Category: Online Game

Do You Recognize This Bird(le)?

I was playing Metazooa recently – a taxonomy game – and excited about the different species at our bird feeder, and I figured, “There has to be a bird identification game out there, right?” And, shock of shocks, there is that!

Birdle is, as the name would imply, Wordle-esque, in that there’s a daily target and six guesses for the user, with indicators for partial success. Of course, Birdle has slightly different objectives than Wordle, being an identification game – that is to say, each daily bird comes with photos of it and possibly a range map. Your goal is to guess its name – its common name – with a dropdown to help, so if you type in “yellow” it will offer you every bird with “yellow” in its name, applicable to that area.

Area-applicable is, of course, only important because of another feature – not only is there a bird-of-the-day for the world, but there are also birds for each of the continents! Excepting Antarctica, because Antarctica, but including Central America and, as a treat, the contiguous US. I have a guess as to where most of their user base is.

Once you’ve guessed, the screen will display that bird’s order, family, genus, and species, grey for wrong and green for the ones that you’ve gotten correct. For some birds this is more useful than others – songbirds are now the bane of my existence, even though I love them and they’re adorable – but in all cases, after your third guess, it will offer to tell you what the correct family is, and then after the next guess the genus, and after guess five it will offer you the first three letters of the bird’s common name. Depending on how expansive the genus is – and whether or not you’re using Wikipedia – this can still leave some room for error, but its clear that the true objective is for you to learn. And check out some gorgeous bird photography. And if nine birds-of-the-day aren’t for either of those enough, there’s also a practice function, where you can plug in geography and/or family of birds and get photos with multiple choice!

The pictures are from eBird and the range maps are from Birds of the World, both of which are comprehensive. And the game aspect adds a certain motive-to-process, as it were. Why else would I remember that some ducks are called pintails? (And why are some hummingbirds called hermits?)

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Yi Xian: Cultivator Card Game

This game is pretty. That was the first thing I noticed, once a friend convinced me to play. The art is colorful and softly lit, the music is light and often ‘peppy meditative’… and there’s a friendly metalbending tiger.

Okay, to be clear – my characterization of Mu Hu as friendly is based on the artwork. If you have the misfortune of opposing the tiger, it might not hold. Also to be fair, as a member of the Five Elements Alliance, Mu Hu can technically make use of any of them – metal and earth are just in line with his character bonus.

The way it works is this: each character belongs to a Sect, which has a base card pool they’re working with, and throughout the game the player will also unlock the character’s unique special options. A little bit like Hearthstone Battlegrounds, Yi Xian is a game of eight players, each prepping their own build, cycling through one-on-one fights until they run out of health. (Or rather, Destiny.) Also like Hearthstone Battlegrounds, your build is determined before you enter combat.

There are, in total, eight card slots in your deck. The game starts with three unlocked and progresses, so as not to overwhelm, and you’ll draw cards to work with each turn, which you can add to your build, hold on to, exchange (discard, draw a new one to replace it) or absorb (I call this “eating” it – it’s one way to level up). You can also stack two Level One versions of the same card to make a Level Two, and two Two’s to make a Three, with improving bonuses.

And then, build in place and timer running down, you fight! And hope that your build scales faster than your opponent’s. You can check in on what they’re working with, if you have time to spare, but you only ever get to see what they had in play last turn – not what they’re changing about it now.

Basics in place, there’s the matter of Sect and character complications: the Cloud Spirit Sword Sect are very stabby, and generally straightforward to use, while the Heptastar Pavilion – reliant on probability manipulation and building around fixed spaces in the deck – are a little bit harder. Mu Hu is consistently well-paired with earth and metal cards, while one of his Five Elements comrades, Du Lingyuan, starts with a randomized preferred element each game and benefits from jumping between multiples, which need be carefully sequenced. My favorite card in the game by name and by artwork is “Giant Whale Spirit Sword.” I have no idea how to explain why this makes sense, except that it… does.

And then the characters have Side Jobs, a whole ‘nother card pool which can give you magic flowers or poison music depending on what you choose. And then, if you’re of a high enough experience level (or playing with a friend who is) there’s also the Season event chaos. And yet somehow it’s all cohesive and well-balanced! And, again, so beautiful. I might go play Mu Hu again.

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Hunters of the Outer Rim

This one is bittersweet, because I knew the game was being discontinued by the time that I acquired it. I recently came into a secondhand Nintendo Switch, and seeing that it was slated to be discontinued, the first of their free games that I tried was Star Wars: Hunters. That way, if I liked it, I’d have as long as possible!

