My high-scores are Better than Yours

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I used to play a lot of games; not so much any more, but I've still got a few scores I brag about. A few years back, Text Twist was all the rage, and I did pretty good at it, as you can tell by reading this site. Me and the written word seem to get along pretty well. There was this penguin-batting game I got a great score on too. I've got a few other games you'll find interesting and want to play, so I'll share with you some information and whet your appetite and we'll see how well you can do at them. Read on!


First up is Hearts, which is part of Vista and now Windows 7. As you can see, I got a perfect score. The only way it could've been more perfect is if I had gotten all three computer opponents to exceed 100 on that last hand (probably by shooting the moon again).

TEXT TWIST - (Link)
Next we have Text Twist. The game has two modes: Puzzle Mode, which is untimed, and Action mode, which is timed. Puzzle Mode is good for getting used to the word list without the pressure of a clock, but there's really not a whole lot of skill involved. I got to a million points pretty easily, and gave up because 1,000,000 points was my goal.


The rest of the time, I stuck with having to beat the timer, and it can be pretty tough when they come up with words you've never heard of before. My top score slowly rose over the course of a few months and on a couple different machines.

Text Twist gives you bonus points if you get all the words, and I challenged myself to get them all as fast as possible. Here are a couple of my better times, but these aren't records; I lost those images.

To the left is a pretty fast solution, but there aren't a whole lot of words. To the right is a fast solution with a considerably larger number of words, making it much more difficult. If I remember correctly, 6-letter words give you 120 seconds and 7-letter words give you 150 seconds, so these are fantastic times.

PENGUIN BATTING - (Link)
This is a cute little game that involves a Yeti smacking a penguin with an icicle to see how far he can fly, because apparently, penguins dream of flying and this is the only way they can do it.

There are two versions of the game, one with normal scores and one with amplified scores, and these are my personal records at each. I happen to know it's possible to get over 600 on the amplified-scoring one, but I couldn't do it.

On each page I linked to is a link that takes you to the other version of the game, so you can try your hand at both of them. They require slightly different reaction times, so try them both. Just be careful you don't waste an entire afternoon!


FRACAS - (Link)

Fracas is a cool little game reminiscent of Lords of Conquest (which I found here!) and Risk, but way cooler and faster to play. The object is to grow your country and then wipe out everyone else's capital while protecting your own from conquest. The AI isn't especially difficult for me to beat (though I do get surprised now and then) so I set myself some extra goals.

First, I have to be the one to eliminate all the other players. Second, there has to be at least one territory from each player still on the board somewhere. I achieve this about every 5 games or so, and here are a couple screen shots to prove it.

Smozzie was nice enough to create a map editor too, be sure you get that and some people's custom maps for a few interesting ways to play, and of course, be sure you adjust the options once in a while; it feels like you've got like about 20 different games you can play just by adjusting the options.


RAILS - (Link)
The last game I'm going to mention for now is one called Rails, and it's made by Pluto Scarab. It's based on Mayfair Games' Empire Builder, which is one of those cool crayon games. You run a railroad company and build track around the map and deliver goods all over. It's pretty awesome! When MS got rid of the MSN groups, the support forum disappeared. I created a place for it in my own forum, and also created a location to hold user-made maps and such. Click here to go to the forum post about Rails, and get access to the fan-made maps, including 2 maps I made and 3 others I tweaked. (Yes, that's right, they've got a map editor too!)

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