I spent many years chasing the "corporate dream" before falling back to my original love - writing. Now a freelance writer and novelist, I spend my days plotting fictional lives with my keyboard and writing for online publications. If you would like to have your business featured in an article, have a question or comment, or simply want to say hello, please feel free to contact me at Author@KawaiiTimes.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
What I like about Sneaky Cards is you get to leave cards all over the world. You get to sneak cards to people with pranks, gifts, and activities. Every time we sneak a card in, I say we “trick” the card in.
The most hilarious cards are: Lay in a public space until someone checks on you. Find someone wearing the last item on the list. Finally, give someone extra tips along with this card.
I gave it 4 stars because sometimes it’s hard to find people to give the cards to.
What I don’t like about it: sometimes it’s hard to find people to take the cards and play with you.
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Proper railroad layouts need to grow, even if it is just expanding the coverage of railroad lines, especially the Class 1 railroads currently operating in the continental United States. There are seven Class 1 RR lines in operation today:
1 BNSF Burlington Northern Santa Fe
2 UP Union Pacific
3 CSX Chesapeake Seaboard
4 NS Norfolk Southern
5 CN Canadian National
6 CP Canadian Pacific
7 KCS Kansas City Southern
I have always been a fan of Union Pacific. One of my earliest Lionel LionChief sets was the Union Pacific Scout Hill RS-3 diesel locomotive. I have quite a few AC Burlington Northern engines and we have a BNSF Lionchief w/Bluetooth in the family.
I added the Lionel Lionchief Plus with Bluetooth Norfolk Southern GP38-2 diesel road switcher. This engine has a working smoke unit, sounds, horn, bell, announcements and remote control couplers. This train represents Norfolk Southern’s commitment to “Training First Responders” and the actual train starting operating on the East Coast in 2016.
I love this engine, so much so that I added two uni-body tank cars and a caboose, all in the first responder paint scheme.
This is a very cute set with lots of colors. The Corner Deli features a deli sandwich restaurant with outside dining, two miniature “deli sandwiches,” a cook minifig and a customer carrying her sandwich.
The actual structure is two stories tall and can be set up open with the interior exposed, or as a closed building. The first floor is either wood or “brownstone” while the second story is a very pleasant shade of blue/green. There is access to the roof via ladders and a ceiling hatch.
The roof has a TV antenna and a colorful bird sitting on it. There is an easy chair upstairs for the deli owner to relax after a long day making and selling sandwiches. I like the red and white canopy above the sandwich counter and flip-up window so sandwiches can be passed to customers outside. It even comes with a fire hydrant (and I will have to add the dog leaving his mark!).
I added this set to the LEGO City sets that I own to give my city more variety in terms of building designs. I really enjoyed building this set. LEGO Creator sets can be built three different ways and I see myself picking up more of these to enlarge the structure.
If you’d like to add the Corner Deli to your display, you can find it on Amazon by clicking here.
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Forager is a fun new PC game from indie publisher HopFrog. I played an early build of Forager when it was still free for download from HopFrog’s website, right after it was made a couple of years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it then as great little casual crafting game, but boy has it grown up for its full release on Steam.
Forager game trailer: Film credit HumbleBundle.com
Forager is a resource collecting, building and crafting game set in a semi-randomized world made up of small islands.
It has a top down viewpoint and all the resources, items, characters, buildings and enemies are beautifully animated 2D sprites with a pleasing and relaxing color palette.
Forager starts your character out on the central island with a basic pickaxe and backpack, as well as some trees, rocks and bushes to start harvesting for resources. Resources constantly re-spawn on all open areas of ground in the game. Additional islands are purchased for gold coins that you either collect in the world or make with technology and buildings.
As you unlock islands in Forager, you gain access to dungeons, puzzles and NPC quests. These add variety to the video game and give you something to do beyond collecting resources and building stuff.
There are 5 biomes in the world. They range from the snowy sheep filled Winter Biome in the north, to the demon infested Fire Biome in the south. Each land has its own unique resource spawns, enemies, and a dungeon. The only exception is the starting Grass Biome. Instead of a dungeon it houses the Museum.
Forager has a balanced, tiered equipment system. The system allows upgrades to the tools, equipment and weapons. The simple combat is fun and gets crazy near the end game when you’ve got a fully upgraded sword, equipment, and a mob of droids following you around. One downside is that at times there is so much going on it can be hard to keep track of.
