I have good news or bad news, depending on what you have going on for the weekend.
There’s a new edition of Bejeweled out. You can either play it online like me (unlimited time, but fewer cool features) or download it for free (like Lloyd) and play for an hour with advanced features like instant replay. We have wasted our Friday evening on this. Yay!
If you haven’t played, it’s a game from PopCap where you have to connect three matching jewels to make them disappear. It’s sort of like a sparkly Tetris in reverse.
The new version has three new styles of the game, plus a few more moves that I don’t quite grasp. The only one I could reliably get was the flaming jewel, which sounds like a cocktail. Apparently PopCap also was able to snare Satan to do the voice-overs. It’s a little disconcerting having a demon bossing us around all night – “Go!” – or alternately praising us in a low, rumbling-from-the-depths-of-Hades baritone – “Excellent” “Good” – and telling us when to move on – “Level Complete”. (You really have to say it like a Dark One to get the whole picture.)
By the way – I’m terrible at it, but I love it anyway!
(Warning, it will take a while to find the free versions. As Lloyd says, “They give you thirty chances to buy it before they let you play it free online.”)