PAX Prime Game Round-up!

So, I went to PAX, y'all.  I was feeling really anxious about it, because that's what you do if you're me and you're going into some new and scary experience, but it was actually really freaking awesome!  I played video games for four days solid, pretty much, and it was just as amazing as it sounds.  Some of my personal highlights:

• Competing in a Just Dance 4 tournament (although I was so, so ROBBED!  The guy next to me kept blocking my controller :( )
• Playing a ton of amazing indie games
• Playing a ton of non-indie games that I probably never would have played had I not gone to PAX
• Getting free Disney Fantasia stuff!
• Being around nerds and geeks for 4 days
• Seeing some amazing panels focused on diversity in games

I wanted to highlight some of my favorite games from the weekend.

My #1 favorite game I played was Monster Loves You.

This game is so freaking adorable, I can't even stand it!  I thought my heart would explode right in the middle of the convention, it was so cute!  You play a monster, starting from hatching out of your egg and joining the little protozoa monsters, all the way through monster adulthood.  I had to put the iPad down during adolescence because I couldn't take it another second.  My heart!  

As you go through your monster life, situations come up that require you to make a decision.  How you act forms your monster's personality through a handful of different metrics.  My monster was brave and kind and not very ferocious (except when he chose to fight off a snake to save his friends!)  

You can purchase this game on Steam at http://store.steampowered.com/app/226740/ for $9.99.  It's totally worth every penny!  

Neverending Nightmares had too long of a line for me to play the demo, but I downloaded it once I got home and it was just as amazing as I had hoped it would be!  

This is the complete opposite of Monster Loves You - it's an extremely creepy psychological horror game that is actually based off of the nightmares of the creator.  Although the demo is rough and not too long, it still had me jumping in my seat a couple of times, and I had trouble shaking the creepiness for quite awhile afterwards.  It's currently doing a Kickstarter to get the funds to finish creating it - please contribute!

One game that didn't even have a demo, but looks so zany it can't be anything but awesome is Hello Hero.  It's a Facebook and mobile game that's already quite popular in Korea, but is slated to be released soon in the US.  This caught my eye because they had a giant dancing cactus that you could get your picture taken with at their booth, as well as many other cute characters that you can play.  It's just a turn-based RPG, but it looks so adorable, that I honestly don't care that much that the gameplay might be boring.  Check out this trailer video:

Those are just a few of the amazing games that I played last weekend.  Be prepared for more game reviews to come!  Woot!

Hello Kitty Kawaii Town!

Long time, no talk, I know!  As you saw from one of my last posts, my organization successfully fundraised enough money to go on our tour, so I was gone for the majority of the summer.  Yay!

On the road, things get boring when you're driving from city to city, and one thing that helped me pass the time was this amazing Android game called Hello Kitty Kawaii Town.  Obviously, something with the word "kawaii" in the name is going to be right up my alley, right?  But this is, like, beyond your average kawaii.  All of the buildings look like what they sell inside (for example, the sweets shop looks like a piece of adorably kawaii cake), and all of the Sanrio characters wander around the town, talking to you.  There are also these ridiculously cute interactions between Hello Kitty and Charmy Kitty that drive the storyline piece of the game.

It is so cute, I literally want to throw up.  Literally.

Essentially, Hello Kitty and Charmy Kitty have these girl talks where they commiserate over what the town needs, and those items become the main quests of the game.  At any given time, however, there is a list of 10 or so quests to work on.  They all have to do with growing things in your garden, gaining coins from a certain activity (like gardens or shops), or building things in your town.  The rewards are generally either one kawaii ticket (kawaii tickets are premium currency in the game and can help you grow things faster or get special items), coins (the common currency for most items), or XP.  The more XP you get, the more you level up and can access better shops and plants that give more XP and coins.  The shops all regenerate coins after a certain amount of time, which varies depending on the shop.  The shops can also be leveled up, but it's generally not as good of a "deal" as just purchasing another shop of the same kind.

It's not the most exciting game I've ever played, but it's so cute that I can just sit and stare at it and happily revel in the kawaii for several minutes.  You can download the game for Android or iOS at their website, http://hellokitty-kawaiitown.com/en/.

P.S.  If you do get the game, my friend code is ekvkltfv - if you enter it in when you start, we both get ten kawaii tickets!  Woot!