Struggling to keep up with the activity in the game shows when it comes to resource production. When you have a ton of furnaces, factories, sewing stations and other production structures, the right side of your screen is a constant stream of information. As you stack your production on top of resource collection from mining rods, and your drones auto-killing everything, that active stream gets hard to read.
The rapidly changing stats make it difficult to tell when you’ve collected enough resources to complete your quest or Museum collection. The sound effects for collecting all of that stuff can get overwhelming, and even annoying, so I tend to turn the sound down while playing late in the game. I hope the developer will fix this later on by changing how resource collection notifies the player.
Forager game trailer: Film credit HumbleBundle.com
Completing the Museum collections are a great way to guide your technological rise. All of the items required eventually show up in the Marketplace given enough time.
You can earn upgrade orbs for your character to increase your damage, add more health, or immediately level up. Leveling up in Forager is how you advance your technology, as each level grants you a skill point that you can use to unlock new items, tools and resources.
The skill page is laid out in a grid formation. At level one, you only have access to unlocking the four center skills in the eight by eight grid. As you unlock each skill, all of the adjacent, undiscovered skills in the grid become available to unlock.
The randomness of island spawns and this versatile skill layout allow for some limited replayability, allowing you to rush for skills to build your economy in different ways during a playthrough.
I recommend Forager if you are looking for a fun and relaxing crafting and collecting experience. It’s adorable and throughout the game you unlock special art and comics from the creator that tells the story of Forager’s developer and shares part of HopFrog’s heart.
It’s clear Forager was a passion project born out of pure love and a need to share the designer’s creativity with the world. Although the endgame can be a little nuts and overwhelming, Forager is overall a fantastic indie video game title with fun achievements and puzzles to solve.
I’m happy to say I was able to complete all the achievements in one play-through with about twenty hours of game play. Forager is appropriate for younger gamers as well since it has no gore. Every monster and resource just explodes when you deplete its health.
Forager is well worth an inclusion in your gaming collection and you will get hours of enjoyment out of it. Happy foraging!
Want to get Forager for your favorite gamer? Gift them a Steam gift card, available from Amazon here.
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This is one of the coolest LEGO sets that I have ever purchased. Packed with new features and details not seen on any previous years’ releases.
The included fire truck has a cab ready for a driver and the new water cannon feature with swivel base and extendable arm. Squeezing the rubber bulb on the cannon causes the “water jet” to extend and knock out the flames.
It appears that the fire started in a garbage can and then spread to the giant burger above. The kit is equipped with “flames” above both the garbage can and the giant burger. There are four flames that are mounted on swivels above and behind the giant burger so they can be knocked down with the water cannon.
The set has a motorcycle for the other firefighter, and there is the burger bar chef who has the fire outside his business. Another “new for 2019” feature is the detailed fire axe with a red and silver axe head.
Another legit features of this set is the “sliding glass window” at the front of the burger bar. It opens and closes just like the ones uptown.
I purchased this set to add to the LEGO city that I am building for my model railroad Layout which will be done in O scale. The city will allow me to include some LEGO City trains in the mix, probably on their own layout wing.
If you’re interested in picking up the LEGO City Burger Bar Fire Rescue, you can find it on Amazon here.
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Limbo is a creepy black-and-grey platformer puzzle style game from Playdead. Although it’s a few years old, it’s still one of my favorite puzzle solving games, and I’ve played through it a couple of times. The thing I love about Limbo visually is its utter simplicity. The game is played through a series of atmospheric scenes that are dimly lit, and in shadow.
While games like Little Nightmares (see my review of this single player horror game here) depend heavily on lighting and color to guide your character along, Limbo takes visual simplicity even further by placing the puzzle solving on a 2D platform and removing all color from the game.
This quick side scroller relies on your ability to solve problems using physics and quick-thinking to survive. In my opinion, the minimalist design adds to the intrigue as you’re forced to get creative within the confines of the two-dimensional world.
If big horror titles and are too much for you, but you like a bit of creepiness in your video games, then Limbo might be the game for you. It’s beautiful atmosphere and simple adventure will keep you pushing through the trouble that lies ahead.
You can find Limbo for the Nintendo Switch on Amazon here.
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Little Nightmares is a platformer style puzzle solving game that Dad got me because I enjoyed the Limbo video game so thoroughly (you can see my review of Limbo here).
