Your Inspiration:

by Shahir Zag

Your Vegan Recipe:
Tofu Paprikash

Your Smile:
Little Girls Are Better At Designing Superheros Than You

This one is great for renewing your faith in humanity after too many crappy new stories about shitty things happening to women. These little girls rock.

The post Monday, Monday appeared first on Gamerwife.

Me and My Big Daddy Poster by Joebot available on etsy

How was your week. Pretty quiet on our front, although I did get addicted to a new mobile game (review to follow next week). Also did a little prep work for our 2 year anniversary. It’s the cotton anniversary, so we’re going to a spa! Towels, robes… it works.

Here’s your weekly roundup.

First off, some Take My Money Tuesdays updates – I figured that just over month after starting this feature I should jump in with a little update on how the projects I’ve promoted have done/are doing. Buddy & Me successfully met their funding goal, but unfortunately Pixelry did not. Magnetic by Nature and A.N.N.E. are both well positioned to make their goals, but Among the Sleep is going to need a big push to make its goal. I’m really excited about this one, so let’s dig deep and make sure it happens!

While I’m still sifting through my post-PAX emails, a recommendation from games writer extraordinaire Miellyn Barrows turned me on to the fabulous women in tech organization WIDGET. Their website is jam-packed with fascinating articles, including Miellyn’s own piece on how to be patient when waiting for your chance to be creative.

Game to Watch:
Teslagrad

Rick turned me onto this one after catching a blurb on it on Destructoid. A clever puzzler platformer also with a magnetism mechanic, but this time it’s ELECTROmagnetism. Eh? Get it? TESLAgrad? Euh?

Anyways, check out the trailer. It looks rad.

The post Friday I’m In Love appeared first on Gamerwife.

Go! Candy is an iPad game I was invited to review by the creators, A Sitting Duck. It’s another endless runner type game with cute cartoony graphics, based on a series of YouTube animated shorts by Luke Hyde.

While the YouTube shorts rely mostly on absurdist humour and the occasional bit of grossness, either in the form of barfing, snotting or even a Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky style punch through someone’s head, the game is surprisingly free of such flourishes.

You play as Candy, an apparently magical green dinosaur who flies through the air gobbling up apples. It seems you are also meant to collect the letters of your name as you whiz through the air to unlock some sort of powerup, although I seldom managed to do so before I got bored.

Yeah, that’s right. I got bored.

See, the instructions at the beginning of the game tell you to tap the screen to boost and slide your finger up and down to move up or down. The problem is, as soon as you take your finger off the screen, Candy does a head-dive into the ground and then bounces on his noggin until he dies. Which means that in order to actually play the game, you in fact need to hold your finger on the screen at all times, which can get pretty tedious, let me tell you. Not to mention the fact that this also seriously obscures the screen.

Which is actually usually fine, as the game is VERY forgiving. The main obstacles are blobby pigeon birds and rotten apples (and I suppose the ground if you dip a little too low, or god forbid deign to remove your finger from the screen to scratch your nose), but you really need to hit a lot of those before you do any actual damage. At worst your letter count will revert to nothing, but with no missions and a negligible difficulty curve, I think my worst criticism is that the game is too easy…

The floating up and down bits are broken up periodically by the appearance of Candy’s arch-nemesis, Negaraus, a blue dinosaur wearing a Power Glove. However, with little variation to his laser attacks, these diversions sadly do little to make the game more engaging.

The score is pleasantly peppy and chip-tune-y and the art style is cute and distinctive, and while I certainly enjoyed the aesthetic of the game, there unfortunately just wasn’t enough gameplay wise for me to really recommend it. However, I wouldn’t mind seeing what else A Sitting Duck has to offer in the future.

That said, it does appear to be a free download in iTunes, so I guess you wouldn’t really lose much by giving it a shot yourself, if you were so inclined.

The post Mobile Game Review – Go! Candy appeared first on Gamerwife.

With horror franchises like Dead Space and Resident Evil becoming increasingly action oriented, it might seem like survival horror is on the outs. But indie titles like Amnesia The Dark Descent have proven that there’s life yet in the genre. Now Krillbite Studio has decided to up the ante with Among The Sleep, a horror survival game where you play as a two year old child.

Originally started as a thesis project, the team behind Beyond the Sleep was struck by the potential of their game and decided to grow it into a full-fledged, commercially viable product. The concept is entirely unique, and the care they’ve put into the little things that help immerse you in the game, like a wobbly camera when you move that mimics a toddler’s unsure footing, is rather awe inspiring.

Frankly, I find the idea of being a two year old terrifying on its own. Adding in creepy noises and nightmare visuals could make this the scariest game of all time. Now who wouldn’t support that?

The post Take My Money Tuesdays: Among The Sleep appeared first on Gamerwife.

Hiya,

How was your weekend? Ours was pretty chill, owing to me being sick. Again. Is there anything worse than being sick when the weather is outside is stunning? Yeah. Didn’t think so.

Your Inspiration:

Available at behappy.me

Your Vegan Recipe:
Red Curry Lentils

Your Smile:
This one takes a little work on your part, but it’s totally worth it.
Step One – Go to Google Translate.
Step Two – Type “pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk” into the translate box.
Step Three – Click on the little speaker button to beatbox.

The post Monday, Monday appeared first on Gamerwife.

Cuddly cat.

Wanna have your favourite feline featured in a Caturday post? Send an email to mariko@gamerwife.com.

The post Happy Caturday! appeared first on Gamerwife.