1482: Lego, not LEGO

Andie and I went to see The Lego Movie today (or, if you work in PR, The LEGO Movie™) — it's the first time we've been to the cinema for ages since neither of us really like going all that much, but given Andie's admirable obsession with Lego (we have three awesome display cabinets with City stuff in at our place, and I'm sure our new home will have considerably more) there was never a time where we weren't going to see it.

I shall refrain from spoiling the movie too much, save to say that it's an excellent kids' movie of the type designed to appeal in numerous ways to grown-ups as well. The concept of Lego being an all-ages toy (whatever it might say about upper age limits on the boxes) is specifically lampshaded, and there are numerous cameos from characters who have been immortalised through various Lego sets over the years — ranging from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings via the DC universe.

What I did want to talk about is how Lego has done a great job of positioning itself to a ridiculously broad market in 2014, and how that's changed significantly over the years I've been alive. Or, at least, the way I've come to look at Lego has changed significantly over the years, anyhow.

I never really got hugely into Lego as a kid. I'm not sure why, really, since you'd think it would appeal to my inherent creative sensibilities. But no; my brother was the big Lego person in our family, though I certainly delved into the big brown plastic box full of it that was a fixture in the playroom when I was growing up. I liked the idea of Lego — something which you could use to build anything you wanted — but always felt a little intimidated by it, too.

Part of the reason for this was that in the big brown plastic box was an extremely well put-together house, complete with doors, windows and a slopey roof. I liked looking at this house because I was impressed with the craftsmanship — I assume it was originally the work of my brother, though I don't know if it was assembled from instructions or not — but I also didn't want to take it apart, because it was "complete", and taking something apart that is "complete" didn't quite feel right to me. Unfortunately, it consisted of all the "best" pieces, which made building other coherent structures a little more difficult, so ultimately I never really became much of a builder.

That was how I thought of Lego; it was something you built things with. I didn't really think of it as having much of a "personality" as such, despite the presence of minifigs. (Incidentally, I was very happy to see that the "spaceman" minifigs, which appeared to be all we had in the big brown box, were specifically brought up in the movie.) It was just sort of… there, and given that I didn't end up building all that much stuff with it, it drifted out of my consciousness for many years, never to return until I met Andie, really.

Today, however, Lego very much has a personality, demonstrated aptly by the movie. But I think the slightly irreverent attitude that Lego is infused with today started somewhat earlier. I can't say for certain exactly when it began, but I have a feeling the computer games made by Traveller's Tales have a lot to do with it. Again, I haven't played all that many of these, but they have developed somewhat over time, too — they began with "silent movie" recreations of Star Wars that ended up being hilarious because of their lack of dialogue, and gradually moved into movie adaptations that used actual lines and sounds from the movie, and subsequently on to original titles such as Lego City Undercover.

The personality of the latter in particular was very evident in the movie, and it's one of the things that made it so enjoyable — it was silly, highly quotable nonsense for children, but at the same time the references and sly winks throughout were clearly aimed at those of us who are old enough to have kids of our own (whether or not we actually do).

In short, it was a lot of fun that I highly recommend you go and see. I'm glad to see something as cool as Lego endures so well in the modern world, and solid adaptations like The Lego Movie will undoubtedly help it continue to do so.

1481: Faceoffs are Magic

Picked up a copy of the My Little Pony Collectible Card Game the other day, and Andie and I gave it a shot tonight. After some initial confusion over some of the rules and how it all worked, I think I've grasped how the flow of play goes now, and I'm interested to try it again.

I haven't played a CCG since the name Portal was primarily associated with Magic: The Gathering rather than Valve. I never really got hugely into Magic (or the game I half-heartedly started collecting but never once played before, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Card Game) but recently, with some attempts at Netrunner (not technically a CCG, but it was originally) and now this, I'm interested to play more.

Being based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the My Little Pony CCG isn't based around direct conflict. Rather, it's based on the rather family-friendly premise of solving problems and giving "troublemakers" the boot before they cock up your plans to solve the aforementioned problems.

The mechanics are relatively straightforward, though not introduced massively clearly in the rulebook. Essentially, each turn you have a certain number of action points to spend, which is determined by the player with the highest score. Consequently, a trailing player has the potential to catch up somewhat by the fact that they'll still have the opportunity to play more cards.