Unfortunately, when I first had it added to my Steam library, my ancient computer took a nosedive, and although it ran the game there was so much lag that I was having a hard time getting through the rooms and monsters. I played my first six hours of the game with the graphics turned as far down as possible, but still had such a problem with lag that I gave up. A person can only get caught and neck-snapped by chefs so many times.
Yes, I said neck snapped. Or suffocated, maybe. The
intensely dark art design in this game sparks the darkest images of your
imagination.
After I upgraded to a new Dell laptop, I gave Little
Nightmares another try. I’m glad I did. Little Nightmares was a great horror
style game for me. It isn’t overtly graphic, the game doesn’t depend on
jump-scares to get the “horror” designation, and the slow pace and dark ambiance
make the game pleasing to look at while you’re trying not to die.
I will admit, although I love puzzle games, I don’t like getting stumped to the point of frustration. There were a few points in the game where I simply couldn’t figure out what to do next, and rather than hit my head against the keyboard trying to figure it out, I referenced the Prima Games Little Nightmares Walkthrough and Guide.
The one thing I didn’t love was that the game wasn’t long enough, so I was glad that I had all the extra downloadable content to work through after Little Nightmares found its end. Adding The Depths, The Hideaway, and The Residence to my Steam library nearly doubled my playtime and kept me enthralled in the story of this delightfully creepy game.
Tarsier Studios took their storytelling a fresh direction by making the entire game without dialogue, relying on lighting, music and sound effects to move you through the plot. It’s clear that your character wants to escape the horrible child-farm she lives in, and it’s not difficult to piece together why, one scene at a time.
In fact, this immersive story style makes the game linger in the back of your mind long after you walk away from the screen, which is an emotional effect that I love coming from a cinematic video game.
As I mentioned before, my biggest complaint about the game is that I would have liked the core game to be longer. It took me about six hours to play through, and I’m not the most savvy gamer.
If you decide to try Little Nightmares yourself, make sure to grab the Secrets of the Maw Expansion Pass. Once you get involved in this story, you’re going to want it to last as long as possible.
I played Little Nightmares on my laptop through the Steam store. But you can find this game on just about all the current consoles here.
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Neave Blacktalon the Knight-Zephyros is an amazing Hero character for your Stormcast Eternal armies in games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar by Games Workshop.
Neave Blacktalon plays as a single model, and her abilities make her perfectly suited for hunting key enemy heroes. She’s a capable filler hero if you have enough points left over in a list. Her sculpt is looks nice with her dual axes, choice of two head sculpts, and bearskin cape.
I enjoyed putting this model together and painting it in the cannon Hammers of Sigmar paint scheme, which are the colors I have most of my Stormcast Eternals collection painted in.
Neave Blacktalon does one extra damage per attack if targeting an enemy hero with Lightning-fast Strikes. She also gets one extra attack with her Whirlwind Axes if she charges with the Nemesis ability. She can even run and shoot in the same turn with Tireless Hunters.
By far her best ability, Windrider, allows Neave Blacktalon to follow in the wake of any other Stormcast Eternal unit that uses Ride the Winds Aetheric, such as Vanguard-Palladors and the Lord-Aquilar. This gives her sudden bursts of speed across the battlefield.
When in combat, Neave Blacktalon gets two shooting attacks at a nine inch range with her Boltstorm Pistol. She hits and wounds on a three plus with one damage each.
She then gets a whopping seven attacks, hitting and wounding on a three plus with minus one rend and one damage each with her Whirlwind Axes.
If she is charging a hero, Neave Blacktalon gets EIGHT attacks doing TWO damage each. With the dice on my side, Neave has obliterated chaos wizards, a skaven warlord and even the mighty Slambo in a single round of combat. I even used her Windrider ability once in a game to follow my Lord-Aquilar all the way up the board, behind enemy lines, where the dynamic duo proceeded to annihilate every enemy supporting hero and a Skullcannon before the enemy general killed her.
Neave Blacktalon is a fantastic model with a beautiful sculpt and does well hunting enemy heroes on the battlefield. Neave deserves a place in your Stormcast Eternals armies collection for your games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar by Games Workshop. You can find her on Amazon right here.
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With Games Workshop’s release of the Warhammer
Age of Sigmar: Soul Wars starter set came a new chamber for the Stormcast
Eternals, the Sacrosanct Chamber. This
sect of the Stormcast Eternals focuses on magical weaponry, enhancements and
beefy spellcasting.
