Haunt The House: A Fun Ghost Game

It started out as a joke gift from a friend (you know who you are) during a Steam Halloween sale a few years ago -- and then we both discovered a fun game. If you want some silly fun to balance out your horror games, this would be the game to pick.

Aside from having a fantastic, old-timey soundtrack with great themes for each location, there are a number of ways in which to play this game and have fun. The game has expanded in the three years I have owned it, and I've discovered new content as recent as a few months ago!

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I THINK originally the game only had Terror Town (hence the title) and the Mansion House. The Mansion House, I'm thinking, was the original portion of the game -- I think this because of the art style -- it looks to be of poorer quality compared to the rest of the game, and I distinctly recall working on achievements related to it. But hey, maybe I'm not remembering correctly!

Ghost Train and North Pole came later, and they're wonderful gems. Thematically they're spot-on and a delight to play. The Ghost Train is actually a carnival/circus train with everything you'd expect to see all aboard a moving train. Your goal is to get everyone to jump off. North Pole is a large department store building stuffed full of Christmas goodness. Your ghost appears to be someone who froze out in the cold, so of course you want to make everyone just as miserable as you no matter what the season is.

But going back to Terror Town, you have a very specific agenda! Not only are you tasked with scaring everyone out of all the buildings in town, but you have to reclaim what was lost -- that is, there are other ghosts you have to call back to the bell tower. Once you've found/released/returned all of them, you can then play them in the game and each has its own special spooky sound.

As a ghost, you can possess all of the objects in the game. The scarier you make the atmosphere, the more choices you have when you possess an object. Max out the atmosphere and you can do some epic spooks that make your entire screen flash and send whole groups of people fleeing in terror! Many of the actions you can take in an object are downright hilarious if you take the time to explore all of the options after maxing out the atmosphere. (There are achievements for using every ability in every object, so it's well worth it to test them all -- it will help you when you replay the areas to get some other achievements!)

Right now you can pick up the game for a whole 99¢ in the Steam store, or get the soundtrack version for $1.39. It's money well spent if you're wanting a fun diversion from horror games but still want to enjoy Halloween!

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Just a shout out to a few anonymous donors in the last couple days -- THANK YOU for donating! Your dollars make a big difference for the kids at Children's National.

If YOU would like to get a personalized shout out and have a shot at some awesome incentives (i.e. games, drawings, Amazon gift card), please consider making a donation of your own on my Extra Life page.

Marathon Day Schedule

Here it is in all its glory! I will be playing these 17 games next Saturday, November 4th. I will be in my public Steam group chat for the entire marathon and I welcome everyone who has a Steam account to stop in and cheer me on!

I'm currently sitting at $165 out of $500. If you can't be around for the marathon, please consider donating on my Extra Life page. No donation is too small! Every dollar helps the children at Children's National.

RIFT: Four Years Ago Today

Look at that beautiful Bahmi rogue! Her name is Kantri, and I created her four years ago today in the game RIFT. The nice people at Trion Worlds are big supporters of Extra Life, so they offered up a few freebies to the participants. I took the incentive and marvelous things happened!

Alright, not at first.

I had fun putzing around in the game on my own for a while. A friend told me she played and I swapped servers... and then I never saw her in the game again. (You know who you are. *scolds*) But then I felt really lost and couldn't seem to figure out where to go by my lonesome... so I stopped playing for a really long while.

I returned to the game in early 2015 and found myself in the middle of a zone event. For the first time ever there were a few people giving instructions to us clueless players and it actually helped us get the event done successfully. I caught the name of one person's guild and promptly asked for an invite. It ended up being a HUGE, disorganized guild... but was better than being all by my lonesome.

(Spoiler alert: RIFT, the guild in RIFT, and my Extra Life streaming on Twitch brought me closer to another RIFT player in the guild -- I am presently married to him. Yes, in real life. Just another reason why Extra Life means so much to me!)

I was very active in the guild for the rest of that year, even scooting all the way up to an officer position where I helped lead the raids and was also in charge of the RP (which was a lost cause unless all the kids were on summer break). I left the guild in late December with a few others because we disagreed about how some things were being handled.

Three months later, after having quit my job and moved 800+ miles to Mississippi, I went back to RIFT and created my own little guild called Spectral Gryphon. It's still there, and not very active, but I maintain it anyhow. I don't want to return to a crazy, large guild, and I hope to one day play some more with my friends and husband.