Folks, I liked it. I adored it. I wish I’d written about it sooner, so those of you interested would have had as long as well, and it’s taken me a while to put it into words. Truth be told, I’m still a little short for words, and that’s ok.

Star Wars: Hunters is a no-hard-feelings 4v4 brawl/bloodbath with Star Wars-style characters, each new and with their own lore. And their own weapons! Lightsabers, flamethrowers, poison arrows… there are no holds barred. And! Rest assured your opponents (and your friends) will respawn when eliminated, no harm done. Except to their objectives.

Hunters has, by and large, three game modes. “Eliminate opponents” (possibly with extra steps), “hold location” (possibly with extra locations to control), and “hold object” (and possibly do something with it). One of the latter, and one of my personal favorites, is a cycling special event called Huttball, which is basically like if soccer or American football were characterized by ziplines, fire hazards, and also The Power of Unspeakable Violence. What a delight! Another special event takes the usual “eliminate opponents” game mode, Squad Brawl (won by the first team to reach 20, 25, or 30 eliminations in all), and makes every single character the Wookie, with an Ultimate Ability recharge that’s absurd. The entire battle is eight Wookies yelling and hurling boulders at each other. It’s called Boulder Bash.

I could go on for hours, but truly, I cannot say enough good things about this game. Whether you like tanks, healers, snipers, or squishy melees, there’s a solid handful of characters for you, each with their own distinct gimmicks, power sets, and catchphrases. If you don’t like one healer, there’s a good chance you’ll think better of another! If you’re not a fan of straight-up PvP mode, perhaps controlling objectives is more your speed. And the implication, underneath it all, that they’re all friends and/or coworkers, to me makes the whole thing all the more sweet. I love this game.

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Hearthstone Updates: The Good and the Bad

There have been some changes to Hearthstone since I last posted about it, bringing good news and bad news. The bad news: they’ve discontinued Duels, which I was rather fond of. The good news: they’ve added a Duos mode to Battlegrounds!

Instead of eight players fending for themselves, four sets of two share health stats with their partner, and so must coordinate their approach. This includes the ability to Pass cards to your teammate’s hand at the cost of Gold. To that end, you can flag certain cards or other options (i.e. Tavern Upgrade) to confer with your opponent! It’s a very simple system, just a checkmark, an x, a question mark, and a portal symbol. Part of the joy for me has been learning how to click with each new teammate, because we all use the same four-symbol shorthand a little differently!

For the combats themselves, you and your teammate take turns fighting first, facing off one-on-one with an opponent until one or both combatants lose all their minions. Their teammate(s) immediately tag in, the fighting continues, and whichever team still has minions in the end does damage! If one player defeated both their opponents, their teammate’s minions fill in the empty spaces in their board and contribute to the damage total.

(Additional note: the Anomalies update I mentioned in the previous Battlegrounds post was, I believe, Season-specific, and isn’t currently in effect. They shuffle cards and rules like that with the major updates, so there’s always something new to play with!)

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Globle: Capitals

I discovered Globle: Capitals when I was writing my post on Metazooa and Metaflora a few weeks back, and it immediately joined my regular rotation.

Capitals has, unsurprisingly, the same basic mechanics as the original Globle (post with those here), with two changes. One, you’re deducing national capitals instead of the nations themselves. Assuming the average person knows more countries than countries’ capitals, this is inherently the harder game. The second difference makes it a bit easier; an arc appears between each guess and the previous, and like the capitals themselves, the arc is color-coded! This is especially useful if the correct answer falls somewhere between your entries.

Unsurprisingly, I like Capitals for the same reasons I like Globle (and Metazooa, and Metaflora). It’s a low-pressure deduction game that teaches me more about the world every day! And this world is such a fascinating place.

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Metazooa & Metaflora

I’ve mentioned the game Globle before – a sort of Wordle offshoot centered around geography. I recently discovered that the same group behind Globle, Trainwreck Labs, also had an animal game! That game is Metazooa.

My favorite part of Metazooa is that each wrong answer gives you the common order, class, etc. that your answer and the correct one share, so each guess fills out a sort of family tree. From a game perspective, it’s useful to extrapolate what this isn’t more closely related to; from an aesthetic perspective, it looks cool; and from a life perspective, I’m garnering a much more detailed understanding of the animal kingdom than I knew before.

And the same is true for plants! Metazooa has a sibling game, called Metaflora, which is similarly fascinating. As it’s harder (for people who don’t study plants), Metaflora gives you 25 guesses, while Metazooa gives you 20. In both games, you can trade three guesses for a hint: the next taxonomic rank down. They also have practice games if the one plant/animal daily isn’t enough for you!

