WeeKee Today - technology and board games lover

June 7, 2009

Board Game Review - Chicken Cha Cha Cha

This a game review of a pretty simple but interesting board game called Chicken Cha Cha Cha. It isn't a game with deep game mechanics or strategy but if you looking for filler game, this game is a pretty good choice with its fun theme and simple gameplay.

Overview

Ready for some cha cha cha?

Chicken Cha Cha Cha is a game for up to 4 players. It is basically a memory game but the designer, Klaus Zoch has design a really fun theme base on this simple concept. Each player has a chicken with a feather. Players will race their chickens in a track, trying to overtake their opponents' chicken and steal their feathers. The first player to steal all the feathers will be the winner!

Game Components

The main game componets are of course the 4 wooden chickens and I like these wooden game pieces. They just have a timeless feel to it.

The rest of the components include oval pieces with matching hexagaonal pieces of different pictures. The artwork is simple but vibrant which really goes well with the theme.

Game Play

This game is a simple memory game. A track is formed using the oval shape pieces and each player chicken are placed on it at roughly the same distance apart.

The chickens will race around this track.

To race your chicken around the track, you need find the hexagonal piece that matches the picture shown in the step in front of you.

If you manage to find the matching picture, your chicken will get to move one step forward and you get another chance to open a hexagonal piece. So as long as you can find the matching pictures, you get to keep moving your chicken and this is where put your memory skills to the test.

If you are fast enough, you (the green chicken in this case) can catch up to other players' chicken. This is where the fun part begin.

If you open the matching picture, you get to leap past your opponent's chicken...

and steal its feathers. However players can always take their revenge and steal back the feathers by overtaking each other. This ritual of lossing your feathers and stealing other chicken's feathers will continue until the winning chicken emerges with all the feathers on its back.

Game Theme

The theme is where I think the game really shines. Although the game play is simple and many would have played similar memory game, the theme of having chicken racing around the track and stealing each other feathers is a fun and interesting one.

Conclusion

On the first look, Chicken Cha Cha Cha would seem like a game just for kids but if you give it a try you could see that it is a pretty enjoyable filler for all. The game is simple but the racing theme and stealing of the feathers can make the gameplay really enjoyable.

The pace of the game can also get pretty intense as players try to gain the lead after stealing the feathers while the trailing player try to catch up. Since the stealer reveals the path ahead, it is easy for the trailing player to catch up. This helps to level the game and makes it more enjoyable for all players.

Chicken Cha Cha Cha is not a deep strategy game for most Eurogame lovers but if you are looking a simple filler game with a fun theme to start off your gaming session, do give this game a try!

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Filed under // board gaming

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June 6, 2009

Yesterday Once More by Guitarist Sungha Jung

This kid is simply awesome! You can feel his passion simply by looking at him playing the guitar.

It brought back fond memories of my younger days in Outram Secondary school when all the students used to sing during the assembly sessions with a pink lyrics book in our hands.

Those were the days.

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June 6, 2009

Running

One nice thing about working around Raffles Place is that it has a nice running route along the river and the Esplanade area. There are regular biweekly running sessions organized by the Health Promotion Board and lead by volunteers from the the Team FatBird.You can choose to run 3, 5, 7 or 10km.

I joined my first running session last week. I have not run for a while and the first run I did was terrible. I barely covered 5km and was totally exhausted at the end of the run. The effects of laziness and late night suppers are clearly evident.

Nevertheless it is great fun running in groups and the running route is really enjoyable. Running with more people also helps to keep one motivated in trying to complete the whole distance.

I hope this is a great start. With more regular sessions in the next 6 months, hopefully I would be fit enough to do at least the Standard Chartered half marathon run in December.

So if you are in the area, do join the I-Run sessions running on Tuesday and Thursday and have a great workout!

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May 10, 2009

I am a PC!

My old desktop PC for more than 5 years died recently. It had been a really great PC meeting my needs by running XP only on 256 Mb ram. I decided to assemble another one.

It is amazing how technology has advanced over the past few years. Assembling your own PCs in the past can be pretty tricky. You need to get numerous components and sometimes the components conflict with each other.

The new motherboard that I got was really amazing. Other than the memory and the hard disk, it has most of the stuff embedded on it! 3D graphics, 5 channel sound card and even a network point can be found on the board.

