I hereby put in a request for a new casual game favorites list.

Good to know you have an interest in there being another annual casual games list. Let's wait and see what Ana has to say.

Honestly, I'm torn 8dog. There were only 15 responses last year. I'm more than happy to do it again if people will participate. It takes a lot of time typing out all the games (as Chief can attest to, with his wonderful support) and I'd like to be assured it's actually going to be utilized.

So...talk to me. I'll listen if you all speak up!

I like to see the lists, but honestly, I almost never play the games until long after they come out and I like most of them so it is hard for me to choose for the lists.

I'd like to see it done though!

Could we simply add individual favorites to last year's thread? Not with editing the old posts but with new posts so that anyone looking could then look at lists person by person?

What would be more useful to me would be if people listed the games they liked along with why they liked them. Knowing that 10 people liked a game won't tell me if I'll like it. Maybe they don't care about puzzles and skip half of them so they can get on with the story. Maybe they don't mind "features" that drive me up the wall and spoil the game for me. That's the problem with the reviews at Big Fish -- people there high-rate a game for things I consider a nuisance and I'm trying to avoid (like three different types of "collectables")

Knowing a certain person liked a game is helpful if I tend to like the same games, but I don't find the mega-list to be very helpful, and that's probably where most of the work for Ana and Chief comes in.

WE could indeed make some kind of Recommendations thread, in fact we could make one and sticky it in Casual Forum permanently that you can add to when you come across one you really like. How does that sound?

Sounds great.

That sounds great to me too - an excellent idea.

I do check out the "Best of" list each year, and have found games I hadn't noticed before, especially if I have been away from Casuals for a while. However, I would be fine with everyone simply posting their lists of favorites and letting it stand as that, without compiling them into a master list. That would be a lot less work for the Moderators.

In any case, most valuable to me (as others have said) are posts of mini-reviews from individual players, as these contain REASONS for why they enjoyed a game. When such reviews are tagged onto the thread for a Notice of new game, even better. It is great to hear current feedback on games by those who jumped right on them.

That sounds like a brilliant idea to me

After a while, with playing so many games, of whatever type, I can so easily have forgotten the title of a really decent one by the time an annual list comes round.
But with such a system in place, I could add a good game as soon as I finished it !!

That's what I thought too, Mad - much better system than having to rely upon my memory regarding games I played some time ago.

I think it would work better than the annual lists.
Worth a try anyway.

Valid for all 3 lists?

Chief

Sounds like we have a plan! We will get this implemented!

Chief, this will be only for casual games. It is the least participated in list.

Ana

Good for me.

Fantastic !! And thank you !!

And if the list can be kept by title in alphabetical order, we could easily see if a game we might wish to add is already there (?)

Mad, that would be nice but it's more work. I thought alphabetization avoidance was the point here.

The idea of a Recommendations thread appeals to me too. I haven't been playing many PC games lately, and have a bunch of credits to spend. Now I find myself sifting through this forum and cross-referencing to the BF reviews to see if I might like the game. Very tedious, when all I want to know is if it has challenging puzzles, or a unique spin like the Green Moon games.

Mad, I can not reorder the post in alphabetical order and it would require someone to physically add the titles to the first post with every addition. The weight of that would fall on Marian's shoulder, because I honestly have no more room on my plate and I don't expect her to do it either. We will see how much work it would entail and if it's feasible to maintain that way.

There is always a way to check if something has been said about a game by searching the forum.

Also, more than one referral/review for a game is to be encouraged! The more the merrier!

What follows is a rough draft of my impression of what we're talking about. The paragraph says what I like about a particular game and mentions why I think a few people won't. To get a feeling for the goal, I ask if this is the kind of brief statement we're considering?

Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows: The artwork uses real historical settings, and the play is very much like a regular adventure game. Mercy of the Gallows has a pleasingly retro look and was obviously made with lavish attention to historical detail. The downside is that to move forward, you must find 10 gold coins in the environment, not in a separate screen, and a few of those coins are blooming hard to see. I had to use hints several times. This didn’t bother me because I usually dislike HO tasks in any form; however, I understand that some players have very high standards about ever hitting the hint button when looking for hidden objects.

Here are some other things you might mention.

Puzzle difficulty? Drop dead easy? Medium? Hard? Problem understanding the goal?

What types of puzzles?

How intrusive is the game with popups and slide-ins?
(SE may be very different from CE here)

Does the game use Dexterity sequences? If so, how many and do they have a skip?

Ridiculous hidden objects? -- like toasters and mobile phones in a game that's supposed to take place in the 1500's.

Are colors fairly natural or are they bizarro combinations of blue and magenta?

