machai-umno

A nice shout out and preview of the Mortis and 15mm/1:100 scale Crusader.

Yesterday, I mentioned that Jeff Laubenstein has been drawing additional art for the Villagers of Cairn Bicycle-brand Playing Card Kickstarter . Jeff has graciously agreed to add more art for Cairn because he believes in this project strongly, and he's fitting it in and around his other, paying gigs. This benefits the Cairn RPG by adding more artwork, as well as making it a bit easier for us to publish the book. All of us on the SoulJar Team (Alyssa, Jack, jim, and myself) want to thank Jeff for his contributions. I think it's safe to say that Cairn would have a very different look without him. Isn't this lady groundhog beautiful? In the Cairn RPG, you must choose two professions, which gives you a range of options. You can choose two complimentary professions, like warrior/marksman, which would allow you to fight equally well with both sword and bow. Or how about priest/healer, giving you access to spells that deal with both Harmony and health? You could choose two dif...

It's a chilly, overcast August morning here in NYC, a harbinger of returning winter. We're entering one of my favorite seasons in New York, the autumns here are generally mild and pleasant. At least September and October. So I'm sitting here at the SoulJar Games World Headquarters, which look suspiciously like my bedroom, sipping a cup of coffee and getting ready to work. I'm still trying to get used to this whole "day job" thing, which is weird to say since generally I work nights. But "night job" sounds like I'm a prostitute.... Which, as a freelance writer, I generally am. But still. The only days I really get much work done are my days off. I can get some things done in the mornings on work days, but then I lose momentum when I have to leave. Still, stuff is getting done. One of the things that's gotten done is that we've received two new pieces of artwork from Jeff Laubenstein. When we asked him to do more work, Jeff asked for a list...

My main regret in my original review of BlockPath was that it is too expensive to unlock all puzzles, since it requires four separate in-app purchases. This has been addressed today with the release of BlockPath Pro , which costs 99 cents and has all the worlds unlocked. While I feel a bit cheated since I had already bought 3 worlds in the Free version, the good news is that the puzzles in the Pro version apparently are different, so I didn't buy the same stuff twice. Also, it looks like their size is large from the very beginning. In the Free version, the first few puzzles are played on smaller grids. The developer is promising new puzzles to be added in September, so this looks like a bargain. Get it. ©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific d...

Make no mistake: Spliced Colors by Maria Cristian is not a logic puzzle. It is, instead, a game to exercise your visual-spatial abilities. The goal is peculiarly odd. You have a set of 12 tiles, and a pattern shown on the right of the screen. You need to pick in order the 5 tiles that reproduce the pattern, but rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. So in the above case, the solution would be this one: Picking the tiles is not intuitive: you must tap the tile and swipe up. Don't try to drag it into place, that won't work. You get 10 points for every level you solve correctly, and lose 10 points (and a life) when you make a mistake or run out of time. Every 50 points, there is an extra level where the tiles scroll across the screen instead of being lined up at the bottom. Every 50 points, the tile set changes. Don't be confused by the different shapes: topologically, it's always the same set, the lines just get more tortuous to be harder to recognise. There are five tile...

Reiner Knizia's Kaleidoscope is a nice variation of domino placement puzzles, flawed by a mediocre user interface. Whether Reiner Knizia was actually involved in the design of these puzzles, or his name is just used for marketing purposes, is unclear to me. The game uses the same double-hexagon domino pieces of Knizia's Ingenious (marketed as Kaleidoskop in some countries), but that's a totally different game. There are six symbols, and 21 domino pieces showing all the possible pairs of symbols. The playing area is a hexagonal grid, which in each puzzle is populated by a different pattern of symbols. You must place all the 21 pieces on the board, matching the existing symbols. Each puzzle has only one solution. When you tap a piece on the right, the places where it can be moved are highlighted. This is helpful because to find the solution you only want to place a piece when you are sure of its position. If you try to drag the piece over the board, which would be the nat...

There seems to be a bit of confusion surrounding the Cairn Bicycle Kickstarter and the Cairn RPG. Some people have emailed me privately to ask if I owned the intellectual property, or received permission, or was ripping Mike Nystul off. One person assumed I was fronting for Mike. There seems to be some anger bubbling in certain areas about another  Cairn -related Kickstarter.... My friend and partner, Alyssa Faden, wrote a response and I want to include it here. She says it much better than me.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey guys and gals, my name is Alyssa and I'm part of the SoulJAR team. Together with jim pinto and Jack Cull, we have banded together under the SoulJAR name to help Ross make this game - and other games - a reality. We are huge believers in utter transparency and honesty and have been updating our own FB pages, the Cairn page, SoulJAR Facebook and...