The Smarmy Carny

A while ago, The Smarmy Carny covered two Tower Defense games worth playing, and strategically the best game out there is Desktop Tower Defense.

At long last, the Casual Collective website has opened its virtual doors for anyone to register and enjoy. Previously, I had been playing under the "invite only" beta version of the site.

MPDTD — Multiplayer Desktop Tower Defense

MPDTD

The Multiplayer version of Desktop Tower Defense is much more thrilling and fast paced than the original single player version when the Arcade version is selected. In the original, the higher your tower upgrade, the longer the upgrade took, and when you sold your towers, you got back less money than you spent on the tower. In MPDTD with the Arcade option, all upgrades are speedy and you get all your money back when selling towers. This makes gameplay much more exciting, especially if you are nimble enough to sell and build towers to suit the upcoming wave of creeps.

Another feature of the multiplayer game that creates urgency is that the next wave starts whenever any player completely kills off a wave of creeps. So there's an urgency to finish the wave off before anyone else, thus sending more creeps before your opponent is ready for them.

Desktop Armada and Desktop Armada Missions

Desktop Armada

With Desktop Armada, 2 players each have six "ports" on their own side of the playing board. From each port, you can choose to build and launch one of a variety of different ship types in a variety of routes. Patrol boats are very fast and build quickly but are easily destroyed. Destroyers and missile boats are medium sized ships — the former take plenty of damage and the latter have a long firing range. Battleships are large ships that take a while to build but take a large amount of damage.

The goal is to get your ships through to the other side, where your boats will fire upon the enemy's base. The trick is to not run out of money and to send enough firepower to overtake your enemy or to send your ships on paths that will avoid detection by enemy ships. A fog of war also makes things more interesting and make the puny patrol boats valuable in scouting the terrain.

Desktop Armada Missions is quite similar to Desktop Armada, but as the name would suggest, you get certain missions or challenges to take on instead of the straight out war.

Buggle

Buggle

Buggle is a great game that players can jump right into without much training. A multitude of little buggles (ball-type characters) fly around the board and eventually freeze. You click to place your marker, as do the other players. Your marker converts the nearest buggles to your color, and those buggles in turn convert other nearby buggles. The buggles freeze again, and each player places a second marker on the board. You get more points for controlling more buggles.

This game is a fairly mindless game that involves a small amount of strategy and a large amount of luck. Even if you place your marker in the best location on the board, two other players' markers could flank you, leaving you buggle-less. Sometimes the other players place their markers in a group, allowing your marker to grab the lion's share of the points for a round.

Flash Element TD 1 and Flash Element TD 2

Flash Element TD

Flash Element TD 1 is the single player tower defense game that was the precursor to Desktop Tower Defense. Unlike the newer Desktop Tower Defense, bad guys follow a pre-determined path and your towers must be off the path. You can upgrade towers and have only a small selection of tower types to choose from.

Flash Element TD 2 is still in production, but promises more variety from the fairly limited Flash Element TD 1. Keep an eye out for this new version, as it will certainly improve upon the monotany of the original game.

What would a multiplayer game be without rankings? The Casual Collective keeps track of your own personal score and rank as you win or lose games. Each player gains or loses points based on the ELO system, a sort of prorated points system used in chess rankings. You get more points for defeating players with a higher ranking and you can also lose many points for losing to players with a lower ranking.

Desktop Tower Defense

A month or two ago, I discovered the world of Tower Defense (or "TD") games. If you Google "tower defense games", you'll find an assortment of variations on the theme — some truly fun versions, some poorly planned, and some boring. The lure of a quality Tower Desktop game is that it is as much fun as playing Warcraft, except a lot simpler.

Possibly one of the best TD games is Desktop Tower Defense over at handdrawngames.com. If you play on Medium or Hard level, you can submit your name and score. You can also submit your score to a group scoreboard — feel free to type in smarmy for the group name and you can compare your score with me and others! If you want to learn more about what strategies work and the best towers to upgrade, play the Fun Mode "10k Gold" game and have a blast! The best feature in this game is that you start with a clean slate, and you work however you want to.

If Desktop Tower Defense is a bit too tough, you might prefer Flash Element TD. Instead of having to build a blockade, the baddies in this game follow a pre-set path. You can't build on their road, but you know exactly where they'll be going. If you can get the Combo Towers activated, you'll really start having fun.

Both Desktop TD and Flash Element TD will apparently be coming together at Casual Collective when it is launched. The site will also feature a multiplayer game called MPDTD (Multi-Player Desktop TD) that is basically Desktop TD with a few features that allow you to compete with other players.