During your turn, you can play "Friends" either directly to one of the two Problems in play, or into your Home, from which they can later be moved at a cost of two action points per card. Cards often have prerequisites and costs in order to play — for example, in order to play one card, you might need to spend two action points and already have two yellow Power points on the board.

Once you've spent all your action points, you check to see whether you've amassed enough Power of the appropriate colours to "confront" a Problem and score a point for it. If two players both have enough power to confront a Problem, after you score a point, you have a Faceoff over it, where you compare your respective Power levels, replace the Problem and score bonus points. On the off-chance you've scored from both Problems in play at once, you have a Faceoff, even if your opponent doesn't meet the requirements for either. Again, this replaces the problems, sends all the Friends home and discards any other cards, meaning both sides then have to start building up Power again to confront the next Problems.

What's difficult to judge from just one play of the game is how the different colour decks play. It seems apparent that the Fluttershy starter deck is concerned with amassing strong amounts of Power very quickly — the Caretaker ability that pops up quite often allows certain cards to boost the power of other ("Critter") cards, for example, which means you can quite easily muster an unassailable force of Friends to hoover up Points nearly every turn — while the Pinkie Pie starter deck is more concerned with fucking over your opponent by reducing their power or removing certain cards from the board.

There's a couple of aspects of the game that appear to be fairly key to strategy — firstly, how you "flip" your main character card, and secondly, how you use Troublemakers.

To the first point, "flipping" your character card involves meeting a specific condition, after which you can turn the card over and use its more powerful "Boosted" side for the rest of the game, which generally has a higher base Power level, a special ability and fewer restrictions on the cards you can keep in your Home area. Fluttershy seemed quite easy to flip, since she simply needed to confront a Problem with another Critter in tow, whereas Pinkie Pie seemed significantly harder to flip — she has to confront a problem unopposed by any of her opponent's cards, which means she probably has to make a bee-line for her own starting Problem before things get too hectic.

To the second point, Troublemakers are cards you play and flip over on your next turn, which then block your opponent from being able to confront a problem, since they first need to beat the Troublemaker at a Faceoff. The flip side of this inconvenience you give them is that if they do beat the Troublemaker in a Faceoff, they score points for doing so, then can potentially pick up some points for the Problem too. With some Troublemakers worth 3 points, that's potentially a gain of 4 or more points in a single turn, which has the potential to completely swing a game from one way to another — you play to 15.

Anyway. To cut a long story short, I won, 15-3, though I'm not sure it really counts since it was a training game. I'm intrigued to try it again, and potentially to try out some of the other character decks and see how they work. Looking at discussion of the game online, its apparently simplicity appears to be somewhat deceptive — there's a fair amount of deep strategy possible to incorporate, as with any good CCG, though naturally there's always the question of who has the "better" cards if you've started delving into the world of booster packs.

There will be more ponycards in the near future!

1480: Before the End of After Story

Looking back over these entries, I can see that I started watching the Clannad anime quite some time ago, and still haven't quite finished it. I'm closing in on the end, though, but it's tough going. Really tough going.

In short, its reputation as "the crying anime" is pretty well-deserved, given that the last three episodes have all, well, you know. Let's just say that watching them first thing in the morning while trying to get fired up to do some work perhaps wasn't the best idea.

This isn't a bad thing, of course, and one of the things I've come to particularly like about Clannad is that, despite its reputation, it's not overtly emotionally manipulative. There's a lot of filling in the blanks yourself, a lot of figuring things out — and that moment when you come to a realisation yourself is what hits the hardest. Certain things aren't made at all explicit, leaving you to come to your own conclusions about what happened. Said conclusions may not be particularly difficult to come to — I'm trying to remain spoiler-free here for the sake of those who haven't seen it — but still, somehow, you're left with a few questions as to whether or not you're really right. After one episode I watched, I simply couldn't go back to it for a couple of days because the possibility of something awful having happened that I wasn't sure I'd reached the correct conclusion about was something I couldn't quite deal with at the time. Eventually I found the courage, though; like any tragedy, you have to face up to things sooner or later.

