$100 Paypal Cash Giveaway from Giveaway Monkey

Welcome to $100 Paypal Cash 2014 Resolutions Giveaway - Sponsored by The Leaker News and Hosted by Giveaway Monkey together with BloggieAway and Parenting Patch.

It’s that time of year again. Time for us to make a list of Resolutions that we will probably forget about by February. But it is a tradition so let's do it, anyhow.

One (1) lucky reader will win $100 Paypal Cash. This giveaway is open worldwide and ends on February 03, 2014 EST. To enter, simply use the following Rafflecopter form. Good luck!

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One winner will be chosen at random via Rafflecopter. The winner will be sent an email and will have forty-eight hours to respond. If no response is received within forty-eight hours, another winner will be chosen. Giveaway Monkey and other participating blogs are not responsible for prize fulfillment.

Voyage to Farland Review AND GIVEAWAY

I'm going to be entirely upfront - roguelikes are one of the types of games that, while I like them, I'm not very good at them. I've heard such good things about some of them, text-based ones particularly, but the controls are so crazy and equipment is a hassle and I die on the first or second floor every time. While Voyage to Farland has a lot in common with those, it's far better, has more going on, but manages to do it all while keeping the required buttons to a minimum, using intuitive menus and making equipment a breeze. Oh, and it's a graphical roguelike, so you don't control an @ symbol fighting letters, shooting *s, etc.

Avadon 2: The Corruption Review AND GIVEAWAY

Avadon 2 reminds me of a solid D&D adventure in a tactical RPG. You have lots of bonus missions to do, several different characters to choose from for each adventure, a good story with lots of choices and you'll die A LOT! I'm far from the best at tactical RPGs, but I had to ramp the difficulty down from normal to easy to casual so that I could get past different parts of the game.

I'm writing this review 24.5 hours into it and I'm only about 30% through the game! $9.99 (or less if it goes on sale) is an absolutely worthy value for the time you'll get and the quality of game play you'll get out of it! Of course, as I haven't fully completed it, I don't have insights into the entire game, but I did get to play a very wide variety of adventures and story.

Hide the Baby - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Political satire! Hide the Baby (by @nickweihs) is all about, well, hiding your baby from an inspector. You see, you're a woman in China, where you're only allowed to have one child. Somehow you had a child without anyone knowing, but the neighbors have heard the crying, so now you've got to fool the inspector so that the baby isn't found out and you aren't hugely fined.

Step One: Find Items!

The game is broken down into three parts: find items, disguise baby and cross fingers hoping it worked. Finding the items is simple enough - simply move around your home pressing the space key to collect different items. You can check the whole house quite easily within the two minutes, so that's not a big deal at all, and luckily you can "Retry with items" so you can just skip to step 2 each time after.

Step two involves picking which item(s) to disguise your baby with. This is where things start to get really hysterical, as the baby can look really silly (the marker is my favorite item, even though I haven't found a winning combination with it yet).

SPOILER: Try this!

Step three is where the inspector comes in, which happens whenever you say you're ready or when the timer runs out. What makes this great (and rather amazing in such a short amount of time) is just the number of ways he responds to things. Just try the felt pen, for example... Even when you aren't successful, the inspector can be really hilarious, even if he is a jackass for making you lose so much!

Play the game here, or check out the game's Ludum Dare page here.

Guylian Belgian Chocolate Giveaway - LOTS OF CHOOOOCOLATE!

Welcome to the Guylian Belgian Chocolate Giveaway!

Sponsored by: Guylian

Hosted by: Gloriously Green Gal & Savory Savings

Co-hosted by: Monica’s Rants, Raves & Reviews, Dividing by Zero, and Got Giveaways?

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner – have you found your sweetie the perfect sweet?  Or maybe you want to treat yourself for the day full of hearts and naked cherubs.  Krista from Gloriously Green Gal and Savory Savings had the chance to review Belgian Chocolates from Guylian and thinks you should share them with your Valentine every day of the year! 
And now you will have your chance with this giveaway!  One lucky, US resident, aged 18 and older winner will receive the following (or very similar) package from Guylian Belgian Chocolates:

• One – 22 piece marbled chocolate seashell truffles
• One – 22 piece extra dark chocolate seashell truffles  
• Two - 6 piece chocolate seashells truffles
• Four - 2 piece marbled chocolate seahorse truffles
• One - No Sugar Added Milk Chocolate Bar
• One - No Sugar Added 54% Dark Chocolate Bar

If you cannot wait to win, feel free to pop over to the Guylian Belgian Chocolates online store and pick yourself up some amazing Belgian chocolates by using coupon code Chocolate10 to save 10%!
The giveaway will run from January 8, 2013 through January 22, 2014 at 11 PM CST.  Entries will be verified.  Winner will be notified via email (consider adding gloriouslygreengal@gmail.com to your safe list) – winner will have 48 hours to respond and claim prize or another winner will be selected.
Good luck!