What style of hidden objects? I actually like the more traditional lists, or put the objects back, because there is more than one object you can work on at a time. What I dislike is one-at-a-time types where only one object is actually available to find. Some games are so bad that I've had to use the Hint for almost every object.

Voice acting -- good, OK, bad, absent. I prefer absent over bad. It bothers me when a character has a completely inappropriate voice -- like California girl voice for character in the 1500's. I don't expect an actual recreation of 1500's speech, but leave off the modern slang.

Maybe other people have things they look for (or avoid) in a game and could suggest more.

Suggestion: Jenny 100, make a numbered list/template of points to hit that can be copied and filled in. Emphasize that all or even a majority of the points don't have to be covered. If the process is too time consuming or complex, people will quit doing it.

I just posted the stickied thread for the casual game list.

Thank you in advance to all who participate.

Please, go look at my review in the sticky. I took Jenny100's preferences into account and lengthened the statement. I only added the date because I remembered it. Overall, I think the review is about twice as long as thoughts on a game need to be in order to be useful; however, when looking at an entry I really want to see a hair more than "enjoyed this" or "long and complicated."

That looks good to me, 8dognight. And I agree with you about ideally wanting something more than, "I enjoyed this."

I can always add to my initial post in the thread if need be, stating the kind of information that would be most helpful when submitting a review/recommendation.

I think it's fine.
A list would also be OK.
Anything that lets the reader know what sets the game above most of the rest.

Right ....

I didn't realise a "mini review" with each game listed would be a requirement.
(I doubt I would have the time, myself.)
But obviously I can see the merit

And if a "list" format ... Surely the person doing the listing could manage to place their entry in its alphabetical place. Not expect a Moderator to do it for them

Just to be clear, the "list" I was talking about in my above post was a "list of features" by the reviewer rather than a full review with complete sentences.

I didn't mean I expected every person's entry to be alphabetized and added to a "list" in the original post by Marian or Ana.

I think a list with even a phrase about each game on that list would be grand. In fact, when I finish my list, I'll edit in the sticky to reflect that.

As far as I am concerned, just a comment along the lines of, "I enjoyed this game for its beautiful visuals and rather unique setting" would be enough. Not everyone has the time to get into more detail, and I understand that (although in the example I just provided, I would sure be interested in knowing what kind of setting it is!).

I think the best time to come up with a game for the Favorites List is right after you play (or replay) it and the reasons are fresh in your mind why you enjoyed (or still enjoy) the game.

I'm going to try the "The Lost Cases of 221B Baker Street" game Mad suggested. You'd think it would be under "L" for Lost or "S" for Sherlock. But no, I found it under "T" for The. Happens all to often.

The Legacy Tales game 8dognight suggested is actually still installed on my hard drive, so I'll try that one too.

That drives me nuts, too, Jenny, and I have had some difficulty finding their games using their Search engine at times. Like you, I was taught how filing systems worked (ignore any "The" or "A" and alphabetize by the first full word). It is pretty silly to file games (or anything else) under "The," when all it does is put half the games ever made in the "T" section.

I agree with both of you about the alphabetization business. Now that you mention it, Gameboomers has walkthroughs alphabetized this way too - and I remember having a hard time finding something the first time I used a walkthrough here, as games that start with "the" are in the "T" section, such as The Black Mirror.

Gameboomers usually has the games in both places.
With Big Fish, they aren't even consistent. For example Big Fish has Agency of Anomalies: Cinderstone under "A" but the rest in the series are under "T" for "The Agency..."

You're right, Jenny; I hadn't noticed that. That's certainly better.

Tried this one today. It's a good one to play if you feel like modern games are all looking the same. There is background sound if you don't want the music.

I tried Jenny100's maltshop special, Crystals of Time, yesterday. Froze up. I'll try it again the next time I pull out my old laptop. I liked the little I got to play of Crystals of Time.

The music in Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows improves after the opening sections.

I'm sorry to hear that.
I played it on a laptop with XP.
Not sure if that makes a difference.

Yesterday I played a game called "Natural Threat: Ominous Shores" and it froze with an error right after one of the videos between the introductory section of the game and the rest of the game. After dismissing the error box, the game shut down and I noticed it had put two log files on my desktop. When I rebooted and started the game again, it put me back to the point right before the cut scene -- only I couldn't interact with anything. I could move between locations, but nothing was interactive. It was weird -- like being a ghost unable to interact with anything -- all the more weird because

I had to delete the profile and start over. This time I skipped the videos in the early part of the game and didn't have the problem. There was another crash much later in the game (apparently while saving), but this time restarting the game restored the save properly and I didn't lose progress.

That is a pain but not insuperable. It is odd that "The" is becoming the longest list but your comment reminded me that on BFG's screens when I close a game, I see at the bottom title recommendations that are about 90% useless because based on a system that picks up words from game titles I already own, for example, the word "mystery." Anyway, I almost never find them useful, which is another reason I think the Gameboomers lists handy.