Part of this vaguely ambiguous feeling about it stems from the faintly otherworldly, dream-like atmosphere it has. I commented back when I was watching the first series that there was something of an air of melancholy flowing through the backdrop of even the most joyful scenes, and this continues during the After Story second arc. After Story also contains more in the way of outright tragedy, but the obviously bad things happening aren't necessarily the most affecting moments — it's the consequences that sometimes come two or three episodes later that hit the hardest.

Similarly, After Story continues the seemingly unrelated parallel storyline that appears to have nothing to do with the main narrative, but which occasionally kind-of-sort-of-possibly-maybe? reflects what's been happening in terms of tone and overall feeling. Having not yet watched until the very end of the whole series, I can't yet tell if this is wrapped into the overall narrative in a specific way, or whether it remains as it was left at the end of the first series — as a story one of the characters ends up telling — but it's certainly something that regularly gives you food for thought throughout the entire run.

I'm appreciating it because I find the protagonist Okazaki quite relatable, too. He's a young man (I know I'm not quite so young as I used to be, but humour me) who appears to have a certain degree of difficulty showing outward signs of emotion, but who occasionally explodes with pent-up feelings that simply can't be held in any longer. To those not familiar with him, he might seem cold or morose, but the complete run of Clannad reveals him to be a sympathetic character who quietly deals with his own turmoil as best as he can while trying not to bother other people with the things that are on his mind. Despite this, he's a passionate, caring person who tries to do the right thing and gets frustrated when the injustices of the world conspire to prevent him from doing just that. He's humble and realistic; he doesn't get ideas above his station, but he wants to try and do what he can for the people who love him.

I'm intrigued to see how it all ends. I have about five or six more episodes left, I think, and things are starting to tie themselves up towards a conclusion. I have literally no idea how it will actually finish right now, though I'm sure there will be more tears before the final credits roll.

1479: Moneybags

Andie and I have bought a house. (Or possibly, "Andie and I are buying a house" — I'm not entirely sure which tense is appropriate at this stage.) Thus far the process has been significantly less stressful than I have been led to believe, but I'm sure there's still scope for something to go horribly wrong along the way. Until that time, however, I'm going to enjoy what has, so far, been a fairly painless process.

One thing that has struck me during this process, however, is how much your perception of money can change in such a short space of time. Or, indeed, how much the quantities of money you deal with on a regular basis can change in a short period.

When you're young, getting a couple of quid pocket money is a lot. Getting an expensive present — something that costs £20 or more — is pretty awesome, and getting a really expensive present — a games console, say — is really awesome. At the same time, if you're not dealing with a lot of money at once, it can be easy to disregard it completely. I recall when I was very young — like, early primary school young — thinking that cashpoint machines simply gave you money if you put in the right number. It didn't even occur to me that you had to have that money to your name in order to be able to receive it in physical form.

Then you move into your teenage years, and start having a bit more money of your own. It's still not in huge quantities, though that said there's plenty of teenagers wandering around sporting the latest iPhones, so modern teens are certainly getting money from somewhere. Some even save up and get their own car, although admittedly said car tends to be a rustbucket monstrosity that will fall apart the second you look at it.

Then on to university, where, in many cases, you'll have early encounters with both crippling debt and seemingly more money than you know what to do with. You'll start paying rent, which costs hundreds of pounds a month, and you'll have expenses to consider. You'll get thousands of pounds through a student loan, then blow it on booze and whatever else students spend money.

Despite university being a whole bunch of years ago now, I must confess that I still find myself in that mindset sometimes. I feel like I don't have much money coming in — even though I'm drawing a respectable wage and can live comfortably — and even a hundred pounds feels like a lot of money.

Until now. We're buying a house, which costs six figures. This involves being saddled with a six-figure debt, and spending five figures up front. The most I've ever spent on something in one go up until now was four figures on a computer, so the prospect of spending five figures at once is… well, it's a little mind-boggling, if I'm honest. I'm not sure the idea has sunk in yet.

Still, at least once all the house stuff is sorted we can hopefully both go back to thinking about much smaller numbers on a regular basis. At least until we decide we want to move and buy another one somewhere else…

1478: Virtue's Numerous Penultimate Rewards

I'm still plugging away at the sequel to 999, Virtue's Last Reward. This is an interesting game in many ways, but one of the most fascinating things I've found about it so far is how it's far more willing to withhold an ending from you than 999 was. In 999, there was only one ending that had a "prerequisite" — i.e. you had to finish one path before you could finish the "true" path — but in Virtue's Last Reward, there are numerous plot branches that end prematurely with a "To Be Continued" message that may only be unlocked using knowledge obtained in one of the other narrative paths. Consequently, a big part of the game's challenge looks set to revolve around determining precisely which order you should do things in.