Entry-Form

 
Krista from Gloriously Green Gal and Savory Savings received products from this sponsor to facilitate her review, no other compensation was received. All participating blogs are not responsible for prize fulfillment.  This giveaway is in no way associated with social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
 

Old MacDonald Vs Zombies - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Old MacDonald Vs Zombies by @RogueNoodle is the last game I'm able to play before ratings end, and it's another keeper! This one focuses on a kindly old farmer and his cow... And an endless horde of zombies, of course. Like most zombies, they aren't there to party or go cow tipping - they want your brains! To stop them, all you've gotta do is clean up poop and make your cow go on a zombie-slaughtering rampage. Simple enough, right?

Them thar graphics sure are purdy, too! Okay, that's more mountain than farmer... I never said I was an expert at imitation!

So, how do you get your cow to go on a fatal zombie-tipping spree? Just like you'd expect - clean up the cow's poop, making it super happy (you'll see the happiness heart to let you know!) and then call it to you, trampling everything between it and you on the way. There's also a combo meter for each time you clean up cow feces, and of course the zombies don't stay still either... They move back and forth, roaming for delicious brainage!

Pffft, that number of zombies is NOTHING!

My record is 29,930, can you beat it? Play the game here, or check out the game's Ludum Dare page here!

Crossbore - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Two indies were speaking with me on Twitter about each others' games (because that's what awesome indies too - praise each others' games!), one of the games mentioned was Crossbore by @i_palmentieri. Man am I glad they told me about it!

Just because you play as a girl doesn't mean the baddies are any easier or less bad; just the way it should be!

Crossbore puts you in the shoes of Paige, tasking you with destroying the attacking Pupling onslaught before taking on the Queen Pupling. To do so, you only get one arrow. Each time you shoot it, you have to go pick it back up... Unless you hold the Space key too long and it goes off the screen, or you miss... In which case you'll be forced to find it glittering somewhere on the screen. On the bright side, you can use the Space key to kick when you don't have your arrow, but you'll need it when the Queen Pupling comes for you!

The game is, as the developer says, rather difficult. To make it more accessible to everyone, there's also an easy version of the game that makes each Pupling kill lower the bar and bring about the Queen Pupling easier. Speaking of the Queen Pupling, that's one fun, creative boss fight there!

The Queen means business!

I ended up trying the regular version several times before moving on to the easy one, and I had genuine fun with each play. The fact that there's even 360 controller support would have made the game even more fun if I had it hooked up. You definitely need to give the game (and/or the easy version of it) a play! You can also find the game's Ludum Dare page here.

One Video Game - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

One Video Game is Oded Sharon's (@Soundguy) first foray into Ludum Dare, and after playing this one I really hope to see more! He managed to get this game thrown together within the last four hours of the compo, and it's as creative as it is hysterical. Okay, maybe it's more hysterical than creative a bit, because it's REALLY funny!

Yep, that's the official screenshot!

The game is, as Oded puts it, "is a FMV 'choose your own adventure' type meta game about making a video game." The entire "game" takes only a few minutes to play. And the end... Oh the end! I'm not giving anything away, just play it! Oh, and you can check out the Ludum Dare page for the game as well!

One Game a Month (#1GAM): Year Two

There's always an awesome monthly revamp of the site, this one celebrates making it into #1GAM's second year!

Christer Kaitila (@McFunkypants as he's better known) - an incredibly prolific indie game developer - came up with One Game a Month (#1GAM) last year and it's currently celebrating the beginning of year two! If I remember right, I first heard about it mid-December-ish 2012 and was so psyched! As someone who loves a good challenge, the idea of having a great excuse to come up with 12 video games in a year was too much to resist. Oh, and there are achievements and experience points to earn, two things I simply can't resist! I did make five games myself out of the 12 months, although two were in the same month.

