been playing around in Sims 3 again, making houses.  here are a few i made the other day:

Caroline

Charming 3br/3ba Mediterranean style home on spacious lot, tons of potential!  Basement garage & flex space, elevator, veranda & front porch, ground floor master suite, game room, built ins, endless possibilities!

based on Plan #17044 – Dream Home Source

Download this lot HERE

REQUIRES:

Elsie

Cute 3br/2.5ba New American style home with 2-car basement garage + flex space, sunroom, wraparound porch, patio with fire pit, lots of room to grow.  Large lot perfect for gardening and leisure activities.

based on Plan #75540 – Dream Home Source

Download this lot HERE

REQUIRES:

enjoy!

because i really didn’t need another iPhone game to consume my life, or anything…

over a million downloads in just four days.  move over Angry Birds – Tiny Tower is the new freemium time waster for the iPhone.

a new spin on the “Farmville”-style game genre, Tiny Tower has players building and maintaining their very own tiny, pixellated skyscraper.  you build a floor, decide what type of venue will go onto that floor, and then keep it staffed and stocked to make money to build more floors.  sounds pretty lame, right?  well, it is pretty lame – but nevertheless addicting and time consuming.

first you have to build a Residential floor and fill it with “bitizens,” the peeps who inhabit your tower.  from there you can choose to build whatever your bitizens are demanding (or whatever you feel like!)  you can choose from Retail venues, Service venues, Food venues, Entertainment venues, and Creative venues.  there is even a tiny “Mapple” store that sells “Mypod,” “Myphone,” and “Mybook”!  the venues are seemingly random – you could get anything from a Vegan Food Store to a Day Spa or a Cineplex – and it seems there is a myriad of possibilities.  after construction on a floor is complete, you have to assign bitizens to fill three positions for each venue to be able to stock and sell the three products that venue provides.  you can only stock an item (1st, 2nd, or 3rd level) depending on how many bitizens work there – so if you have three bitizens working in a venue, you can stock all three types of products that venue produces – and make the maximum amount of cash for that floor.  in addition, you have random peeps showing up in the lobby who wish to be transported via elevator to certain floors as a way to earn more cash.  there are also “Tower Bucks,” which are premium currency that you can earn in-game for various reasons, or purchase through the app, to help with things like speeding up the processes on a specific floor or upgrading your elevator.  occasionally, a VIP will show up and enable you to increase the speed of a certain item – like construction and stocking time.  in the menu, there is “Bitbook”, a Tiny Tower version of Facebook, where you can see what your bitizens are up to, and a graph to see the demand level for various venues.  each bitizen also has a “dream job” and a specific allocation of “experience” for each type of venue – so you can earn extra cash by placing bitizens in their dream job or in venues where they have high experience points.

i’m currently up to 17 floors – check out the tiny Mapple Store!

a bitizen waits in the lobby to be taken up!

the in-game menu – lots of options!

the game is set up like Farmville or other time-management style games – it takes a certain amount of time for each different product to be stocked or floor to be built.  unlike Farmville, however, the game is absent of the ability to social network with other players (i.e., you don’t have to go water other people’s crops or do stuff like that to earn extra cash).  you can connect with friends and see their towers, though, and there are achievement points to be earned via the Apple GameCenter app.  as far as i can tell so far, there is no end to the game – there is an achievement for building 100 floors, so you can play… and play… and play… and play.

it all sounds pretty confusing, the way i’m explaining it, but if you were to actually play this game, you like at least a million others at this point would be HIGHLY addicted.  just like millions of people are HIGHLY addicted to Farmville.  if you don’t need to find anything else to take up more of your time, then you probably shouldn’t download this game, but if you are looking for a fun, free little way to pass the time every so often, then this game isn’t really that bad.  as i’m writing, the Notification is reminding me that i need to go stock the products in my Arcade… guess i better get back to it!  i give Tiny Tower 4/5 stars – the only reason it doesn’t get 5 is because i REALLY didn’t need another game to take up my time!

check it out in the App Store:

Category:  Games

Publisher:  NimbleBit

for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, iOS 3.0 or later

a lot of amazing things debuted at E3 this week… BUT.

the Chief is BACK. get your guns.

back at the beginning of March, Conan’s show was made available to Finland via TeamCoco.com.  in honor of “Finland’s greatest contribution to mankind”, Angry Birds.  i need say no more, just watch the clip.

a Sims 3 house, designed by yours truly

Sensible Ambience

A definite bargain! Modern, upscale 3br/2ba at just under $30k, this home features an enormous Master suite with Jack & Jill style bathroom, fireplace, eat-in kitchen with island, laundry room, front/back porches and a 2 car garage with work area! A great place for Sims looking to get out of a starter home!

