Travian: a browser game: go play, now.

A friend introduced me to this game a week ago, it took me until 2 days ago to sign up and start playing and I am HOOKED!

Its very similar to the PC and Mac Caesar series: You begin your game life as a person running a small village, You have to build resources, and earn more. As you do this, you get rewards in the form of more resources. You start off with 20 gold, and can earn more by referring people to the game (or buying it via PayPal, but I don’t want to do that yet): my link follows this post. I haven’t yet spent any gold because people seem to just keep coming to my village to work. They seem happy enough. The first 20 gold though needs to be spent at some point, just havent worked out when.

If you sign up and start playing (and its something you dont have to do all day long. each task takes time, some things take way long… and the game goes on without you) here are a couple of hints.

1) Do the tutorial: You’ll find a person in full regalia on the right of your screen, he’s your guide, and he will send you on quests which get you more resources and capacities
2) Don’t try to jump ahead of him, you’ll run out of resources – I made that mistake.
3) I don’t know what 3 is, yet, I am only on day 2 of my game Smiley

Here’s my link: If you do sign up, be a Roman and in the southwest. That way we will all be within cooee (or a few hours) of each other. We might even be able to set up our own alliance to defend againts marauding Gauls and Teutons (or even greedy Romans)…

Travian

Have fun!

Oh yeah I am kyteflyer in game, and my Village is called Serenity

Tetris

I’ve been a fan of Tetris since having the original game on my Amiga 500, 15 years ago. It’s a clear winner in the longevity stakes.

I haven’t ever found a Tetris clone which quite had the same feel to it, although I have played many. since moving to the Mac, I haven’t bothered. Until today, that is. I went to Tetris.com and discovered Tetris Zone. It only gives 10 minutes of gameplay in the trial version but its enough. I bought it right away.

Its available for both Mac and Windows (and is Vista compatible). Theres an online ranking system, your scores are automatically stored.

Min Specs PC:
* Windows 2000/XP/Vista
* 512MB RAM
* 64MB Video Card
* 65MB Disk Space

Min Specs OSX:
* Intel or PPC-based Mac (G3 or better)
* Mac OSX 10.3 or higher
* 256MB RAM
* 32MB Video Card
* 65MB Disk Space

AND, its only $US9.95. Excellent value.

[Edit] The music within the game is a combination of the old Tetris theme and a rockin’ version of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I suddenly found myself whistling along as I was playing. hrmmm.