This week is Silly Mindless Games Week. Let’s devote half an hour each day to playing mindless, stress-relieving games, because your brain needs it.

Gamer Girl Friday recommends a few bite-size games for taking a quick break between work or studying.

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Table of Contents

1. Kingdom of Loathing
2. Time Wasters by Swordplay
3. Blockbuster arcade games
4. iPhone: True or False
5. Guild Wars avatars are so sexy
6. The five-word story
7. Results of last week’s contest
8. Win an Xbox 360 laser pointer LED keyring!!

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Kingdom of Loathing

If you’ve ever needed a short distraction, if you’ve ever felt bored, if you’ve ever needed to kill 30 minutes of time, I have one excellent recommendation:

This is a comical web-based role-playing game where you do regular RPG stuff, like questing or killing mobs. Except that, in the game, you get only 40 turns a day.

That means you can’t get addicted to it. Once you’ve used up your number of turns, you can’t play anymore. You can still perform certain actions, but you can’t do anything significant until your turns get refreshed the next day.

It’s perfect for casual gamers who want something fun to do for a while but don’t want games to control their lives.

But that’s not the best thing about this game. The best thing is that it’s very funny. The developers have an awesome sense of humour and they’re not afraid to exploit the heck out of it.

Seen inside the Haiku Dungeon.

The illustrations are childish scrawls, which makes it very funny when coupled with sophisticated (although you might argue corny) humour.

For instance, as with all RPGs, you get to choose a class of character out of six possible classes. Some examples:

The class types are all pretty funny.

During your adventures, you will pick up cool items to help you out.

To earn these items, you’ll have to battle unimaginable horrors.

I’m a playing a Sauceror, you see. And my default weapon is a saucepan.

This game isn’t just about fighting monsters, either. You will often bump into random adventures that make you choose a path:

You will visit dangerous zones such as:

And you get to bring a pet to help you fight evil monsters.

Pooka is my pet. (You can name your pet anything you want.)

You will level up and get stronger.

Once in a while, Monty Python fans will thrill to references to The Holy Grail, scattered around the game.

To any passer-by who sees you playing this game, you will look like a complete idiot.

But it will be worth it.

I actually played this game years ago. I can’t remember how many years. The game’s been around for a while. But I stopped playing for a reason I can’t remember and my account has gotten deleted since.

A few days ago, I suddenly remembered this game again so I made a new account and now I’m having as much fun with it as I had, years ago.

Well, give Kingdom of Loathing a try. It’s free and it’s entertaining and it’s addictive. Just that it won’t allow you to get addicted.

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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.

Today, Swordplay recommends…

Don’t Look Back is a simple flash game with a deep storyline, although you will only get it upon completion of the game.

It’s a challenging action-platformer using minimalist graphics and will take only maybe 30 minutes to complete.

Some of the bosses can be quite tough but it doesn’t matter because you don’t perma-die in this game. If you get killed, you start over in the same place you got killed. No replaying stages!

If you have to take a break or close your browser suddenly, the game will remember where you last stopped and put you back a few frames before that.

You need some patience to get through some of the challenges but it feels great when you do!

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Blockbuster arcade games

If you’ve got an Xbox 360, rejoice!

The Days of Arcade campaign was launched two days ago, bringing you six weeks of blockbuster arcade titles that will make you drool.

This week, the campaign launches with Hasbro Family Game Night, which is a super-value-for-money package because it has many games in one!

Featuring favourite Hasbro games such as Connect 4, Battleship and Sorry! Sliders!, you can play the classic versions of the games or enjoy the revamped versions.

Note that you need to be signed up with Xbox LIVE to download this game. But Xbox LIVE is free to sign up, so that’s alright!

To find out what other titles are coming on Days of Arcade, click here.

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iPhone: True or False

For six months, since I bought my iPhone, there hasn’t been a single game in it. I never really believed in playing games on mobile phones.

When I have time to kill outside, I’m either playing on my DS or reading a book.

But last week, horror of horrors, I forgot to bring out my DS and my book! So I was stuck outside with nothing to do but surf the net on my phone. Which gets old because I’m not really into random net-surfing.

That led me to changing my attitude towards mobile phone gaming. Now I need games on my iPhone for future times of forgetfulness.

One of the notable games I found was True or False Trivia. It’s not exactly a game; more a quiz application.

You get hundreds of weird facts for which you have to guess “true” or “false”. I learnt many interesting things through this. For example:

The average office desk has 400 times more bacteria than a toilet.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Every time you sneeze, some of your brain cells die.

Interesting, no?

There’s a free version of this application, which gives you 110 questions. The paid version (USD1.99) gives you a lot more but I don’t know how much because I haven’t bought it yet.

lol.