To speak too much about this aspect of the game and why it's structured in this way would be to get somewhat spoileriffic, and I know that at least one person who might be reading this is currently playing through the game at the same time as me, a number of hours behind where I am. As such, I'll refrain from discussing this aspect of it too publicly for the moment and satisfy myself simply by saying that I find this approach really interesting.

It's one of the things I like best about the visual novel medium, as it happens. It's also one of the main means through which the visual novel medium distinguishes itself from conventional novels and other linear forms of storytelling. The branching nature of visual novels means the medium inherently lends itself to a form of storytelling whereby you only get the complete picture of what is going on by seeing things from multiple perspectives. And I'm not necessarily talking about switching narration perspectives to different characters — in most cases I'm simply talking about the protagonist making different choices, proceeding down a different path and consequently demonstrating a different side to themselves.

In some cases, these different paths are manifested as the protagonist changing in different ways. In Katawa Shoujo, for example, each narrative path sees the protagonist learning something from his chosen partner, and growing into a markedly different person as a result. He's still Hisao at heart, but each of the girls bring a different aspect of him to the forefront — Rin brings out his artistic side, for example, while Emi encourages him to never give up and to always keep on with whatever he's put his mind to.

In other cases, these different paths simply allow us to see how the protagonist responds to different life situations. In Kira Kira, for example, each of the main narrative paths corresponds to each of the very different female members of the cast, each of whom have their own story to tell. By seeing all of these stories through to their conclusion, you get a complete picture of who they are — and perhaps the reasons they do the things they do.

One of the best examples I can think of in recent memory is School Days HQ, too. I'm still yet to see 100% of the scenes in this, but I've seen enough of the endings to know that knowledge gained in some narrative paths can completely change the way you look at others. What may superficially seem to be a romantic scene can be tinged with sadness or tragedy when approached from a different angle with different knowledge already in your mind. And if you're unfortunate enough to catch that game's most notorious bad ending on your first run through… well, I pity you trying to see the rest of the game in the same way afterwards.

Rather than separating narrative paths into their own discrete threads that neatly tie themselves up, then leaving the player to do all the mental fingerwork to weave them all together into a complete picture, it seems that Virtue's Last Reward is deliberately structured in such a way as to encourage you to explore all the different options — including the "bad" endings. In the path I played tonight, making a "bad" choice ultimately proved to be something I actually needed to do in order to progress the story further down another route. That's something I've never seen before, and it's proving to be a real highlight of the experience for me.

But as I say, in discussing this we're getting dangerously close to spoiler territory, and I'm keen to avoid that. So I'll leave that there… and now I'm off to go and see if I can't actually make it to one of the endings before I go to sleep this evening.

1477: Nondescript

It's been one of those days that just sort of… happened today. I wrote about EA's horrendous molestation of the Dungeon Keeper series, gave Flappy Bird a well-deserved drubbing in a review and a few other things, then played an interesting horror game called Serena which I'm going to write a review of tomorrow, then capped the evening off with some Final Fantasy XIV. That was my day. That was it.

Much as we might like to always have interesting things to talk about and tall tales to tell, the fact is that most days we go through our existence are pretty humdrum, boring and nondescript, with almost nothing of note happening whatsoever.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, because having humdrum, boring and nondescript days suggests that things are going all right — it's better than having days that are crushing disappointments, or that make you want to punch walls, or that make you want to sit in the shower and cry, for example, but it's also not quite as good as days that make you want to explode in happiness or play a pair of tea tongs like castanets. (Actually, I must confess to doing the latter earlier while waiting for a cup of tea to brew, but it was more through boredom than happiness. Tea tongs actually make a surprisingly convincing castanets substitute, FYI.)

Perhaps this is why social media has risen to such prominence in recent years. Everything from the humble status update to a "selfie" has the potential to make the mundane seem so much more fascinating than it really is — at least it does to the people posting these things. Yes! they'll think. Here's my dinner! It's amazing! Maybe people will be jealous of what I'm having! I have beans with sausages! Joke's on you, losers! Oh God I'm so lonely.

