Oh, Check My Flow

It all started so innocently enough.

PONG.

Two paddles.  A square ball.  Black and White.

And then came Asteroids and Space Invaders.  PAC Man and Frogger.  Tetris!  Super Nintendo and Super Mario.  I don’t even know or understand what is out there today . . . Guitar Hero?  Assassin’s Creed?  Halo?  Hello??? McFly!

Somewhere along the line, Bill Gates invented the computer and there was Solitaire.  And it was good.  And Hearts.  Even better.

Then, Al Gore invented the Internet.

So much technology.  So much programming.  So much time of my life wasted.  Curse you Angry Birds!

And while my true addiction still lies in playing MahJong on Facebook, I have recently discovered a new game to keep me from spending time with my family, or working and earning a living, or eating, or breathing, or blogging, or pretty much anything else.

FLOW.

The concept, like Angry Birds, is so simple, yet the game is somehow compelling.

A grid is displayed.  As you play and move up levels, the grid gets larger–5×5, 6×6, 7×7, 8×8, oh I think you get the picture, and more colored dots are added.  Is it politically correct to call them colored dots?

On this grid, the computer displays pairs of colored circles.  The human must then connect these colored circles (blue to blue, yellow to yellow, etc.) without crossing another other color and leaving no squares unfilled.  (No square left behind!) It’s like a color based Sudoku!  Actually, it’s eerily reminiscent of Twister where you have to connect the green circle with your right hand and the red circle with your left eyeball, except in Twister, you did get to cross other people, and if you were lucky, they were of the opposite sex and cute.  Or drunk.  Or both, which is even better.  (Okay, for some people, it didn’t even have to be the opposite sex, and I don’t want to imply that there might be something wrong with that since it’s politically impolite to offend ANYONE these days, and it appears I have seriously transgressed digressed here.)

Back to my FLOW.

My general requirements for a game these days is that it is FREE, easy to understand the rules, FREE, and doesn’t require me to play with any other human beings.  It’s not that I don’t like other people.  I really want to like people.  But most of them are just so damned stupid and ignorant, that I can’t possibly like them, let alone play a game with them.  Let’s face it, most people are alive because it’s illegal to kill them.  I really think that’s why some of the video games my kids play are so popular.  They get to kill people–without being thrown in jail or fried for it.  And I have digressed again.  Did I mention that the game has to be FREE?  OK–doesn’t have to be–I tried the FREE Angry Birds, and you just know that I ended up buying the full version like some crackhead purchasing his fix.  And even though there is no killing involved (even Angry Birds involves blowing things up with kamikaze birds) Flow fits these criteria well.

This is all my daughter’s fault.  She asked me to help her with a level while we were waiting for our food at a restaurant.  Five minutes later, I was hooked.  Does that make her a pusher?   There ought to be warnings on these games.  Support groups.

I’d discuss the game and strategy more, or maybe seek some professional help, but I really feel the need to go and play it right now.