TOEFL Test - iBT Practice Free App

Note: I was unable to try this app out myself, so the below comes only from developer info, the app's page and other online sources.

A few years ago, I ran a word-of-the-day game called Million Dollar Words: Daily Edition. It was a lot of fun to put together, and despite the fact that 80% of the words I use on my blog (and more like 90% in real life) are either "awesome", "sweet" or "amazing", I really do enjoy learning new words! Since vocabulary apps are small, they're pretty much the only things my 3 year old phone can handle, and I'd download them to try to find even more delicious words of awesomeness.

What I never considered, though, was searching for TOEFL apps! TOEFL - the Test of English as a Foreign Language - interestingly includes a whole slew of words that lots of us who speak English as a primary language don't even know!

For those who aren't big fans of learning new vocabulary, and for those of you who want to read about the app and not my own life experiences, TOEFL Test - iBT Practice is an awesome app! Instead of simply using virtual flash cards or reading a list of words and their definitions, you also get games to play in addition to the quizzes, flash cards, charts and so on, perfect for people who learn all sorts of ways!

The free version includes all of the features of the full "pro" version but with fewer words (150 instead of 3000!!!), so you can easily see what the full app has to offer for free! If you decide to go for the pro version (hint: you should!), it's only 99 cents anyway, far less than the cost of a boring book.

Available For: Android and iOS (Free version; Pro version $0.99)

Developed By: MediaAgility

Wordspionage - Scrabble for Sneaky, Tricky Spies!

Note: I don't have any of the platforms this game is available for, so this information and excitement is taken purely from the game's app pages and the developer.




Wordspionage is Scrabble with special operations, special words and craziness aplenty. Boom, post done in one sentence! Have a great rest of your day everyone! :D

Seriously though, and don't get me wrong, I do like Scrabble... But there's only so much of coming up with random two letter words and trying to figure out what to do with a Q when there are no Us anywhere to be found. Since I've only recently gotten back into writing, my vocabulary has all but fallen apart, so looking at seven random letters typically leads me to coming up with words like "cow" or "hat" or other 3-letter words that children learn before second grade. Wordspionage, on the other hand, adds some much needed strategy for those who aren't masters of the dictionary.

FEEL THE WRATH OF MY Q!!!

Best of all, the game is free for iOS and Android, so get on it! And make sure you give Sterling and Madeline - the code names of the husband and wife development team - a challenge once you do!

Available For: iOS (FREE!), Android (FREE!)
Developed By: Napland Games
Game Homepage: www.Wordspionage.com

Dare to Dig! - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Dare to Dig is the type of game my brain typically tries to come up with for challenges, and it's done very well - you only get one pickaxe, and you have to dig through dirt, stones and treasures to hunt down mythical, one-of-a-kind, priceless treasure like the Fountain of Youth. Your "life" is the durability of the pickaxe - each time you go through new dirt, excavate treasure or try to break through rock, you use up some of the pickaxe's durability. Luckily, there are items like duct tape that help you out (duct tape is ALWAYS useful!), but the odds of making it are still slim, so you'll be playing it numerous times (which isn't a bad thing at all!).

Your main play screen. Find yourself some treasure!

As you play, you'll accumulate all sorts of goodies - some just count toward your "valuable stuff" (score) total, while other items allow you to become stronger, be able to break rocks easier, see further, repair between floors or even use a drill instead of a pickaxe temporarily so you can easily get through anything! It's the balance between going for these things (or, rather, being lucky enough to find them) or rushing toward the next floor that makes things interesting.

I played the game just under 15 times myself and managed to find the Fountain of Youth, still leaving a few items unfound in my list of items. My strategy was mainly to get just close enough to the edge that you could make sure you weren't missing anything, then go in a big circle, hoping to find the way to the next floor. Everything is randomized, so there are times that I'd lose on floor 3 or 4, and others that I'd fly through til 8 or 9 and get stuck. The most important thing, though, is that the game is always fun to play, and it's easy to get hooked!