The challenge is as simple as the name itself: make a game every month! Unlike many game creation competitions there's only one rule (taken from the website): "There are no rules. This is a personal challenge. Have fun and be nice." I unfortunately didn't note exactly what the count was on January 1st, but as of Jan 3rd there are currently 5,399 games from over 7,000 users! If you're a game developer, you've got no excuse not to give it a try (even if you just make bigger games, you can simply submit each one in the month it's completed), and if you're a video game lover you'll be able to play thousands of games from one place, all searchable by keyword or tag!

Each month, an optional theme is posted, and Christer often does a keynote speech or video. This month's theme is "Respawn", and it's absolutely perfectly fitting for a new year. You can checkout the keynote speech below in the video while you watch countless games going by.

Are you taking part in January's #1GAM? What are you working on?

Goblyrinth - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Goblyrinth by Mlle Eole (@ebezolli) deserves praise for not only being funny, done well and even making a post-LD version (a version that's edited after the 72 hours and therefore not technically part of the jam), but also for succeeding in something that I tried previously myself with 10 Seconds Alive.

Goblyrinth puts you in the shoes of one of ten scouts, each with one matchstick, lighting up the dark and trying to plot a path out of a trap-riddled cave. Each round, a new scout is sent out from the same space, and once you hit space you light the torch. From that point on, each time you press an arrow key to move, the match moves one bit closer to extinguished. Your shaman uses his astral vision to keep a map of anything lit up, so each newly-lit space helps whether you die or not. You can also simply kill your scout at any time with the "Splorch!" button in case you run out of match and get stuck...

WOOHOO! The exit is found, so no more goblins must be sacrificed!

The game is quite funny and, since it's randomly generated, it's fun to play over and over. If you REALLY want a challenge, you can play the post-LD version that generates much more complex, dangerous mazes.

See? MUCH more dangerous!

You can play the Ludum Dare version here or the tougher (but more fun) post-LD version here. If you took part, you can also rate it here. The game/page is in both English and French; if it's in French and you want English, just click the yellow "En" button across the top.

Choose Wisely - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Choose Wisely by zconnelly13 is the first platformer I've tried during this Ludum Dare. For those who haven't tried making a platformer, it's one heck of a challenge in 48 hours, and so it's quite common for Ludum Dare platformers to be pretty rough around the edges. While Choose Wisely isn't flawless by any means, it's definitely more polished up than expected. Plus, the art is really fun - I love hand-drawn art, and you can really see how each and every thing in the game was drawn by hand.

Hand drawn art for the win!

What makes Choose Wisely fit the "You Only Get One" theme is that you often have to choose between three choices, and you only get one of them. You get to choose your pet (mouse, kitteh or doge), your jump (wall jump, double jump or strong jump), etc. The choices you make throughout the game will make it (im)possible to get some stars but not others, so if you want all 52 you absolutely have to play through numerous times with different choices.

You only get one jump. Unless it's the wall jump. Or the double jump. But you can only CHOOSE one, so there!

You can play the game free in your browser here, and if you took part in Ludum Dare 28 you can rate it here as well!

A Pantless Man with a Clueless Plan - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

My third Ludum Dare 28 game review is, in a way, very similar to One Way Out (if you get why, that's awesome, way to go!). A Pantless Man with a Clueless Plan by @Detocroix is a very silly, short little game where you lose no matter what you do (unless you simply refuse to do anything, and if you really want to play that way then you've lost anyway...).

Go ahead, find something and hit the enter key, I dare you!

The game can be completely played in less time than it will take you to read this post, but I really felt compelled to write about it anyway. The game has only eight possible outcomes (seven things to interact with and "don't ever interact with anything, despite the fact that nothing ever happens"), and you only use up to six keys (up, down, left, right, escape and return), but the game is hilarious and has some really fantastic art for being made in 2 days by 1 person! Heck, the dude even recorded the sounds himself by tapping his fingers on a desk and using an ocarina.

The only ending where you, the pantless man, don't die yourself!

You can play the web version for free right here or download it for Win/Mac/Linux from here (you can also rate it if you took part in Ludum Dare 28!) Which ending was your favorite, and did you find all seven?

Tower Zoo for iOS - A Wild Puzzle Game

Note: I don't own any of the available platforms for this game, and am therefore unable to review it. It's not that I don't want to play it, trust me!