I’m clearly fond of both of these; if you love these branches of science, or just want to understand them better, then this is probably the fun, educational game for you.

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Hearthstone: Everything Else

Surprise! I’m not done with Hearthstone yet. If you haven’t read my first two posts on it, you can find those here and here. All caught up? Great! The third play style is Tavern Brawl, which has a new set of rules each week. For instance, “[y]our deck is full of wannabes who cast a random spell at a random target when played.” Some rules, like this one, provide you with a deck, while other times you’ll have to build your own. Depends on the week!

The fourth option on the main menu is “Modes,” which leads you to… four other options. Arena and Duels are both a three-strikes system in which you build a deck and try to win as many games as you can before you’re out; each can be played using Gold or Tavern Tickets, and each wins you more prizes the longer you last. Duels also has a Casual mode, which costs nothing but has no reward. As for the mechanics, Arena features the traditional characters and rules, while Duels has its own characters, with extra abilities and increasing Health and deck size the further in you get. I personally prefer Duels, both because it has that Casual option and because it’s my kind of chaotic. I especially like how the addition of new cards each turn forces my strategy to grow and adapt; it’s ever-changing, which means it’s never boring!

Solo Adventures are Hearthstone’s story mode, where you can play through the characters’ origin stories and learn more about their history with each other. Functionally, it’s a lot like traditional Hearthstone, but against an NPC and with dialogue. Some arcs have you rooting for yourself more than others; March of the Lich King was painful because I didn’t want Arthas to win, knowing full well the villain he was becoming. Others are clearly the hero of the story, regardless of whether they’re in the Book of Heroes. (Rokara is in the Book of Mercenaries. She’s also the most consistently heroic character I’ve played so far.)

The final game mode is Mercenaries, which is by far the most unique. Whereas the others are about picking the right cards, success in Mercenaries is more about what you do with the cards you’ve picked. It works like this: to take on a Bounty, you put together a party of six Mercenaries. Protectors deal double damage to Fighters, who deal double to Casters, who deal double to Protectors, so you might base who you bring on which type your opponent is. However, your opponent is the last in a whole lineup of NPCs you’ll have to fight to reach them, so the ideal party has a little bit of everything. Pick wisely, because once you start the Bounty, you’re locked into those six cards. Success is instead contingent on picking, 1) the right three to have in play for any given combat, and 2) the right abilities from each of them to maximize effect. Each ability has a speed, with the lower numbers going first, and you can see what your opponents have picked before choosing moves yourself. Be exceedingly careful with the Health of your characters, though, because if a Mercenary dies, they’re out for the rest of the Bounty! And if everybody dies, big surprise, you’ve lost. There are a few major perks to this game mode, too. First is that, like in Duels, you’ll get a new upgrade after each fight, which lasts for the duration of the Bounty. The second is that, unlike Duels – or any other Hearthstone mode – each combat grants your Mercenaries XP, which unlocks new permanent abilities! You’ll also receive Merc-specific Coins, which can be used to upgrade those abilities.

The closest that traditional Hearthstone gets to this is the Reward Track – by playing games and completing daily or weekly quests, you progress along a track that earns you Gold, cards, Tavern Tickets, and Card Packs, which can be opened for five cards apiece. Battlegrounds also has its own track, where you can earn Hero skins and emotes.

And that’s Hearthstone! I definitely didn’t cover everything, but we’d be here for a very long time if I did. Hearthstone is near and dear to me, so I hope I’ve managed to impart at least the impression of everything, in case any piece of it interests you, too. See you in the Tavern!

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Hearthstone: Battlegrounds

Last week, I talked about the first Hearthstone game mode, and I promised more. So here’s part two: Battlegrounds!

Battlegrounds is an 8-player competition where you each pick one of two Heroes (randomly pulled from a broader lineup), start with three Gold, and instead of using your own card collection, you have to buy minions from Bartender Bob. Unless your ability says otherwise, minions cost three Gold apiece, refreshing the selection costs one, and the cost of upgrading your Tavern Tier decreases by one each turn. There are six Tavern Tiers. As you upgrade through them, you unlock higher Tier minions, usually with better abilities. In both traditional and Battlegrounds, you may only have seven minions on your Board at a time; in Battlegrounds, minions sell for one Gold (with exceptions). If you acquire three of the same minion, they combine into a Golden minion with an improved ability, and playing it lets you Discover (pick between three cards) a minion from the Tavern Tier above yours! Each turn, your board of minions will go up against another player’s, attacking mostly at random (except where abilities like Taunt dictate otherwise). If you have minions left after your opponent’s have all been defeated, each surviving minion’s Tavern Tier is added to your own, and the sum is dealt as damage to your opponent. Unlike in traditional Hearthstone, the minions that died last turn also return to your board! This gives you a lot of opportunity to build them up; my favorite minion type for this is Mechs, to which Magnetic minions can bond, allowing you to not only increase their Attack and Health, but also give them additional abilities! Only five of the ten minion types are used in each game, though, so you have to get comfortable with multiple strategies.