It's sort of baffling if you take a step back from it all, really. Take photography in particular — the rise of digital photography and phone cameras have devalued the humble photograph from cultural artifact to disposable, throwaway thing. Photos used to be a precious commodity — you'd go on holiday with a couple of 36-exposure rolls of film in your bag, and you'd try to make every shot count. Now, you can afford to take pictures of every course of every meal you have and share them to the world as if they give a shit. And Silicon Valley types who enjoy making new social media apps for no other reason than to say they attracted several million in seed funding, whatever that is, can take advantage of people like this by offering them apps that allow them to "turn your photographs into beautiful memories" and the like. Ugh.

Of course, the Internet belongs to everyone so it is your choice how you choose to go about using it. Just remember that the things you're posting might not be as interesting to other people as they might be to you. Heaven knows I know that after writing 1,477 days of nonsense on these very pages.

There you go. I even have something to say on a humdrum, boring and nondescript day such as today. And now I'm going to bed. Good night.

1475: Thundercards

We've finally got our Internet back after it being down for most of today as well as last night — not to mention BT's site noting that the problem was reported at 4:30 am and would be fixed by 12 am (errr…) — but yes. Internets we have. Woo!

While it was down, Andie and I went out for a bit, initially to have a scary grown-up talk with a mortgage advisor. We're well on the way to owning our own house, though I'm hesitant to talk too much about it right now in case it all falls through. Exciting, though.

Anyway, Andie buggered off after lunch to go and see a friend in Portsmouth, so I thought I'd have a wander into town and see what was what. Actually, I had a vague idea in mind that I wanted to pick up a copy of the board game Mage Knight that I could play solo while the Internet was down — while our regular gaming group is hesitant to return to the game again since our last 5-player game took literally all day, I do like the idea of the solo game, which is much shorter owing to the lack of downtime.

Long story short, I went to Forbidden Planet (which appeared to be playing host to a Magic: The Gathering tournament of some description — interesting to know) and had a browse of their board games. There was no Mage Knight — they haven't had that in for a while, I don't think — but they did have a game called Thunderstone which I recalled seeing positive comments about in the past.

I didn't know much about Thunderstone, but a quick browse of its BoardGameGeek page revealed that it was very positively received by the community as a whole (an average rating of 8.1 is very high for that notoriously picky community) and was something that may indeed be worth picking up, particularly since it was £10 off as part of Forbidden Planet's sale. So I grabbed it, took it home and gave its solo version a go — yes, the fact it supports solo play is one reason I was willing to give it a shot.

Many board games take a significant amount of time to "unpack", what with all the counters and tokens you need to pop out, but Thunderstone takes the cake in that there are about a bajillion cards, all of which need to be sorted into their own little compartments — though thankfully the game does include special "divider" cards to make organising the box pretty straightforward.

The game itself is a deckbuilding game with elements that are similar to both Ascension and Dominion, but with enough unique flavour and mechanics to make it clearly its own beast. The gist is that you're a faceless hero attempting to save the realm of Numenera — a setting I'm not familiar with, but which I understand is relatively popular in fantasy enthusiast circles — from "Doom," some sort of amorphous unpleasantness that has been hopping through dimensions from the original incarnation of Thunderstone to the version I bought today.

Your "goal," such as it is, is to defeat an evil horrible Thunderstone Bearer, a powerful monster who shows up later in the game, and one who brings about the end of the game if you allow him to advance far enough. In order to do this, you'll need to recruit heroes, purchase equipment and then tonk a whole load of monsters on the head with various blunt and sharp implements until Big Bad comes out, you tonk him on the head and save the day. (Or until Big Bad comes out, you fail to tonk him on the head and the world is swallowed by eternal darkness, or something.) Victory is determined not by whether or not you beat the Thunderstone Bearer, but by the number of Victory Points you've earned at the end of the game — this is a competitive game at heart, though in solo play you are playing against the game itself rather than simply attempting to amass as many points as possible.

Each turn, you can either visit the village or delve into the dungeon. Going to the village allows you to spend money up to the value of the cards in your hand to purchase various items or the services of local heroes. You can also use XP tokens gathered through previous successful combats to level up your existing heroes — so long as they're in your hand on that turn.