Sequitors are the first choice for your battleline units in games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Sequitors are the Liberator’s final form. Better in every way and currently undercosted in the 2018 Generals Handbook, they are a must have inclusion in your Stormcast Eternals, and specifically Sancrosanct Chamber lists.
The Sequitors Stormsmite Mauls and Stormsmite Greatmaces are solid weapons. Both hit and wound on a three plus. Sequitors shine when you take as many Stormsmite Greatmaces as you can, one in every three models, plus the Sequitor-Prime unit leader can take one as well.
For example, a unit of ten models can have four Stormsmite Greatmaces! To top that off, a hit roll of six with a Stormsmite Greatmace does D3 hits instead of one. This allows for some crazy extra attacks with good dice RNG (random number generation).
Sequitors can also take Tempest Blades instead of Stormsmite Mauls, granting them an three attacks instead of two, but they wound on a four plus instead of a three plus.
Sequitors have two wounds and get to reroll saves of one for any units carrying a Stormshield (sorry Greatmaces, but that’s the tradeoff), on top of their base save of a four plus. They also get an ability called Aetheric Channeling which allows you choose to channel aetheric power into their weapons or shields at the start of the combat phase.
If you choose to channel aetheric power into your shields, you get to re-roll ALL of your failed saves, not just the ones. If you choose weapons instead, you get to re-roll all failed hits. This ability stacks with the Evocator’s Empower Spell, which if successful allows the Sequitors to re-roll failed wound rolls. A minimum unit of Evocators is a must have inclusion in lists running Sequitors.
While I personally feel that Sequitors are a little overpowered as an automatic inclusion in games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, they are not impossible to deal with. They can be hammered down, or at least weakened with shooting attacks. This gives them better balance against armies with lots of shooting, such as the Kharadron Overlords.
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition for PC is the penultimate version of this classic Dungeons and Dragons RPG adventure. Baldur’s Gate is a top-down isometric view RPG adventure where you roll a single character or an entire party of adventurers to experience the story of your unusual parentage and the mysterious circumstances the Sword Coast of Faerun currently finds itself in.
The world of Faerun is a vastly fleshed out world in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons and many characters from the books and pen and paper RPGs like the wizard Elminster and the drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden appear in Baldur’s Gate.
Baldur’s Gate is built on the 2nd Edition rules for Dungeons and Dragons and still remains one of my favorite RPG systems from when I was a kid. The game can be paused at any time by pressing Spacebar allowing you to micro manage your party’s actions during combat. And there are some intense encounters where you really need to.
Expect to fight all of the classic monsters from Dungeons and Dragons such as Kobolds, Gnolls, Trolls, Giants, Doppelgangers, Beholders, carrion crawlers, liches and many more. The updated spell effects and sounds really make your spell casters shine as almost all of the spell effects were updated with more depth and animations. And all of the classic D&D spells are available for your wizards, druids and clerics. Some of my favorites are Magic Missile, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Bless, and Monster Summoning and all look fantastic in Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition.
In 2016, Beamdog Inc had acquired permissions to re-release the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series as Enhanced Editions and boy did they deliver. Beamdog faithfully updated the entire game’s graphics, sounds on an updated version of the original Infinity Engine. They even added new NPC’s to find and add to your party and some new side quests.
Beamdog has preserved the look, feel, mechanics, and spirit of the game and I have bought almost all of the Enhanced Edition Games they have released on Steam.
My Love Affair With Baldur’s Gate started with the original release of the game in 1998. Baldur’s Gate was originally developed by Bioware and published by Interplay Entertainment. I put in hundreds of hours in the base game and its expansion Tales of the Sword coast during high school and later in college.
Since that time I’ve done at least 10 full playthroughs with different main characters, including an evil character run that was just as memorable as any of my others.
If you are a fan of pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder, and you want to play one of the best RPGs ever made on PC, then Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is the place to start.
I highly recommend you check it out for yourself along with the other games from that series. Beamdog currently has released Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II. They are all amazing and Beamdog has even released a brand new expansion for Baldur’s Gate called Siege of Dragonspear that has never been seen before. That’s right, they made a full game expansion for a title that is now over 20 years old.
That is the kind of dedication to an intellectual property that I wish more developers had these days and it shines through every bit of work they did on enhancing Baldur’s Gate.
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Reviews from a family of gaming geeks. 