I stumbled upon this old Facebook game called Dungeons & Dragons: Tiny Adventures, about a week ago. The game is more than a year old but it’s so cool that it’s still getting new fans every day.

It’s a lot more simplistic than the old tabletop D&D but gives you the same kind of happy ownership of a character which you can level up and buy equipment for.

The game was basically designed for people to play while doing other things. In its own words:

Tiny Adventures was envisioned as a game you play sporadically, off and on, while you are doing other things. It’s not healthy to do any single activity for hours on end, so we have provided Tiny Adventures as a fun game you can use to intersperse in your other activities.

When you have a free minute you can check on your Tiny Adventurer and see how they were doing. You might read an encounter or two and use a potion, you might buy an item in the shop and buff your friends, or you might find the adventure has completed and send your hero out on another quest.

I like that.

Play it here.

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Table of Contents

1. Professor Layton is back!
2. Time Wasters by Swordplay
3. The Xbox 360 Gaming Showdown 09
4. Win exclusive FCUK Ghostbusters tees
5. Results of last week’s contest

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Professor Layton is back!

We rarely get girl-friendly games we can rave over, but shortly after Scribblenauts comes Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box!

The Diabolical Box is the second title in the Professor Layton series of puzzle games made for the Nintendo DS. It was launched two weeks ago but I didn’t get to touch it until now because Scribblenauts was hogging my attention.

I’m enjoying TDB a bit more than I enjoyed the first Professor Layton game.

The gameplay is the same, but I prefer the story this time. It’s about this scary box which kills anyone who opens it. Playing as Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke, you will have to solve the mystery without killing yourself in the process.

Of course, the main appeal of the Professor Layton series lies not in the background story but in the endless puzzles that you meet along the way towards solving the bigger mysteries.

There are many types of puzzles to thrill puzzle lovers — logic puzzles, math puzzles, word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, sliding puzzles, detective puzzles, well, just about any puzzle you can name.

The varying difficulty level of the puzzles keeps it fun because sometimes you want the joy of solving a puzzle really quickly, while other times you want the satisfaction of prevailing against a frustratingly challenging puzzle.

Easy puzzle:

Medium puzzle:

Hard puzzle:

Each puzzle comes with three hints, which you can unlock with hint coints. What I don’t like about the game is the way hint coins are earned.

The coins are hidden in every room you come across. By tapping at objects, you unearth the hidden coins. For example, in this room, the coin might be hidden in the chef’s hat.

Each room houses a few coins, but there are hundreds of rooms in the game and I really hate tapping at every spot just to find a few coins.

The game boasts 120 main puzzles, with 15 more to be unlocked at the end of the game.

Professor Layton games are a fun way to help people stave off dementia in their later years, so I think everyone should play this game!

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Time Wasters by Swordplay

Swordplay is my pesky li’l bro who spends all his time playing time-wasting games. To make him a little bit more useful, I’m sitting on him and making him recommend one fun and simple web-based game each week.

This week’s game: Stick War

Swordplay didn’t like the game too much. It’s a Civilisation type game. But he loved the music. He thought the gameplay was a bit of an anti-climax after being introduced to the epic music.

I thought the game looked fun, but I didn’t have time to try it because it seemed more like a time sink than a time waster.

But check out the music, anyway. It sounds like one of those Hollywood epic movies, like Gladiator or something. (Not the intro music, the one during the actual gameplay itself.)

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The Xbox 360 Gaming Showdown 09

Make a date with the Xbox 360 blockbuster gaming event of the year at VivoCity, on Oct 23 to 25, 2009!

Xbox 360 and its gaming partners are bringing together the biggest hits of the 2009 holiday season under one roof. Expect exclusive hands-on sessions with unreleased games and a chance to win $20,000 worth of prizes in stage challenges throughout the weekend.

Click here for more information on specific games and activities you can look forward to at the event!

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Win exclusive FCUK Ghostbusters tees

If you’re already a fan of the Xbox 360 Facebook fan page, as you should be, you should already know about this giveaway.

Five awesome limited ediction FCUK Ghostbusters tees are up for grabs this week.

You have to be really quick because the closing date is tonight (Oct 9) at 11:59 pm.

Join here!

Instructions are on the giveaway page but it’s very simple. You just have to be a fan, then accept the event invite, then send an e-mail.

That’s all. Good luck!

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Results of last week’s contest

Wow! Skyy wins a limited edition Forza Motorsport 3 thumbdrive for being such a big Forza fan!

He designed an RX-8 in Forza Motorsport 2 using the game’s customisation features, and then loved it so much that he made his real-life RX-8 look exactly like his Forza RX-8!

Wow, such dedication!

Skyy is going to LOVE Forza Motorsport 3 because the cars in the new game will look so detailed they’re practically photo-realistic!

1989 Ferrari F40

Anyway, congratulations, Skyy! Please contact me to claim your thumbdrive within two months!

Thank you for participating!

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That’s all for today! As usual, I need to rush off. For a meeting, this time.

Sorry there’s no GGF giveaway this week. My giveaway box is a mess and I need some time to take stock and mail out some outstanding prizes that I forgot to. :P And also to decide what to do with prizes that were never claimed.

Go take part in the Xbox Facebook fan page giveaways in the meantime. These’s always something new and interesting, and they’re not always games!