Yes, this being a deckbuilder, you're somewhat at the mercy of the cards you draw, though through careful use of various abilities that let you "discard" (remove temporarily) or "destroy" cards and manage your hand more effectively. Although there's a random element that can, at times, be frustrating when you don't quite get what you want, as with most deckbuilders it's about considering what you might need a little way down the road, and planning accordingly. It's all very well recruiting a deck full of "Strong" heroes (massive Physical damage, may only level up after combat instead of in the village) but as soon as a monster that requires you to twat it with Magical damage at least once shows up, you're buggered if you haven't allowed for that eventuality.

The monsters all have interesting abilities. Some force you to destroy cards in your hand before you can confront them, some provide benefits after you've killed them — you add them to your deck as trophies rather than keeping them separately as in Ascension — and one particular category, known as Ultraterrestrials, all have an infuriating special ability where if your total damage exceeds — or, in some cases, is not exactly — a particular value, then you simply can't kill them, even if you would have otherwise obliterated them off the face of the planet. This makes for more interesting strategies than simply acquiring as much power as you possibly can — it's worth your time to gather some abilities that will let you reduce the amount of damage you inflict, too.

Anyway, I played a solo game and lost to the game. It was reasonably close, though — I think it was 54-46 in favour of the game, if I remember rightly — which isn't bad for a first attempt. I'd be interested to see how the dynamic changes with more than one player, so hopefully I'll have a chance to get it to the table at some point in the near future.

1473: Ruined

Oh, EA. Why. Why. Why. Why.

I am, of course, talking about the new iOS version of Bullfrog's classic Dungeon Keeper, which was released today and is, of course, utter bobbins.

Why? Because it's a free-to-play mobile game.

And yes, I think we've reached the stage where it pretty much is reasonable to brand free-to-play mobile games a universally bad thing, because the fucking awful ones far outnumber the very, very few good ones. In fact, I can't think of any good free-to-play mobile games offhand, whereas on PC I can name plenty.

Dungeon Keeper does every offensive thing it's possible for a shitty free-to-play mobile thing to do. It has wait timers, it has premium currency, it has the ability to purchase resources and other things rather than collecting them yourself (by, you know, playing the game) and worse than all the monetisation crap is the fact that they've taken a game that was originally an interesting, fun and original idea and made it into something utterly predictable and boring.

Dungeon Keeper is clearly aiming to ride the coat-tails of popular "midcore" strategy games such as Clash of Clans but this isn't a particularly good thing, either; Clash of Clans is an unashamedly pay-to-win title whose "top players" ride high in the leaderboards for no other reason than the fact they have paid more money into the game. Thousands of dollars, in many cases.

This is the second time EA has trawled Bullfrog's back catalogue to "re-imagine" them for iOS — the first being Theme Park — and it's the second time it's proven to be a complete insult to the memory of a great game. The people behind this monstrosity should be disgusted with themselves — as profitable as free-to-play games are and as much sense as they make from a business perspective, there's no getting away from the fact that the games themselves are complete shit, being devoid of any real depth and compromising good game design in the name of being more exploitative .

Stop it, EA. The people you're hoping to court with these games' names are the people you're pissing off the most.

1472: New Friends

After Lara died, Lucy rat was very lonely. She seemed reasonably all right for a few days, but took a turn for the worse over the next couple. She'd spend most of the day hiding in her box and not being very sociable — she'd come out for a bit if you made a fuss of her, but before long she'd go back into hiding.

It's strange and fascinating to see, in a morbid sort of way. Watch an animal who is suddenly left all alone after having become accustomed to the company of another, and it's very clear that they do "feel" things — whether that's true "emotions" as we know them or simply more of a survival instinct "oh shit, I'm not as safe as I was before" isn't entirely clear, but they definitely feel something.

And it was heartbreaking to see in Lucy rat's case. She was normally such an energetic, silly little thing, so to see her so lethargic and unenthusiastic about everything was difficult to deal with. And so, after confirming via a bit of online research that yes, rats really do prefer to live with others of their own kind, we went to the pet store and picked up a couple of young playmates for Lucy. (We got two because, practically speaking, Lucy is getting older, too, and we didn't want a new playmate to be left in the same situation when Lucy does eventually leave us.)

