gfpuzz

Trying to get through my backlog of events to write up- I'm tackling the Puzzlehunt now, since all the puzzles are available online to refresh my memory.

( Read more... )

Anyway, we had a good time and would love to see Puzzlehunts happen more than once every two and a half years.

The Seattle puzzle season is in full force, with Safari last weekend, Non-Intern Puzzleday in two weeks, and Puzzlehunt 14 and the newly announced SNAP 8 in September. (And I've got Dragonflight, PAX, and a family wedding thrown in there too.) But for now, I'm here to talk about Safari.

This was a rock music-themed event. However, I don't have a lot to say about the puzzles this time around, because I didn't see that many puzzles. The Boxfort Brigands decided to play to optimize fun rather than points this year. Since I was the only person on the team interested in the running around and stamp hunting portion of the event, I was the only person who ever did it. So I crossed campus a few times, and was very sore afterwards. But the stamp search is fun, and one of the things that makes puzzle Safari unique.

( Read more... )

Despite some difficulties with the metas, we wound up 23rd out of the 75 or so teams, which is pretty decent. Our goal to have fun was definitely satisfied, though.

The traditional "what I did this weekend" post, a bit delayed because LJ has been having technical issues:

( Read more... )

On Twitter, #msig2011 and @msinterngame are the things to check out to see the public Tweetstream from the event. We did the documentary contest again this year, and had a team with the interns from the My Intern Life video series to get footage for an upcoming episode. As always, I'll keep an eye out and link what I can find.

Yes, it's almost time for the 2011 Microsoft Intern Game. Nonetheless, somebody had time to get last year's writeup completed and online.

When I was going over my puzzles, I didn't talk about my puzzle for the Game proper, Fortune Cookies, because I figured I could just link to the wrapup site. And I'm doing so, just a lot later than I was expecting. The one thing I'll add is that I can't take credit for baking the homemade cookies. I'd found a custom fortune cookie website that would get them for a reasonable price, but one of the first round of testers offered to figure out how to make them himself. That was much appreciated, and I think they came out pretty well.

Obviously, I can't say anything spoilery about the WHO Game this weekend, since it'll be rerun in the Bay Area in the fall, so I'll just say they have a lot to look forward to. It was a ton of fun, and Silly Hat Brigade and Los Jefes are awesome for putting together the first game in Seattle since 2005 and in here or the Bay Area since 2008.

Some nonspoilery Tweets showed up with the hash tag #whogame (I'm @gfilpus there). The one other thing I'd say that I didn't put there was a remark from our puzzle event newbie that you really have to be crazy to run these things. I couldn't really dispute that because it's kind of true.

The weather in Seattle has been really weird the last few weeks- the weekdays would be dreary and rainy, but the weekends would be sunny and overall awesome. While things were threatening to break that trend at the beginning of the event, it turned out to be a great day for a walking hunt in Fremont, the wacky hippy suburb of Seattle.

( A few puzzle spoilers )

Thanks to a long lunch break, we were close enough to the end time that we went over to the wrapup location to hang out. Some random Costco food, many conversations, and a round of Seven Wonders later, they announced partial results- we weren't in the top 3. I expect we won't be too far behind that, despite our blunders at the end, but I'm not too concerned about it. 2011 puzzling is off to a good start, and I'm looking forward to WHO, Safari, staffing Intern Game, Puzzlehunt, and any surprises that may come.

DASH was great fun, and I'll have more to say on it later. For now, I'll just mention that there were suspicious flyers at the Seattle wrap-up, suggesting that Microsoft Puzzlehunt 14 will be run by Liboncatipu the weekend of 9/10-11.

While we're all waiting for the World Henchmen application results to come back (at least, those of us who applied to the Seattle edition), I thought I'd take a moment to do another video game review. This time, it'll be about the physics puzzler we've all been looking forward to, but I've been especially excited about after seeing it on the PAX show floor last year. I'm referring, of course, to Curve Studio's Fluidity, which is available as a digital download via WiiWare.

It's a small-studio physics platformer, which means platforming with one interesting twist and levels that explore the many facets of the twist. This time around, the twist is that you control a quantity of water, which behaves as you would expect water to. You move by tilting the WiiMote to tilt the world left and right, you jump by "tossing" the WiiMote upwards- the concept is well-explored, and puts interesting twists on the usual platforming concepts of switches, doors, one-way passages (literally valves), inventory, hazards, etc. As the game goes on, you unlock special abilities and the other two states of matter, and encounter puzzles that test all of those abilities in interesting combinations.

The other thing that appealed to me personally was the Super Mario 64-esque structure of the game. You have a wide-open area to explore, and you find areas with sets of puzzles that lead you a star. (They call them rainbow drops, but they're stars) With enough stars, you unlock new areas, which give you abilities you need to get to more areas, and things branch out until you get enough stars to reach the level boss. And, of course, once you've found the stars you can still return to the areas and search their nooks and crannies for hidden flowers (which grants another star if you find them all) and puzzle pieces (which unlock a few minigames). There's a lot of meat on the game's bones if you're a completionist, but it's still fun if you want to get to the final boss or just play around.

It's fun, pretty, and pushed a lot of my buttons. If you have similar buttons to that, or just like fun, it's worth checking out for $12.

Some details about the WHO Game application process have been posted, presumably in an effort to be more transparent about criteria. And it’s hard to be more transparent- they break down the weighting of different factors, and since the biggest one’s the creative portion, they talk about the sort of thing they’re judging that on.

Come to think of it, the creative application is a variant on the charity auction idea I’d pondered in my last post about applications, except instead of money you’re bidding time and instead of contributing to society by supporting a charity you’re contributing to society by making funny videos.

As you may or may not have heard by now, there's a proper weekend Game in Seattle announced! Their website has all the information I know, so I'll just link there for now.

The announcement of this one, and quasi-announcement of Doctor When in the Bay Area in the fall, makes me wonder if we can declare the ends of the Bay Area's three-year Game drought and Seattle's six-year Game drought. Only time will tell, I suppose. As much as I hope the communities can get back to a place where the weekend events are just part of your balanced puzzlehunt breakfast, I have to admit that it's going to be action and a lot of hard work to get there.