Let this be a lesson for you: Good things may just be waiting for you to take a chance. Oh yeah, and use those freebies you get if you're an Extra Life participant! They're a complete game changer, if you know what I mean!

Two Weeks Until the Extra Life Marathon!

I can hardly believe that this year's Extra Life Marathon is only two weeks away! I feel like I haven't done nearly enough this year to promote the charity or how hard my team members have been working to raise awareness. I'm going to shift gears, so buckle up!

What you can expect to see here in my blog in the coming weeks:

• At least one entry about LOTRO's Harvestmath Festival
• The long-postponed team member interviews I've had the text for but have been too lazy to format/edit/add photos. (I should have made the team members provide their own photos...)
• The equally long-postponed entry about my Mount Addiction in RIFT.
• Probably an entry about the new stuff in RIFT's Autumn Harvest Festival, and possibly also something about the new Mage Soul, Mystic Archer (if I decide to buy it -- but it uses a bow, so I think you know the answer to that).
• At least one more update about Costume Quest to compare scores with Green Owl.
• A poll about games I should play/blog about for the Marathon Day.
• An entry about my favorite, not-so-popular game everyone should play for Halloween. (Can you guess what it is?)

That's certainly a lot... At least if I don't get to everything I can say I still did plenty! My plan is to go ahead with the 24-hour Marathon on November 4th even though I'm unable to stream any of it. I will, however, be in the Steam group chat for the public group Snarkqueen #ForTheKids -- and I invite anyone and everyone to join in and follow my adventures throughout the day!

PSA: Harvestmath is Back!

One of my favorite festivals in The Lord of the Rings Online is here: Harvestmath! I could ramble for ages about how much fun it is to run the quests through the Haunted Burrow, or how much silliness there is in playing Tricks on people from Ered Luin to Bree, bobbing for apples, picking pumpkins... In the end, I do it for the festival mounts and cosmetics. Those always seem to be fantastic compared to other festivals throughout the year.

This year's gorgeous mount is called Steed of the Eldar Autumn, and there's a set of Leafmail cosmetics (even a shield!) to match. I'm busy running through the festival quests on a daily basis for my elves who must have these things to out-pretty other elves. (This is why we casual players festival ourselves to death, right? Collect all the cosmetics and toys!)

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Now, in favor of the fact that today is a certain Green Owl's birthday, I haven't played any more Costume Quest this week. We'll see tomorrow when he checks in (if he doesn't party too hard today!) if he's caught up to me or surpassed my totals!

Costume Quest, Part One: Bullies, Grubbins, Candy & Apples

Part One of my escapades in Costume Quest, in which I out-maneuver a bully with some sweet air time, lay the smack down on some Grubbins, collect all the candy, and bob for apples repeatedly because mini games are fun.

[This blog entry is part of a series taking place throughout the month of October.]

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So, I mentioned last time that your sibling gets kidnapped by a Grubbin (ugly green guys who are stealing all the candy in town) because your lame-o sibling is dressed up like a piece of candy corn. They've been thrown over this massive, ominous-looking gate and the only way to get it to open is to trick-or-treat your way through all of the available neighborhood. To do this, there are a bunch of other things you have to do.

The first obstacle, after you get your swanky robot costume restored (we've gotta find that witch and figure out why she blew our costume away in the first place) is getting past this gang of kids dressed up like mummies. The leader is hitting a kid dressed up like a knight, and you decide that just isn't cool with you.

After the bully foolishly tries to race you (swift-skating robot that you are), you get some sweet air time by going over a ramp while the bully crashes into a pile of trash cans right in front of the local police officer -- who threatens to call his parents, which sends him running home. You become instant besties with the knight in shining armor and gain access to another costume's powers when you fight the Grubbins.

Your new buddy Everett suggests a visit to Sadie in the park, who apparently sells things called Battle Stamps. By trading candy for these stamps, you get some sweet bonuses during your battles. I was reluctant to part with my candy at first, but some of the fights were actually rather hard (and I was defeated -- but thankfully didn't lose anything valuable) and I told myself I'd just whack more stationary objects with my candy bucket to make it rain candy.

The park also contains one of my favorite things I've encountered thus far: bobbing for apples. It's a fun, timed mini game that offers different prizes as you play -- notably candy, but also a nice Creepy Treat. Green apples give you 3 points, red give you 1, and you're gonna regret biting into one of those wormy apples -- bleck!

