Through your transdimensional socket connection, you now begin to interact with the desert world. The cute crayon graphics, the beautiful music by Helen Trevillion and the excellent writing build a very atmospheric world you don’t want to leave easily. I had to force myself to quit and write down some lines to communicate this to you, fellow reader! Oh, yes, and TSASSTOTHADB (as insiders call it) is also an adventure game which features one of my all time favourites: A well-filled bookcase. Seriously, you should play the game for the bookcase alone.

And you better do it quick! Those demanding parents are yawning harder and harder with every missed cue! Get Puck into the green light, get the girl back on stage, and, most importanly: Avoid crashes! It’s hard enough for the little sweeties to walk in their costumes, so if their paths cross…Are you family man enough to bring this mid summer tale to a sweet dream’s end?

To successfully mine the candy, you have to rotate the candy orb, so your candy mining projectiles will hit only the best and tastiest candy – but beware, don’t try to mine it all at once by hitting the core of the candy orb – horrible things will ensue!

Now, to keep you happily mining along, Gregory Weir has crafted a level mode in which you meet a good natured miner, a candy-hating duchess and, finally, a general who instructs you in the war for your nation’s most important natural resources: Candy.

Now, what makes the game special isn’t so very special at all anymore, but still special enough to mention: You have to interact with your past self. You are so alone that nobody but yourself can help you. The Company Of Myself. Braid showed us how possible that is, yes. It is nicely implemented, though, the dialog keeps you playing, and soon you will be stacking your current selves on top of your past selves that have faded away for the good cause.

Excuse my kid’s movie introduction, but since Chalk does not really have an introduction, I thought I could as well make one up. It is a game that takes place on a chalkboard, with a chalk-drawn main character walking through all kinds of chalky dangers – and you as the player are in control of the single chalk to change their fortune!

The indirect controls work very well and give the game a sort of “interactive drawing” feel. Things happen on the chalkboard, and you can change them if you react fast enough. The little lady with the red scarf always follows the sun, so if you drag the sun to some other place, she will follow. Cute!

And if that game is so chock-full of fast paced niceness and groovy guitar picking and friendly graphics, I can hardly resist. And if I am then challenged to show that I am the fastest that ever was on earth, I am going to be the first off the mark, believe me! RunMan: Race around The World by the two coolest kids on the block, Tom Sennett and Matt Thorson, challenged me to do so. In every way.

The file header reads “I will be the fastest!”. The helpful information in a convenient textfile reads

RUN! DON’T SLOW DOWN! DON’T HIT THINGS! POP THE BALLOOOOOOOOOOONS

The conclusion I draw: Sometimes, you don’t need to read Plato or Aristotle to progress in your personal pursuit of happiness. Sometimes you just have to RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN!