Games and Audio
Apr. 11th, 2016 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearSpent a very pleasant afternoon at Paradice games cafe in Bromley the other week, and played two games I'd never played before.
Incan Gold was all about judging when best to cash in - the longer you waited, the more treasure you were likely to get, but also the more likely you were to lose it all by falling into a trap. It also involved guessing when the other players were likely to cash in, as you got more treasure if you were the only player to give up on a particular turn. It was a fun card game, but not the sort of thing I'm remotely good at.
Beowulf was a much longer and more complicated game, involving a theme that certainly appealed to me, and some interesting game mechanics. I really enjoyed the main section of the game, but it all went a bit awry once we entered the end game phase, which went on for far too long and sapped my will to live, as well as all my points.
Recently, several different people have recommended Lois McMaster Bujold to me, in terms of the highest regard, so I downloaded The Curse of Chalion and listened to it over Easter. The audiobook had a good narrator, I liked a lot of the characters, and I certainly got invested in the story as it progressed. Overall, I thought it was a solid and entertaining fantasy novel, and I'll listen to the rest of the trilogy at some point - but I'm not sure why people raved about it, as it didn't stand out as tremendously better than plenty of other fantasy series I've read.
Incan Gold was all about judging when best to cash in - the longer you waited, the more treasure you were likely to get, but also the more likely you were to lose it all by falling into a trap. It also involved guessing when the other players were likely to cash in, as you got more treasure if you were the only player to give up on a particular turn. It was a fun card game, but not the sort of thing I'm remotely good at.
Beowulf was a much longer and more complicated game, involving a theme that certainly appealed to me, and some interesting game mechanics. I really enjoyed the main section of the game, but it all went a bit awry once we entered the end game phase, which went on for far too long and sapped my will to live, as well as all my points.
Recently, several different people have recommended Lois McMaster Bujold to me, in terms of the highest regard, so I downloaded The Curse of Chalion and listened to it over Easter. The audiobook had a good narrator, I liked a lot of the characters, and I certainly got invested in the story as it progressed. Overall, I thought it was a solid and entertaining fantasy novel, and I'll listen to the rest of the trilogy at some point - but I'm not sure why people raved about it, as it didn't stand out as tremendously better than plenty of other fantasy series I've read.