The creator of Tower Zoo reached out to me a while back (almost two months ago... Geez am I behind!) about this game, and once I checked it out I figured I had to give it some coverage. Plus, it's one of only three games that was nominated for the Media Innovation Awards, so that's saying quite a bit too!

Kindle Fire HD Giveaway & Free eBook from the Kilenya Series!

This site was not compensated in anyway for this post. This site is not responsible for the giveaway prize. However, this blog writer definitely thinks Kindle Fire looks awesome, and although I don't have one myself, helping to give one away is pretty frickin sweet :D

In Celebration of the release of The Golden Symbol, the last book in the Kilenya Series, author Andrea Pearson is giving away a Kindle Fire HD and eBooks 2-6 in the series. Are you asking what happened to the first book? Well, that is FREE Until January 18th and the second book, The Ember Gods, is only 99 cents until January 18th as well. What a score! Head over and download your free copy of the first book, The Key of Kilenya, now.

Free Copy Of The Key Of Kilenya - KINDLE Version

Free Copy Of The Key Of Kilenya - Nook Version

If you love reading and happen to just love these books, sign up for her email list to stay up to date on everything she has coming out. SIGN UP HERE

Check out the Kilenya Book Series Website.

Maybe you'd like to read up on the author or other books and products she has to offer. Check out her BLOG HERE.

Now for the giveaway

This Giveaway is open to US Residents Only. 18+ or older. This giveaways ends January 18th at Midnight EST. The winner will be chosen and given 24 hours to respond VIA EMAIL. If no response is given another winner will be chosen. I am not responsible for prize fulfillment or shipping mishaps. KINDLE FIRE HD is what you will win along with eBooks 2-6 from the Kilenya Series. Don't forget to download the first book listed above for free. After January 18th, it'll go back up in price.

Sponsored by Kilenya, LLC Hosted by It's Peachy Keen and Sweet Southern Lovin Co-hosted By; Bugs and Beans, Everything MommyHood, Budget Earth, Submissive By Design

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Game Institute's Huge Game Developer Package Sale!

Yes, this might sound like an advertisement or something, but I wrote every word of it and I believe every word. I was not asked to write this, I was not paid for it, I didn't even get any free samples or stickers or anything! This entire article originates from being on their email list and just being genuinely excited about it!!!

One of the biggest problems with getting into game development, aside from the time required, is the high cost. If you've ever looked around any book store (or amazon.com, etc) for game programming books of any sort, you know all too well that $50-$60 is just an acceptable price for 300-400 pages of knowledge. That assumes, you know, that you did your research right, picked out a book that will actually work for you, doesn't assume you already know things that you don't, doesn't teach you the same things all over again... I seriously have at least $200 worth of books that are useless because I just couldn't get behind the way the author was putting the knowledge out there or had already learned those exact same things in another book (usually there's one or two chapters of goodness, but seriously, $60 is waaaaaay too much to gamble!).

Oh, and if you want to go to school for game development, unless you live near one of the few schools that teach it, you'll be going online, and that's ridiculously expensive too. I really love the looks of some of the schools (Digipen was the first I'd heard of and I drooled over the website for months), but there was no way I was affording it, and I don't believe in getting huge student loans that will take years (or decades) of my life to pay off.

The other day, I received an email from The Game Institute (I'm on their email subscription list) saying they were having a big sale. The Game Institute hosts a humongous array of game development training materials for wanna-be game developers of all sorts - it covers C++ programming, art/animation, math (yeah yeah, no one likes math except me, but you'll be using a LOT of math as a game programmer), AI (always one of my favorites, it's such an awesome field to learn) and even building your own game console (although if you want to actually build it, it's another $230 for the kit...). What's amazing is that all of this comes as one huge package, including online textbooks (you can purchase physical, but the price is unknown) and around 150 hours of presentations for only $99, but through January 1st it's only $49! That's less than gambling on one single book most of the time! Plus, apparently you also get any new stuff put out for a year. There's also the option of actually getting a professor to guide you and getting college credit for it, but I couldn't find a price for that anywhere without buying the package (and it's not payday yet...). You can actually find the huge, detailed list of everything here as well.

I wish I would have known about this sooner so I could have shared it as a Christmas gift idea for everyone, but it still makes an excellent gift idea for any game developers (or someone who would like to learn to become one!) in your life (or yourself!).