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Guild Wars avatars are so sexy

Still playing Guild Wars.

I created a new character this week. A ranger. Because Kerrendor has a masterplan for us to play the ranger team build, which means an entire party made up of only rangers and their pets.

Eight rangers + eight pets = massive damage.

I took the longest time to decide which hairstyle to choose (see above). I’m such a bimbo. Sometimes, I spend up to an hour just customising a character, especially for those games with fully-customisable facial features.

I finally went with the second one because I like the leaf in the hair.

And the twin pigtails.

The game world is really beautiful and the quests can be quite creative and entertaining. Best thing is that it’s not as demanding as other games of its genre. I can actually do something worthwhile in just half an hour.

I guess I’ll be playing Guild Wars for a while.

My pet tiger.

A lopsided zone.

Surrounded by a necromancer’s pets.

I think my elementalist is cuter.

But I don’t have time to play so many characters!

The ranger team build had better be worth it! =P

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The five-word story

As part of last week’s contest, contestants had to collectively tell a story, with each contribution limited to five words.

I’ve put together the story in full for your reading pleasure. (Assuming you can even make sense of it.)

(Typos have been corrected, punctuation added and tenses standardised. Other than that, the content is verbatim.)

Zombicidal Maniacs

Authors: Lindy, Ben!, Yoi, ahtiong, Aicee, terboo, nigel, quar, Jerry, Sn, Peaches Mode, RN1209, amd

One day, in the village, there were zombies running amok, causing the villagers to flee. And the local priest started praying to the gods for holy lightning, thunder and fart.

Zombies also began to pray to Sheylara, their goth goddess, for some juicy human flesh and lots of chilli sauce.

Packets of Mac chilli appeared, but some wanted ketchup, instead, so they fought among themselves. Soon, three police cars arrived. Two female zombies stepped out and the zombies stopped fighting.

And the zombie king appeared in his diapers and pyjamas, carrying a banana and a bottle of milk for zombies, from the mammary glands of zombie cow across the street, where Yoi lived.

Then, Yoi whipped out his miniguns and shot RN. RN evaded, then fell into a drain nearby where he twitched in pain, scrambling to find his intestines because he wanted to eat Peaches’ pink shirt for dinner. (Kajang satay with soy sauce.)

Soon, the zombies started puking out RN’s intestines. After that, it was Peaches’ pink shirt’s turn. Amd saw RN eating cow dung with dog piss but remembered his intestine was still in the zombie’s puke.

Then he thought, “I need to kill Peaches and Yoi.”

But, suddenly, Yoi unleashed his zombie doggies from Resident Evil and quickly sent them to find Sheylara, who’s in Kuching, bishing Yoi through her iPhone.

Soon, Peaches Mode also appeared aristocratically from the horizon. Then RN bushed ALL. So there.

He was bushing everyone. Then PeachMeister showed up. Ruined everything by bravely shielding the innocent.

“No innocents here. All guilty,” he said.

Then RN quickly went to the law firm to get Justice CG to help RN bush everyone again.

While both bushed, Yoi began to disintegrate, discombobulate and metamorphose because he had diarrhea. So amd recommended him charcoal pills to ease the diarrhea, but that’s not how diarrhoea’s spelt.

“That’s correct,” Peachy pointed out and so the madness continued… or so we thought.

Once…

Well.

The story started to not make sense after around Peaches’ pink shirt. So I have no idea how you guys are going to continue the madness.

But knock yourselves out and thanks to all contributors!

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Results of last week’s contest

And the winner of this awesome Xbox 360 laser pointer LED light keyring is…

Nigel!

Congratulations, Nigel! I will contact you by e-mail regarding your prize if I can remember to. Alternatively, you can e-mail me, which would be a lot faster!

Now, wasn’t that fun?

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Win an Xbox 360 laser pointer LED keyring!!

Wow. Guess what.

Déjà vu!

I have another Xbox 360 laser pointer LED keyring to give away! So, if you really want one of these and you’re not Nigel, here’s another chance for you!

Alright. You need to do some work for this. I would like for you guys to write a haiku-style verse! Yarrhh!

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry consisting of three lines, the most common of which comes in the pattern of 5-7-5.

First line: 5 syllables
Second line: 7 syllables
Third line: 5 syllables.

Example:

I am a contest
attracting lots of people
because I am leet

Your Mission
Write a piece of haiku about me in the 5-7-5 format. You don’t have to use my name but you can if you want to.

Judging Criteria
LOL Factor – 50%
Poetic Quality – 30%
Creativity – 20%

Closing Date
March 26, 2009, 11:59 pm.

You may submit up to two entries each. May the best entry win!

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You have reached the end;
Congratulations, gamer,
but there is no loot.