Battlegrounds characters start with different amounts of Armor on top of their 30 Health, likely to counterbalance their various abilities, but just like in traditional Hearthstone, when you run out of Health you’re out. If there’s an odd number of players left, the NPC Kel’Thuzad will reanimate someone’s board so that everyone still have a match. The last player standing wins! Battlegrounds takes longer than traditional Heathstone, because while the duration of each turn is set, there is no Fatigue mechanic to limit the length of the game. However, because each turn is a set length, usually much longer than I need to make my decisions, I’ve found Battlegrounds is useful for when I want to work on something in small doses. I can take my turn, get something done, and then take a break while I take my next turn!

This week, they also came out with the Anomalies update, giving each game a special rule like “Only Mechs are in the Tavern” (a favorite of mine) or “Tavern Tier 7 exists. Start with 10 extra Armor.” As you might imagine, these massively impact your strategy, up to and including which Hero you pick!

The cherry on top is Bartender Bob himself. He talks. Sometimes it’s in response to actions or transitions, like “Don’t tell the others – I’m rooting for you” at the start of a combat, and sometimes he’s just making conversation, which is when he’s at his funniest. Some of my favorites include “”Oh, I’ve dealt with the League of Evil. Terrible people. But good tippers!” and “All the best minions come here. I’ve got the spicy pretzel mustard.” There is so much to be said for this game, and still this NPC is genuinely one of my favorite parts.

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Come In! Have A Seat By The Fire

Hearthstone is a virtual collectible card game with several game modes and a warm, comfy tavern theme. If you have your volume on, you’ll find yourself greeted as the main menu appears.

Your first option is traditional Hearthstone. In this, you pick one of the eleven character classes – each with a signature ability – to build a 30-card deck for, then compete one-on-one with another player. The first player starts with three cards in hand, the second starts with four, and they each get one opportunity to reshuffle some back into their deck and draw replacements. This is most often useful when the card costs a high amount of Mana, because players have one Mana on their first turn, two on their second, three on their third, etc. up to ten. Starting with an 8-cost card, then, isn’t immediately useful. The second player also gets The Coin, a free card which grants them one extra Mana Crystal on the turn that it’s played.

The goal of the game is fairly simple: each Hero starts with 30 Health, and through the use of minions, spells, and weapons (all played by spending Mana*), you’re trying to knock the other Hero’s Health to or below 0 before they can do the same to you. You start your turn by drawing a card, and the text on each explains its abilities. There’s also bolded text, which you can hover over for the definition; for example, Windfury means a character may attack twice each turn, and Taunt means enemies must defeat your Taunt minions before they can attack any of your other characters. Each minion has Attack and Health stats. There’s also a time limit, to each turn, but also to the game: once your deck runs out of cards, each time you should draw deals you an increasing amount of Fatigue damage instead.

Alongside all this, there are several maps (randomly chosen from), each of which has interactive features! They give the game that little bit of extra character I adore. Strategy? Yes. Firing a catapult while you wait for your opponent to take their turn? Also yes!

On the subject of waiting, this post turned out extremely long, so I’ve split it into three parts. For my commentary on the next game mode, Battlegrounds, come back next week!

*Except for the rare cards that cost Health instead.

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This Game’s Gone Globle!

A few months ago, I posted about the suddenly ubiquitous game Wordle. Since then, I’ve been introduced to quite a few variants (at varying levels of masochism), but the handful I consistently come back to are foreign language Wordles (Duolingo‘s blog has a list of those here) and Globle.

Globle is effectively the geography edition of Wordle. Each day there’s a mystery country, and as you guess each nation it gets color-coded by its geographical distance from the correct answer. That distance is listed numerically as well, under the map and the list of your previous guesses. Your list can be organized by order of input or by which is closest; personally, I’ve found the latter quite useful when dealing with island nations, where I can at least approximate which continental areas it’s closest to.

Since there are so many countries in the world, this game has no guess limit; you only lose if you give up. Because of that, I consider it to be a low-pressure, fun and challenging sort of educational resource: I’ve become a lot more familiar with where countries are in the world – and in relation to each other – and even learned about countries I hadn’t known existed. It’s fantastic!

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