There were other quests to tackle in the area, of course: 6 trick-or-treaters hiding around the neighborhood (the reward is your second candy bag); having to put together a patriotic costume to get into a kid's patriotic party so you can steal cherries from his tree; giving said cherries to your principal who's blockaded a street with her bake sale and won't let you pass until you help her out; trading Creepy Treats with a couple of the local kids; and trick-or-treating at all 20 of the area's houses. Once you get all 20, the Grubbins are called away and that massive gate finally opens, letting you and Everett go rushing off to save your unfortunate, less-cool sibling.

I'll let you know how that goes next week. For now, here's the current total in the competition between myself and Green Owl. He promises to give me more competition next week when he can put in some more game time! (Bring it!)

1 point for every 100 candy pieces, 1 point for each other category lead.

I hope you're enjoying the Halloween adventure so far, and I truly wish I could share some of the gameplay with you. I encourage you to look for other Extra Lifers who might be streaming this game this month! As always, please consider donating to help the charity. Every dollar is #ForTheKids.

How to Trick-or-Treat All Month Long

 
Yeah, you read that right. Sweet, sweet candy throughout the entire month of October. How? Let me tell you about Costume Quest.

Costume Quest is this amazing game by our lovely friends at Double Fine Productions. The game originally released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2010 and wouldn't reach PC gamers until a port happened a year later. It was later made available for Mac and Linux through a Double Fine Humble Bundle, in case you needed any further proof of how awesome they are.
 

If you have had the misfortune of never hearing about this game, I will enlighten you: Some ugly dudes are stealing all the candy in town, have taken your sibling (mistakenly), and you have to trick-or-treat your way through the neighborhood collecting costumes that let you have Power Ranger zord-like battles to earn battle stamps, racking up your candy total, and finding neat things like creepy treats.


Basically, if you liked all the glory of trick-or-treating as a kid, you're going to enjoy this game. I promise. Pinky-swear, even.

 

So, throughout the month of October I will be playing the game bit by bit, and I'll be doing my best to share some of the highlights with you (which probably means spoilers, so you've been warned!). I've streamed the game in previous years on Twitch for Extra Life, but have yet to actually finish the game. My motivation this time? I am playing to compete! My wonderful team member, Green Owl, is also going to be playing the game throughout the month and we're going to compare our loot collections once a week. The winner will get bonus points for the Mascot Mayhem competition. He's also from Spain, so I don't know if any of the American Halloween culture will go over his head or not -- I'll let you know!

I can't really say much else about the game just yet. I know this witchy chick pictured here is some kind of antagonist-y villain who finds you annoying. But just when you think she's ruined your night more than your crummy sibling and ugly candy thief have, someone points you in the right direction...

The next blog entry will either be the first update on Costume Quest progress and loot collections, or a very overdue team member interview. Whichever it is, I hope you'll keep reading and enjoying what I share. Please remember I'm doing this #ForTheKids and they'd appreciate your donations.

3000 Hours of Lord of the Rings Online

This past Thursday, August 24th, I hit 3000 hours of gameplay in LOTRO. To commemorate this milestone, this blog entry will list many of the things I have done in that time: things I remember, things I don't-quite-remember, and whatever dumb facts I can pull out of a hat on Bingo's hatrack.

   

My first in-game screenshot.

I began my adventure on June 7, 2012. This means I have been playing for 5 years, 2 months, and 20 days, OR I have been playing for 1907 days. 3000 hours divided by 1907 days means I have played an average of 1.57 hours every day. Considering that I took a year-long break to play RIFT and be a guild officer, that's still pretty dedicated of me. And overall I can't complain since RIFT is how I met my husband.



 

Look at those beautiful charts and colors! On the Arkenstone server, I have 10 Free People characters and 3 Monster characters. On the Landroval server, I have 9 Free People characters and 3 Monster characters. I have played every race and class at least once. Elf is my favorite race, hunter is my favorite class. Dwarf is my least favorite race, champion is my least favorite class -- I prefer ranged abilities and unique skills. I have a character in each crafting profession on both servers. I try to keep up with it, but it gets awfully tedious.  I attempted to play Monsters on Elendilmir (before moving to Arkenstone), but the other Monster players were snobs.

Celondim, Ered Luin.

Suri-kyla, Forochel.

Celondim is my favorite starting area, Archet is the bane of my Middle-earth existence.  Aside from my obsession with Rohan, my next favorite region is Forochel (that SKY, and the moose!). The regions I hate most are Angmar and Mirkwood (you'd hate them, too, if you only played solo/duo for 4 years).