Gotta catch find 'em all! And it even shows you how many of each you've found in total!

The game does require a free download, which you can do from the game's Ludum Dare page.

My Dad's the Grinch - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

A Christmas game! How were there not more of those? Ludum Dare did run pretty darn close to Christmas, and Christmas was in the ratings period! Much like new Christmas songs, good Christmas games are hard to come by, so it's a double bonus that My Dad's the Grinch (by @MatthewVroman) is so much fun!

Be careful or you'll only get ONE present!

The game gives you 8 different gifts, randomly chosen from a bit more than the 8 (replays will have new items mixed in so that it's not just the same game over and over). Your goal is to figure out which present is which using the sizes of the gifts (some are small boxes, some are wider and some are taller) as well as your four tools: shaking them, weighing them, getting a hint about it or x-raying it.

You have a limited quantity of each of these, so use them carefully and remember what's what later on!

Of course, the more you get right, the less gifts there are, so it becomes easier and easier! The game is a blast to play, super simple so anyone can play it, and definitely something a grinch would do to their kid. You should definitely play the game here, and you can check out the game's Ludum Dare page here as well.

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.

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.

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?

Party of One - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

My second Ludum Dare 28 game review is of Party of One, a fun twist on puzzle warfare by Jan Marcano/@AldianSolkai. The premise is simple: your party of heroes has to protect the town from invading monsters! The twist? The evil wizard behind the invasion has cursed your party and turned you all into one person, so now it's just "one" of you against all of them! Good luck!

Definitely fitting of the "easy to learn, difficult to master" phrase.

No Way Out - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

I'm kicking off my Ludum Dare 28 game reviews with No Way Out, a really awesome, amazingly atmospheric little adventure by Emma ("Eniko"/@Enichan) of the one-woman game studio Kitsune Games. Before I even dig in, let me just sum up with this: it's a short little adventure that can be beaten in under a minute if you know what you're doing, and it's an experience that every game player should have. Plus, it's free to play and requires no download since it's a web game!

It already has you intrigued, doesn't it?

WackoBirds - An Action/Arcade Title by a Painter!

Don't let the name trick you - there are plenty of games with the word "Birds" in it that are clones of Angry Birds (not that all of them are bad, per se) - WackoBirds is an entirely different game! Yes, the protagonist is a bird, and yes you're fighting back against tyrannical foes trying to reclaim your lands, but you'll be doing so by creating barriers for your WackoBird to bounce off of on the fly instead of simply aiming and hoping for the best.

Draw lines with your fingers to direct your WackoBird!

Cursed Treasure 2 Review and Interview - FREE Tower Defense Meets RPG Web Game

Awesome, fun art right from the beginning!

Cursed Treasure 2 (with the awesome, impossible-to-resist-singing subtitle of 'Hey! Heroes! Leave us Gems Alone!') is a free Flash game that places you in the role of an evil overlord that must protect gems from the invading, annoying "good heroes" that always try to spoil a good/bad time. While the game is a Tower Defense game through and through, you gain experience after each level (whether you win or not!) that help you out, making the game great for both Tower Defense lovers AND RPG fans. I won't hesitate to say that I'm absolutely terrible at Tower Defense games myself, but I fell in love with the original Cursed Treasure. As soon as I heard the a sequel had released, I spent the next several nights absorbed in getting stars from levels, upgrading skills and annihilating do-gooders with unending fury!

Free Minecraft Halloween Texture Pack for 360!

This is Halloween, this is Halloween... *hums to self*

As if Minecraft wasn't creepy enough half the time, you can pick up a FREE texture pack through November 3rd to get in the Halloween spirit! The creepers look like ghosts, the cows look rather skeleton-y and even the moon is crazy! I've yet to get a texture pack for Minecraft, and I'm one of the 7 people in the entire world that doesn't have it for PC, so I'll definitely be grabbing it and toying around. Anyone who knows me well will know I'll be tossing my controller and pausing in fear very often... Happy Halloween!