They're a lot younger than her — they're literally half her size — but so far they appear to have been getting on well with one another. One in particular has been following Lucy around, snuggling up with her in the little hideaway and generally being very friendly. The other doesn't appear to object to the presence of either Lucy or her young friend — whom she previously lived with in the pet store, so was at least accustomed to the presence of — but is still very shy, preferring to sit very still in the corner and hope no-one notices her.

The two of them are very distinct both from one another and from Lara and Lucy. Lucy is all white with a few light grey splotches here and there, while Lara was mostly white with a dark grey head and grey patterning on her back. Socks, as one of the newcomers has been christened, is all dark grey except for her belly, which has a white stripe down it. Clover, as the other one has become known, has more of a splotchy pattern all over her, plus a noticeably more fluffy, slightly messy-looking coat.

It's very early days for us to get to know them yet, but they're very cute and Lucy seemed immediately happier as soon as she had some company. It's always a slightly nailbiting moment when you introduce new rats to one another, especially when one has been living somewhere for a while. We had the same moment after Willow died and we got Lucy to keep Lara company — Lucy spent her first few days hiding in the corner and, on one memorably terrifying occasion, even decided to "play dead" worryingly convincingly for a while. Before long, though, the two of them at least appeared to be friends with one another, even if Lucy was always a cheeky little shit towards Lara.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the three of them get along with one another, and I'm sure there will be further updates as they start to come out of their shells a bit.

1471: Netrunning, Again

It was supposed to be one of our regular gaming evenings tonight, but two of the usual five participants were unable to make it, so the remaining three of us decided to try something a little different — concentrate on a single, two-player game and really get a feel for it.

The game was Android: Netrunner, which I talked about a short while back, and after tonight I feel I have a stronger grasp for the "feel" of the game and how it works.

In particular, what I've found interesting is quite how different the various factions play. The recommended starter decks — Jinteki for the Corporation player, Shapers for the Runner player — include an interesting balance of abilities, but can often see a game ending somewhat quickly. The Jinteki deck in particular is rammed with traps to set for the Runner player, most of which do various types of "damage" to him, causing him to discard cards and lose the game completely if he has to discard more cards than he has in his hand.

A key part of the Jinteki deck strategy appears to be making good use of these traps. One, known as Project Junebug, is particularly deadly in that it can be quite well "disguised" as one of the point-scoring Agenda cards by spending credits to "advance" it, then unleashed when an unsuspecting Runner hacks into it, only to discover an ambush waiting for him that does more damage than your maximum possible hand size early in the game. I won a game in this way this evening; my friend Tim likewise won one against my other friend Sam by making use of a similar strategy, though this time by simply setting two identical traps, luring Sam into the belief that one was an Agenda and the other was not, but actually revealing after the fact that both were deadly Project Junebug cards. Nasty.

Part of what is clearly the most interesting thing about Netrunner came out in our game this evening: it's as much about reading your opponent's psychology as it is about playing the optimum cards. In my game against Sam, for example, I left an Agenda card completely unguarded for a significant part of the game, building up defences in front of my other cards — including Project Junebug, which I then proceeded to "advance" in order to further cement the appearance that it was, in fact, an Agenda. By the time I laid some defenses in front of the previously unprotected Agenda and started to advance it, Sam was firmly of the belief that the more well-guarded card was the more valuable one — and from there, I was able to eliminate him easily.

Conversely, when Sam and Tim played one another, they tried different decks. Tim tried the Criminals Runner deck, while Sam went for the Haas-Bioroid corporation. It was quite hard to get a feel for how the Criminals deck played — it appeared to be quite focused on attaining a decent amount of wealth, which can subsequently be spent to enhance your capabilities during a "run" — but the Haas-Bioroid deck was a clear contrast from Jinteki. While Jinteki is all about bluffing and setting traps, Haas-Bioroid is all about setting up impenetrable defenses that are quite difficult for the Runner to get through. Conversely, a Criminals vs Haas-Bioroid match went on for significantly longer than the Shaper vs Jinteki matches we had previously tried — and rather than the games ending quite quickly, this matchup resulted in a much more protracted battle in which either side could have feasibly won.

I'm yet to delve into the more complicated side of building your own deck to play the game with, but even the differences between these starter decks are fascinating. I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to play the game again and see how differently the other factions play to one another.