REQUIRED:

The Sims 3
The Sims 3: Ambitions

a Sims 3 house, designed by yours truly

A-Typical

A “non-traditional” A-frame styled house. 3 br, 2 ba – master suite, island kitchen, fireplace, front/back patios, a touch of landscaping and 2 parking spaces make this affordable modern home a nice place for your eccentric Sim starter family!

REQUIRED:

The Sims 3
The Sims 3: Ambitions

Click HERE to download this house

Beat it in less than a day.

2:12:06 to be exact. and not consecutively, either. just over the course of the day. final score: 1,400,400 with $4695.

i’m especially fond of food games. i might’ve mentioned that … but i’m also really good at this type of game. it’s *kinda* like a diner game but you don’t have to run around – just fill orders. for burgers. 11 different kinds of burgers. i was whooping ass till about level 25 then it just got crazy hard with double burgers and stuff.

a great time-waster, cost me $1.99 and there’s also a free trial available.  4 / 5 stars. it coulda lasted longer and maybe had a map or quest to follow with different kinds of burgers… idk… i’m not a game designer, just a hardcore gamer

enjoy playing this one.

———-

• Seller: eGames, Inc.
• Genre: Time Management

for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad,
OS 3.0 or later

Worst. $2.99. I’ve. Spent. In. A. While.

No seriously. If I only wanted to be able to play 3 different kinds of yahtzee then I’d have just bought yahtzee. I seriously don’t need “rainbow yahtzee” or “battle yahtzee”…. Just plain ol’ yahtzee would have been fine with me.

This game tricks you into thinking you’re going to play some yahtzee adventure through a board or some kind of career mode, but really you play a game or two a piece with about 7 AI characters, get like 4-5 special “trophies” from the yahtzee sensei, then you are welcome to play one of the three types of yahtzee or revisit one of your previous matches. Bo. Ring.

So in “Rainbow” yahtzee, the dice are colored and there are several bonus score sections based on the dice colors, like color yahtzee (all dice of same color) and color full house (2:3 dice of two different colors).  All I can really say about that is that gameplay is a little longer and you can get a little bigger scores, but overall not really worth it – especially if you’re a diehard yahtzee player – you won’t remember to think about dice colors !

“Battle” yahtzee really annoyed me. I lost the first few games cuz I didn’t really understand the concept and the “help” section failed to define the rules and gameplay clearly enough either. Basically you start with a hundred points and with rolls of the dice you can either use your score to take points from other players or add to your own. The “last player standing” after everyone else reaches zero is the winner. I’m not going to get anymore technical than that about it – these matches were really a waste of time in the overall scheme of things because again, it’s not yahtzee.

I’d give this game 2/5 stars because it wasn’t worth the $2.99 I paid for it (on sale, I believe) and I would have liked a little more adventure mode/career style gameplay, and less boring battles. Definitely opt for something cheaper and less distracting from the original yahtzee principles if you’re looking for a good yahtzee app.

———-

• Seller: Electronic Arts
• Genre: Board/Dice games

for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad,
OS 2.2.1 or later.

the latest from the crack dealers better known as Apple’s app store.  for real, the games are like crack.  maybe better than actual crack because you don’t have to deal with any of the unpleasant side effects.

enter Godfinger.  if you like farm games, or Pocket God, or Virtual Villagers – esque gameplay, then you will definitely enjoy this one.

so you start out with this dinky little rock of a planet in the middle of nowhere, outer space.  a step-by-step walkthrough begins the game, detailing gameplay and preparing you for deification.  you have the ability to control most things on your planet – but are only started off with a few – rain and sunshine.  you are also given a few simpleton “followers” to impress with your wonders and worship you.  to perform wonders like rain or sunshine, you have to tap and hold on the object (sun or cloud) then pull down to disperse the energy created.  every time you perform a wonder, you burn “Mana” – the spirit-coinage of the Godfinger masses.  your Mana cache can only hold so much, though, and you spend it as you have to perform wonders to get your planet going.  Mana is generated automatically at timed intervals, but you can speed up the production of Mana by having your followers “worship” you by dancing around a totem.

