Ok, so, my “normal” life has been affected by this neverending tale of tropical depressions, level 99 storms, and days and days of opportunistic hails of rain…
Out-doors activities are all canceled…
So I say: In-Doors Activities!
Here’s a self-compiled list of nice and entertaining stuff to do while the world’s sewer system colapses.
Tool-less, space and people demanding activities:
1. Hide and seek, I bet you saw this one coming (VERY space demanding).
2. Obstacle racing, I bet you didn’t see this one coming… Your house has an integrated racetrack… you just have to find the “safe” way to go with the flow.
3. Kick the can, yep, in-doors is a whole different challenge.
Generally, any game you can play with the least degree of “safety measures”.
Hands, pen, paper, glue, scissors, scotch tape, etc. activities:
1. Tic, Tac, Toe. Yeah… classics are classics…
2. Chopsticks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopsticks_(hand_game)
3. Thumb war.
4. Rock, paper, sissors. Cheap, I know.
5. Chess. I know you might think about needing a chess board, and pieces… but… then… where is your imagination and your creativity. you can always draw a chess board, and you can always cut out some paper pieces to names them or draw the shapes of the real pieces.
6. Checkers.
7. Mancala.
8. Backgammon. (mancala on steroids… that’s my opinion…)
9. Reversi.
10. Arm wrestling.
11. Origami. This is surely the most productive time-wasting activity…
12. Papercrafting, ever dreamed to make awesome stuff? Papercraft your dream… it’s fun and entertaining.
13. Paper plane folding …and flying. My fave.
I got brain damage from recalling so much alternatives already… But there’s many more.
Any boardgames you may have are definitely a choice at times like this.
Computer games:
I’d be bored to death without this section.
1. “Spring Project”. Real Time Strategy meets freedom, of speech, of price, and of choice.
As many people seem to get lost at trying to understand how to play this “game”, I’ll try to explain it as best as I can:
“Spring” is an engine, what you download when you download “spring” is like, the tools needed to play a certain game.
“mods” are the rulesets for a game, and you need this if you intend to play a game with “spring”.
“maps” are like the gameboards for a game, though in a much looser context, but you still need one to play a game in any “mod” with “spring”.
Now, as for the aquiring of such things I will put a list of things needed to download by order, and you’ll se by yourselves that this ain’t rocket science:
First, “spring”, download and install before proceeding with any more downloads: http://sourceforge.net/projects/springrts/files/springrts/spring-0.81.2.1/spring_0.81.2.1.exe/download
Secondly, download a “mod”: http://dé.su/EEv46.sd7 (Please account that this “mod” is only my humble suggestion, you could try to skip this and open “Springdownloader” located in your spring installation folder, and then moving to the download tab, and then double clicking the latest version of any of the mods that draws your attention)
Third but not least, download a “map”: http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2579 (Once again, this map is only a suggestion, it’s not the only map available, nor is it an example of what all maps look like)
This should set you up for a nice singleplayer or lobby game.
2. Tremulous.
This game is my favorite mix between First Person Shooters and Real Time Strategy.
You build and you fight, this is a must see to understand. Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tremulous/files/tremulous/1.1/tremulous-1.1.0-installer.exe/download
3. Americas Army 3. Supposing you have the bandwidth and the hardware requirements… WHY AREN’T YOU PLAYING AA3?
This is one of the best free First Person Shooters out there.
Here’s the download page, I’m using deploy version but I’ll let you choose between Steam or Deploy download options: http://www.americasarmy.com/downloads/
4. Warzone 2010. This is a very entertaining RTS that combines tons of macromanaging features, with the ability to micromanage your units to design depth, mixed up with a tech tree of hundreds of technologies.
5. Battle for Wesnoth. If you don’t like or you are tired of RTS or FPS, and you prefer to think well all your moves: http://wesnoth.org/
6. Last, but not least in this small list: Sauerbraten. Sauerbraten combines Fast Paced, First Person Shooter action with Cooperative Map Editing, which makes it a very entertaining game, open for the exploration and expression of your creativity and architectural skills.
Download: http://cubeengine.com/files.php4
This In-Doors activities is far from complete. There’s lots more stuff you can try out at your home, you just need a bit of imagination, and lots of good intentions, to find something fun to do in a rainy day.