I found a treehouse in Eastern Rohan.

My favorite expansion is Riders of Rohan. ❤ Since its release I have gone to the trouble of buying premium mounts for the majority of my characters JUST so they can have nice-looking war-steeds from the start.

I have a mount-hoarding problem. Arkenstone Aarawynn used to collect every single festival mount until my break from the game. She's collected more since returning. She would have more if I could afford more Mithril Coins. Don't judge me. (If you make a donation on my Extra Life page, I'll tally up how many mounts my characters have combined!)

I hate player music and keep it muted. I don't need to hear your badly-transcribed modern music in my Middle-earth haven from the real world, thank you. I think the music system is neat, but it'd be nice if most of the music was within the lore and not so abrasive. (So no, Breg -- I haven't been rickrolled in Bree. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!)

My favorite NPC is Corudan, the Elf from Lothlorien that joins you in the Epic from Great River through Rohan. His cheeky commentary about the other NPCs is awesome. My least favorite NPC has got to be the majority of the dwarves in Moria. Idiots can't get themselves out of a wet paper bag.

The furthest I have quested in the game is with Arkenstone Aarawynn, who is presently in Lebennin of Central Gondor, just past Linhir and doing quests in the Ruins of Ethillorn.

While it's nice to now have a great kinship to run content with (Away Shall Fade on Landroval), I find the raids/instances/skirmishes/big battles to be pretty bland. SSG could learn a thing or two from Trion about group content and the storylines that make them fun. (Hammerknell? Infernal Dawn?)

I enjoy festivals as long as the cost for things I want isn't a ridiculous grind. It's ironic that the casual players are the ones that enjoy the festivals most, but the token costs for items necessitate a grind most of the time! The Harvest Festival with the Haunted Burrow is my favorite, with Yule close behind it.

I could ramble on forever here (I mean, I have spent 3k hours in this game), so I'll leave it to the comments if you want to know anything else! If you enjoyed this rambling, nerdy entry, please consider supporting my efforts for Extra Life -- every donation helps a child!

Teammate Interview: Purple Squirrel

Next up in the team interview series is Purple Squirrel!

1.) Where did you grow up? Did you like it or hate it? Are you still there?

Most of the parts of childhood I can remember were spent in rural Ohio, just down the road from my grandparents, as well as 3 sets of aunts and uncles at the time. I loved it back then. Big yard to run around in, creek to stomp in.

I am less enamored with it now that I'm still living here in my 30's but I also have a lot more allergies now, plus living near family has its drawbacks when it comes to privacy, much as I love them. Ideally I'd like to live closer to town so I don't have to drive half an hour to get to everything, but not in the main part of town where housing is more expensive. I've seen some nice places that border on state parks that I'd LOVE to live in once we're ready to move.

    

2.) What was the first video game you ever played? How old were you? What year was it?
Oh man I'm not sure I can remember that. We had an Atari as far back as I can remember, so it would have been sometime in the 80's. Not sure what my FIRST game was (probably Frogger?) but my favorite when I was little was Joust. The Atari was the only thing we had for years, later games were accessed through my cousins.

3.) What is your preferred gaming platform and why?

Lately I have been favoring the PS3. I was fond of Wii before that because it was a bit different (and for me was the perfect platform for Okami, since it made the brush drawing much more natural). The controller fits perfectly in my hand, there are a lot of good games available for it, none of this waiting 20 hours to download updates every time you turn the console on (*coughs and glares at the Xbox One*)... and I don't have a computer that can run much in the way of games right now so console works out better for me.

4.) What is your preferred gaming genre and why?

I mostly stick to RPGs these days. I like something with a good story, the more immersive the better. Bonus for an open world so I can run around and play and enjoy the pretty on days when I don't feel like questing or advancing the plot. (This is, of course, part of why I've become so enamored with Skyrim of late.)

5.) What is your favorite fandom?

Oh geeze you're gonna make me pick one? I can't pick one. Lately my biggest ones have been Harry Potter (proud Ravenclaw), Avatar (Last Airbender - Legend of Korra was decent but I feel like it was overall weaker and some things could have been done better), and Star Trek (TNG in particular). Lupin, Hagrid, Uncle Iroh, Spock (TOS not JJverse), Worf, and Data are some of the big favorites for me. Uncle Iroh has a special place in my heart when I am stressed because I swear we all need an Uncle Iroh in our lives.