next you begin to create buildings like farms and camps, and your wonders will power them to help you produce coins so you can buy more stuff to help establish your civilization.  you also learn how to “terraform”, and can change the land formations of your planet, adding valleys and peaks, creating lakes and mountains, and using the wonders you can make the land green and lush with plant life and trees.

you can wear your followers out, though, so make sure you give them plenty of rest in between jobs to help them stay happy and keep working hard for you!

another bonus of Godfinger is the ability to connect to the Plus+ gaming network, and connect with friends all over the globe.  you can surround your planet with friends’ planets in your mini-solar system, and you have the ability to visit friends’ planets to “enchant” their followers.  when you enchant a follower from another planet, that follower will generate gold for YOU and YOUR FRIEND, so it’s like a bonus cash opportunity.

there are in-game “Achievements” and goals to complete to progress through the game, and as you advance  through levels you will unlock more buildings, followers, wonders and other special items.

the game was released to the App Store for free download, but users are able to purchase extra “Awe” via the in-game store to help them advance more quickly and complete more tasks / levels in a short amount of time.  “Awe” is given in-game as well, and when used gives the ability to complete a task instantly so that you can earn money more quickly or complete a goal without having to wait.

that’s really the only thing i don’t like about these types of games – even some of the online (Facebook-based) games get irritating because you have to wait a certain allotted amount of time for something to grow, or finish production, and with ADD i just don’t have the brainpower to keep up with these types of things sometimes.  but thank goodness for the iPhone’s Push Notifications (and my slew of iPhone/iPod toting cronies who are also playing this constantly), or i’d never know anything that was going on and i’d go back a week later only to find my planet a desolate wasteland covered in skeletons and rotting vegetation.  guess that’s why i’m also not any good with growing plants in real life.  but, every now and again when i have a spare moment, i check in with all my little followers, pick up the gold they’ve generated, set them back at their tasks and go on with my day.  it IS pretty much like crack, though, once you get it up and going – you have to stop every few hours and go, “OH! better check on my planet! see what’s goin’ on with that shit…”  i’d give it….ohhhhh…. 4/5.  because it’s addicting, but not to the point of consuming huge blocks of your time, and there’s always something new to see or do.

so, if you’re into this sort of thing you definitely won’t want to miss out on Godfinger!  become your own supernatural force today!  (haha, i hate having to close articles… i always sound like a bad infomercial…. ‘Come on folks, it’s only $19.95 plus shipping and handling!  and the first fifty callers will receive this amazing set of ginsu knives FREE!  but WAIT – that’s not all – if you call now, we’ll also throw in an entire set of ShamWOW! and a dicer-chopper-combination-hookah-and-coffee-maker, also makes julienned fries!’)

• Publisher: ngmoco:) (2010)
• Genre: Simulation

for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad,
OS 3.0 or later

the iPhone game of the week this week is Cooking Dash.  if you have ever played any of the famous Diner Dash games, then you’ve played Cooking Dash.  Flo is back to serve the masses in five new levels of food mayhem!

this is a time management game, where you must correctly serve customers their orders, collect their money and clean up after them.  there is incentive for placing colored people in like-colored seats, and for performing the same task multiple times in a row.  in some cases, some foods require cooking time and you must wait for the food to be cooked/prepared before you can serve it to the customer, and at a certain point the food will start to overcook and lose point value.  each round has a minimum and expert point value to earn to clear the round.  points accumulated through the rounds can be used to purchase upgrades to the restaurant that will make customers happier and more pleased in the atmosphere, or speeds up or increases the number of available appliances and workstations for different items.

i’d give this game 3 out of 5 stars, mostly for playability.  there are so many of this type of game that it’s hard to really find one that stands out more than the others, so as far as originality and gameplay goes it’s definitely a 3/5.  if you’re a fan of the Diner Dash series, it’s definitely a must-download.

Publisher: PlayFirst (2009)
Genre: Time Management

for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
OS 2.0 or later