Setting up the PC was really a breeze and the whole setup cost me only $350! The components include ASUS M2N68-VM Motherboard, AMD Athlon Dual Core X5200 CPU, 2 GB RAM, Hitachi 250 GB SATA 2 Harddisk and a pretty cool casing.

Trying getting 1 Gb of ram for a Mac and you understand what a good deal this is.

With that said, I really like the Mac user interface. So I setup Rocketdock on my PC. Not exactly the same but for low budget folks like me, it is really a fantastic hack. I spent quite a bit of work to get everything working but the end result was definitely worth it!

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May 7, 2009

Have you heard of Charlie the Unicorn?

One interesting thing about working with people from different cultures is that sometimes you get an interesting view on some of the media that they are exposed to. Over dinner, a Swiss colleague asked, "Have you watched Charlie the Unicorn? It was really funny!".

I did a check on the video on youtube and was really surprised that the clip has over 30 million views! Till now I still couldn't understand what the clip is all about though I got to admit that the way they call Charlie is pretty hilarious.

Why do you think it the clip managed to gather so much views? What makes it viral?

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Filed under // social media

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April 25, 2009

Facebook Song

A classmate share this video in class yesterday. Really funny!

If you are also addicted to Facebook, do remember there is life beyond online!

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April 20, 2009

Game Review on Scotland Yard

This is a game review of Scotland Yard, one of the oldest board games in the cafe. I got this game as a gift when I was in primary school back in 1988. So this game is almost 21 years old!

Overview

Scotland Yard is a very interesting deductive and cooperative game for up to 6 players. One player will play as Mr X the bad guy who is at a secret location on the map. The rest of the players will be detectives working together to deduce the location of Mr X.

Game Components

The components for the game are of pretty good quality and perhaps that explain why it survive the last 20 years. The game board depicting the map of London is beautifully illustrated. The player pieces are simple but functional.

Game Play

Scotland Yard has very interesting game play mechanics. It is a cooperative game that involves both deduction and strategy. Players acting as detectives will cooperate to beat one player acting as the villain. The game starts with detectives placed at various locations on the map.

Each player acting as a detective will have a number corresponding to a location on the map.

The player acting as a villian has a location as well but nobody know exactly where he is. For the detectives to win the game, they have to catch him at his current location.

Where the heck is Mr X?

To try to capture Mr X, detectives have to move to different locations on the map, hoping that they will land on the location of Mr X. To move around the city, detectives can take different modes of transport such as taxi, bus or train by using the tickets allocated to them.

Run out of tickets and you are stuck!

Different locations have different modes of transport available (indicated by color) and detectives can only travel one stop to another location using an available mode of transport. For example, the detective below can take a taxi and only travel from the current taxi stand to the next immediate taxi stand.

Only taxi are available at location 158 as represented by the yellow semi circle

Different mode of transport enable players to travel different distance as the stops may be further apart. Effective use of the transport system is the key to winning this game.

Trains allow you to travel further since the train stations (red marking) are further apart

Mr X, like the detectives, get to travel around the map too. Transport tickets used by the detectives are given to Mr X. As Mr X moves, the only clue that detectives get is the mode of transport that he uses.

There he is!

At various intervals, he will have to reveal his location. Using this location and mode of transport that he subsequently takes, detectives will have to deduce his location and land at his location.

Mr X is going to reveal himself soon!

Detectives have to catch him before the end of 24 rounds before he escapes. If that happens, the detectives have lots of explanation to do. "You mean that 5 detectives can't catch a single fugitive!?"

Theme

Scotland Yard has a great theme. Players engage one another trying to hunt down Mr X. There are lots of interactions as players strategize on how they plan to corner the villian.

One of the strategy is to spread out initially and close in once Mr X reveals himself

When Mr X reveal himself in the location and provide clue on his next mode of transport, it is really fun to try and deduce where he plans to go. Playing the villian is exciting as well as the player will have to try and shake off the detectives that are hot on his heels.

Conclusion

I think Scotland Yard is a real classic. The game mechanics are interesting and it is a pretty easy game to pick up. There are lots of interactions as well as excitement as detectives anticipate the revealing of the location of Mr X. There are many interesting strategies that both sides can use such as Mr X giving a glance at a particular location of the board to mislead detectives about his current location.