Star Wars is also cool but I don't feel as drawn into it as I used to, even if my blood does run hot as soon as I hear that opening fanfare. In addition I love the Dragon Age series of games (I still need to get my hands on Inquisition x.x) and as evidenced by my blog I am absolute Skyrim trash.

I also am in love with a book series that doesn't have a big enough fandom to properly nerd out in, so I mostly post random crap to the author's Facebook page. Song of the Summer King/The Summer King Chronicles. Gryphons and a coming-of-age story turned epic adventure that's just... Augh I know some indie published stuff puts people off because there's some terrible stuff out there but this series is actually REALLY freaking good.

6.) Have you ever attended or wanted to attend a gaming convention?

Eh, for some reason gaming conventions never really interested me all that much. I mean you see some elements of gaming cosplay at other types of con and most of the time when I see photos and descriptions the other kinds of fandom cons always seem more interesting to me.

7.) When did you first consider yourself a gamer?

I honestly don't know. I forget when I first heard the term used, but I think I probably considered myself one as soon as I heard the term? I have a terrible memory.

8.) What do you think defines a gamer?

Do you enjoy games? Seek them out in your spare time? Congrats, you're a gamer.

   

9.) What is the best game you've ever played and why?

Oh man that's hard. I think I'm going to go with Okami here because part of what captured me about it was it was styled so DIFFERENTLY than other games. Here was a game that took traditional brush style art and not only managed to make it work with an immersive 3D game world, but also incorporate it into the very fabric of the game by giving the main character the power of ink to change the world. They managed to give it a good story along the way, too, and made you really care about everything that was happening. All in all it's a beautiful piece of art come to life, so even though some of the challenges in the game frustrated me (I'm looking at you, Blockhead Grande) I still have to set it apart as one of the best I've encountered.

10.) What is the worst game you've ever played and why?

Does anyone remember that godawful ET game from Atari? That one. Definitely that one. Look, man, if you've ever played it YOU KNOW WHY. Nothing works. NOTHING WORKS it's just terrible. I have vague memories of trying to figure out what you were even supposed to DO in the game and then just giving up and switching to something else.

11.) What fictional character (game, book, movie, etc.) do you relate to most and why?

This is a hard one for me because I don't think there's any one character that encompasses ALL of me. So I'm going to have to talk about more than one.

I think I was definitely very like Luna Lovegood in my childhood. Blissfully unaware of how "weird" I was, just me being me... believing in creatures other people knew didn't exist (unicorns mostly). Of course, there's also a little bit of Hermione in me as well, driving people insane by always doing well in school and being obsessed with following the rules, then later starting to push back against injustice, albeit with a constant sense of stress.

Lately I identify a lot with Data. He spends most of the early seasons of TNG wanting to understand humanity, but only really being able to appreciate human social customs on an academic level, not finding them particularly instinctive or truly being able to understand WHY people behave the way they do even when it is decidedly irrational. I have a lot of trouble with social norms myself, so I definitely feel a connection to that desire for better understanding.

   

12.) If you could be any role from any video game, who/what would you be and why?

That blue shell from Mario Kart. FEAR ME.

13.) What's the meaning behind your color/animal choice for your mascot?

My other half is a software dev, and frequently devs run across job descriptions that are ridiculous or impossible, as such a candidate is very unlikely to exist. Whereas in many other circles such a mythical being is often referred to as a unicorn, in the local dev community such companies are said to be looking for a "purple squirrel". Plus squirrel doubles as a nod to "hey look a squirrel!" and notable squirrel characters with a serious lack of attention span, which... is a problem I often have.

  

14.) What kinds of people should taken an interest in your gaming/blogging/streaming?
People who like Skyrim, particularly rambling about bugs or oddities of Skyrim society, or in character posts from characters who like to complain about Skyrim and its politics. I mean I find it humorous, I dunno if anyone else does. Also sometimes there are comics I draw based on stuff that happens in game.

(For more of Purple Squirrel's screenshots, doodles, and blurbs, read Diary of an Honorable Khajit.)

15.) What is your favorite internet meme?

Bode. I mean I realize feline obesity IS a serious thing, but at the same time, chubby kitties need love too and this meme just made me stupidly happy for a while.

   

Be sure to thank Purple Squirrel for being a team player! We welcome all comments, questions, followers and Extra Life donations. Stay tuned for more about games and some of our other Extra Life teammates!