Super Mario Brothers Original 8 Bit

From the website

"Full Screen Mario is a fully HTML5 remake of the original Super Mario Brothers. You can play the original levels, play through some of literally millions of possible random maps, or create your own using the level editor. This whole project is open source and free"

While I am currently a non gamer that wasn't always strictly the case. This game holds copious amounts of nostalgia for me from playing it as a kid. Then digital games were not as prolific as they are today. Games and games consoles were quite expensive at the time as we weren't in the Euro, they were imported and in the mid eighties to mid nineties we were economically in a different place. My interest in gameing growing up consisted of playing games on the Atari 800  my uncle had then the Atari 1600 and later owning and playing games on the Commodor 64. I remember playing the original 'Mario Bros' on the original Nintendo, I'm not sure if it was one my friend owned or it was one we rented from the local Video (VHS) Store. As the years progressed and the bit count in consoles increased I got a Super Nintendo with which I used to play 'Street Fighter'. My friend had a Sega Mega Drive with a few games that I can't now really recall.  

While this is not exactly the same without the control pad, once I became familiar with the keyboard controls I remembered how it was Mario's control system that made the game both frustrating and addictive. It's just so hard to tell if you have enough speed or height to make that jump and usually you don't. Playing this reminded me of how my heart used to thump when I would make any progress, knowing that the lack of understanding of the controls would lead to my inevitable demise. The graphics are uber cute in their original 8 Bit form and hold up really well as does the soundtrack. All in all I really enjoyed the hour and a half I spent playing this. I would avoid it your in the office, it could become a productivity sink hole.  

Dixit

As a non gamer I found Dixit to be visually playful and good fun. Like most games you could become competitive as it is in essence a race, but the novelty of this game is its reliance upon the participants individual levels of creativity and story telling. The more random and obscure your story relating to the card the other players must match is probably this games greatest achievement, it is in this space that lies the fun.
The more ambiguous  and nuanced you are in telling your story, the less likely you are to entice another player to bet on your card. The more accurate you are, the chances of the other players guessing your card increase which looses you points. It's a balancing act, that as you move through the game will become more refined. If none of the players or all of them picks the storytellers picture, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and all the players that bet on the storytellers card score 3. It is as one of the players described when I played, the 'Salvador Dhali' of board games with surrealist themed visuals with sometimes just as surreal user generated narratives. An example of a story I used was 'Electricity Supply Board' which had everything and nothing to do with the card I had selected, but also injected enough of a 'WTF moment' into the game, to give the players an acute dose of the LOLz.
Dixit would make an great after dinner party game when you get a handle on the rules, which make sense after a dry run. It's not too serious but is rewarding on two fronts, creatively and competitively both in terms of racing to the finish but also who can be more creative, humorous, faster with their narratives than other players. If you wanted to grease the wheels a little you could add some wine, it'll to give the creativity levels a shot in the arm. According to the sales assistant in the shop a game of Dixit is a thing of beauty when surrounded by a group of child players who's imaginations don't have the restrictions that limit adult players in their story telling. If a grown up is brave enough to play with a group of children they're usually beaten and beaten bad.