The only drawback of the game is that the game experience is heavily dependent on the players themselves. The player that acts as Mr X got to be good enough to give the detective team a good challenge. Similary the detective team has to be good enough to make the hunt exciting and rewarding. A off balance in either side can make the game experience less than ideal.

The experience of playing as a detective or Mr X is also very different. In the role of detective, the emphasis is more on coooperation and deduction while playing Mr X involves more of planning your movement so that you don't get trap into corners.

Scotland Yard is a great game with great game mechanics. Perhaps it is a bit old which is why most people would not have noticed it. That is a pity considering that Scotland Yard is the recipient of the 1983 Spiel des Jahres game of year award. If deduction and cooperation game is your cup of tea, you definitely do not want to give Scotland Yard a miss!

P.S On the side note, I think someone should come out with a Singapore version for this game considering we have a great theme for it....

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Filed under // board gaming

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April 1, 2009

Celebrating April Fools on the wrong day

I like April fools' day and enjoy reading all sort of fiction announcements like Google introducing the Google Chrome with 3D , etc. It is a fun day but the thing that irks me is that people don't celebrate it on the right day. This could be due to ignorance or simply the lack of appreciation on the tradition of April Fools' day.

The origin of April Fools' day was based on the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar over the Julian Calendar . Back then, the mark of spring is an important day because it marks the season of growth. By observing the alignment of the Earth with the Sun and growth cycle of the wheat seed, the start of spring is officially known to be on the 1st of March to all farmers.

However due to the confusion during the transition of the calendars, some farmers mark the break of spring on 1st of April instead and sow their seeds too late while other farmers are already enjoying the growth of their crops. Hence they were term as April fools. Since then, a month after the break of spring was marked as April Fools' Day to make fun of these farmers.

Since then the Earth's ecosystem had undergone drastic change. The change in the magnetic field had led to slower rotation of the Earth. Climate change and pollution caused by thousands lighting candles on earth hour resulted in the season of spring to start later on the 10th instead of the 1st.

To strictly observe the tradition of April's Fools Day, we should celebrate it on the 10th of April. I guess no one pays attention to understand great traditions anymore. Like everyone else I wish all a Happy April Fools' day today.

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March 30, 2009

I still don't get Earth Hour

I attended the 6th Social Media Breakfast event for the first time on Saturday evening. I like the event. It is always interesting to learn different perspectives from people with different areas of expertises.

One thing that I did not enjoy though was the WayangEarth Hour where lights were switch off to signify a vote to take care of Earth. Don't get me wrong, I am all for saving the earth, effective use of the world's resources and to fight climate change but is this constant showy approach the right way forward?

I have read about the hole in the sky, global warming, etc since I was in secondary school. After more than a decade later, we are still doing all these symbolic stuffs year after year such as releasing of balloons, organizing concerts, switching off lights for an hour and using candles which actually generate more CO2 then having the lights on. Is such symbolic act really educating users the right way?

For green to be effective, I think it should not be intrusive or inconvenient. Green technology should adapt to people lifestyle rather than believe that the majority of the people would go out of their way to be green. A simple example could be changing all your light bulbs to energy saving or LEDs type of lights. If everyone does that, even without making changes to our daily lifestyle, it could make a real significant impact to energy consumption.

It is time to focus more on action rather than trying to sensationalize the whole climate issue because at the end of the Earth Hour, how many people can really say that they have concrete plans on changes that they would made to be more environmental conscious?

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March 26, 2009

Infected with Mum's Addiction

There are many ways I waste my time. It is either twittering or facebooking. For this week, I am infected with Mum's addiction of watching HK drama serial. I wondered how many countless of nights that we stay till wee hours just to watch 溏心風暴. We finally put a stop to the addiction as we finished the last episode at 2.30 in the morning today.

It is a damn good drama series. Great cast, superb storyline, full of emotions and a good dose of battles between the good and evil doers. Of course not forgetting that Linda Cheung is simply gorgeous in this show!

Some of the songs in the show were really nice especially the song "My love will get you home" by Christine Glass.

No doubt I wasted lots of hours in this show but hey at least the time is spent on mum instead of Facebook.

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Filed under // life

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