It’s a rainy Monday morning. Ten years ago, it would have been the perfect setting to do nothing while waiting for class suspension. I kind of envy my daughter being on vacation and having the day to fiddle and play games on her phone. I was facing my computer, contemplating my next article when I remembered that it was Memorial Day. I should take the day off but as a mom working from home, what’s the difference between a holiday and a regular working day? It’s not like I could go outside to destress, then an idea came to mind. It turned out, I didn’t have to envy my daughter at all.
What’s the best source of entertainment within the confines of our home? If you answered mobile and computer gaming, you’re absolutely right! It was in college when I got really hooked on gaming. Sure, consoles back in my younger days Like Play Station 1, SEGA Genesis, and NES were awesome, but you had to buy each CD or cartridge to play the game, which is way too expensive for us back in the days.
For someone who’s simply looking for entertainment, the lengthy games consoles offered were more of a task. That’s probably the reason women like competitive computer games more than console RPGs. Beating my friends in Counter-Strike was more fulfilling than defeating Sepiroth in Final Fantasy.
It’s the most fun to play with friends but sometimes, it couldn’t be helped that you had no one to play with. Until a friend introduced me to y8.com. For someone who experienced the pain of collecting games on a console, you could imagine my astonishment when I saw the hundreds of games on this website in the early 2000s. That’s when I knew that mini-games are the best, simplest source of entertainment. I like a little strategic challenge so I particularly like defense games, like Bloons, PvZ, and Tetris. It’s genius to put all kinds of mini-games on a single website. Imagine being in quarantine and you only have like two family computer games.
Nowadays, I still play games on websites, and the most recent ones I discovered were cbc.ca/games which is full of puzzles like the very nostalgic Sokoban, and I also found nostalgic games on plays.org which I have been playing with their arcade Classics like Super Tetris for the past 2 weeks during my free times. I was able to work on my High Score and challenged my daughter, who thought that arranging falling blocks from the sky is a piece of cake to beat it.
While writing my blog, I literally just finished playing one of its base defense games, Defense Battle. Seeing those golems and orcs wave when you don’t have enough Zeus yet screams panic. For me, that’s really the kind of rush I need to reduce stress in this “new normal” holiday, that's why I now have Plays.org bookmarked on my browser.
Gaming has really come a long way. Its accessibility is its greatest asset as people of all ages can enjoy it. Competitive mobile gaming is at its peak and many have gotten hooked into it but for some people like me who only wish to take a moment of entertainment in my free time, I will always find solitude in solo games. I can’t wait to have more free time this week once I finished some deadlines and I'll surely check other game categories from plays.org that I can set my new high score. For now, I’ll let my daughter struggle with those “simple” games. Well, I did tell her those were simple, I didn’t say those games were easy.
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