Mad said on the recommendations thread, "Another favourite Casual of mine, and one which I would absolutely recommend, is Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles."

Thanks. Hound of the Baskervilles had slipped my mind entirely. I'm replaying it now.

I wish people would add more games to the thread. You don't have to say much. I am using the thread often myself for two reasons. First, the BFG offerings haven't intrigued me much in the last few weeks although I did buy one which seems to have a lot of glowing saturated green, a color my mother referred to as poison Paris green. Fingers crossed that green is not the new lavender and blue screen wash. Second, casual games are a welcome, easy fix of a distraction, providing psychological respite akin to the magical properties of those legendary, tasty and expeditious Powdermilk Biscuits that stiffen the spines of shy people. What I mean here is that when I can't face another instant of news, I dive into casual games.

I plan on adding more games to the recommendations thread, for sure. And I find myself looking forward to new postings there.

These games have been an escape and a stress reliever for me for about 10 years. As a welcome distraction from my own thoughts their importance to me really can't be overestimated.

I wanted to play that Sherlock game, but was disappointed to find there were issues with my machine when I tried to play the Demo. The game cut off 1/4 of the image even though I had plenty of screen to display it all. Never could figure out why, and didn't want to bother with having to change my screen resolution every time I launched the game, anyway.

I intend to add more games too, but I want to replay them before posting about them. Most of the games I've played recently aren't games I'd recommend as being "among the best" though most are OK.

Reenie, did you try not using the custom cursor? The system cursor makes the game run way better on my laptop; sometimes I get double cursors but I ignore the fancy gold pointers.

Until now I have always waded through my Casuals with no real thought of whether I would recommend one because, as with any game, what suits one person won't suit another

I play them when I want a short-ish, stress free experience. And they fully fit the bill for me in that respect.
Especially those offering a story that hasn't been repeated over and over and doesn't have varying colours of "smoke" obliterating the screen every five minutes

But many people want something more challenging or with lots of "collectables and suchlike" - which is certainly not what I want. So my recommendations are likely to be few and far between

I’d like to contribute some games to the list, but I’m not quite sure where they fit in (i.e. adventure or casual). First, I am playing them on my iPad, and buy them at the app store. Second, while I consider them more casual than traditional adventures, they are not very much like the usual HOPAs that BigFish has. Some have 3D movement, but most are node based puzzlers. My definition of casual is how much note taking and continuity do I need. These games can be played piecemeal, and rarely need notes.
Some games I recently played: Returner 77, The Cube Escape and Rusty Lake series, Agent A, Xon episode 1, and Secret of Chimera.

That's the whole point of the "mini-review" saying what it is you like about the game.

The idea is to get a "short list" of games to try.

There are hundreds if not thousands of casual games, and each download of a trial can take half an hour or more. It is easy to spend all day downloading games and finding nothing you're interested in...

• because puzzles are too easy
• because there are too many pop-up annoyances
• because there are too many dexterity sequences
• because it's too gimmicky (e.g. -- have to use an apparatus that runs out of batteries every time you use it)
• because it's too gruesome
• because the graphics are ugly magenta/cyan (or some other ugly color tint)
• because characters look like bad cartoons
• because game changed (for the worse) compared to earlier games in the series
• etc.

It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than a list of games where you don't know if the reason the person liked the game is the same reason as why you wouldn't like it.

The idea is to get more of a "best in type and why" list than a "personal favorites" list. There are no wrong answers.

Well my listing of the Sherlock Holmes Hound of the Baskervilles won't be explicit enough then ....

I'd better see if I can improve it with an "edit"

____________________


EDITED now !!

I agree with Jenny, completely. There are some specific aspects of Casual games that are clear ON/OFF switches for some people, while others don't care either way. For example, some people don't mind Pop-ups while others find them annoying; for still others, Pop-Ups are a total game-buzz killer. For the last group, it would be valuable to know if the game is overwhelmed with that stuff (and if the game Settings includes an ON/OFF choice for this). Poor graphics or poor voice acting are a bit more subjective, but still easily communicated. But as for whether a game is "too hard" or "too easy," we've seen that is pretty subjective and hard to make clear in a mini-review in any case.

As for me, I don't/can't play games with pronounced Action sequences or timed stuff, due to a health issue. It would be great to know up front if that aspect were present. I've had to bail on several games because the timed or combat stuff didn't show up until after the segment I'd played through in the Demo.

In any case, we aren't expecting perfection in these mini-reviews, just a better idea of what a game is like without (as someone already said) being faced with playing through countless Demos or simply taking a blind chance on every game.