Honorable mention goes to Onslaught 2, which is a fun TD game, but I keep running into a bug where my towers just stop shooting at the bad guys. The gameplay on this game is fun, especially if you get the hang of the combo attacks. Let's put it this way — if Onslaught 2 didn't have this bug in it, this post would be titled "Three Tower Defense Games Worth Playing."

In preparation for the Transformers movie next month, transformersmovie.com has put out a turn-based battle game titled Battle for the Allspark.

Autobot gets burnt

In the game, you start out by choosing to Protect (as an Autobot) or Destroy (as a Decepticon). Enter a zone and choose a robot from the opposing side to fight against. Each robot picks one action per round, and you are limited by the amount of energy you have during that round. The robot that runs out of power first loses. As you win battles, you work your way up from your initial rank (Private) through the three higher levels (Lieutenant, Captain, and Major). As you gain rank, you also gain access to additional "skills".

Your wins and losses don't only affect you: The game keeps track of which side has stronger control of the world, split up into 20 "zones" — the side currently holding the majority of zones has control of the Allspark.

But to be honest: The reason I really like this game is that I have a 75% rate of victory.

If you're bored and are looking for something to do, here's a quick 15-minute exercise to keep you busy:

The Official David Hasselhoff Site of Worship has a David Hasselhoff paper airplane that you can print out, fold up, and fly to your heart's content.

I wanted to make the David Hasselhoff paper airplane myself before talking about it here, so I did just that. I'm happy to say that the paper airplane folds up nicely to make a great David Hasselhoff paper airplane, and it flies really well, too.

Tip: Save the paper airplane image to a local drive, and print the image there. That way, you will have the opportunity to print the image out in as large a size as possible. Otherwise, your browser may resize the image, print out the URL and date on the borders, and mock you in general.

NB: The folding instructions are confusing and often unhelpful, so a general knowledge of paper airplane folding will help. And if the instructions reference a tab that you don't see printed on the paper, that's because it's not printed on the paper. Go figure.

As I mentioned in an August post, Advertising Week held a poll during August and September to vote for your favorite advertising icon and favorite slogan. The winners were announced today and will be inducted into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame this afternoon.

The two 2006 icon winners were Colonel Sanders and the Kool-Aid Man. The two winning slogans were "Don’t Mess With Texas" and "When it Absolutely, Positively Has to Be There Overnight."

I am not thrilled with the winners this year, but there's always next year!

Today I was tagged by Jono over at *insert witty title here* to play a word association game.

Here are the five words provided for me, followed by my associations:

• Stick — Post-It
• Bottle — Message
• Mint — Listerine
• Camera — Lens
• Trolley — San Francisco

I hereby dissolve myself from any conclusions anyone might make — trained or otherwise — regarding these thoughts from my subconscious. It's disturbing to me, however, that 3/5 of my answers are proper nouns. Two companies and one city. Perhaps I'm merely a product of television and advertisements. At least my Trolley answer wasn't Rice-A-Roni (the San Francisco treat).

And now, I pass the torch along to 5 more bloggers. Here are the 5 random words for them:

• Kumquat — ?
• Gobbledygook — ?
• Lollygag — ?
• Diphthong — ?
• Masticate — ?

You can always count on me to be less traditional and more eccentric than the rest.

And here are the five bloggers I am tagging:

• Jule Ann – Who is Jule Ann?
• xenomouse – Screaming for Mercy
• Marlene – Buffalo Tales from South Wales
• Abigail – Shotsnaps
• Jim – According to Jim…

Of course, these five wonderful people are obligated to post their responses on their own blog, choose five new words, and tap five other people to play!

OK, so I cheated and picked not-so-random words. All the words I selected were from my list of 100+ Fun Words to Say. So sue me! (Disclaimer: By "sue," what I really mean is "place no legal action against.")

Update: The 2006 winners have been announced!

For most of August and September, you can vote for your favorite icon and your favorite slogan.

Previous icon winners include the M&M Characters, the Geico Gecko, and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Slogan winners include Wendy's "Where's the beef?" and Verizon's "Can you hear me now?" This year, you can choose only one of 26 icons and also one of 26 slogans. Trust me, for fans of pop culture, it's not an easy choice. Next year, I suggest that they allow people up to 5 votes to spread around.

For the third consecutive year, Advertising Week is conducting this poll to determine which two icons and slogans are added to the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame.

On September 29th, you'll be able to head back to Advertising Week to see who won this year.

Do you see any favorite icons or slogans that are missing? The icon I am surprised didn't make the list is Ronald McDonald. The missing slogan that I just can't believe didn't make the list is Miller Lite's "Tastes great! Less filling!"

Do you see any other icons or slogans missing? Comment here and let your opinion be known!