Fast Foursome

Four Epic games that didn't manage to hold my attention for very long.

Wild Card Football

This is all about American Football (not soccer) and presents well with some nice music and cool cartoony but stylized characters (because its football with super powers!), and obviously was designed with head to head play in mind. The downsides for me are that there are a LOT of controls. It doesn't help that I don't really know football either.

Super Crazy Rhythm Castle

This party game (for up to four) is basically guitar hero with side tasks to annoy you while you do it. Some cool songs in here though but man is the villain really annoying in that he talks way too much. Probably a better experience if not solo. :P

TOEM

A very relaxed black and white game about casually wandering around and taking photos of things to earn enough stamps to buy a train ticket on to the next zone to do it all again. There is some humor in the odd ball characters that give you your tasks but some of the targets are quite annoying to find.

Rugrats

Easily the worst of this set that seems to be relying on the nostalgia factor from the TV show. Yes you get to play as the titular rugrats to collect... things through very simple levels. The silly theme and lack of tutorial doesn't do it any favors.

Peggle Deluxe

I know this is an old game from Popcap, but I only just recently tried it out since it was free in the Origin game launcher. At its core it is a version of pinball with a slew of cute critters that help you get past all 55 levels to reach Peggle Mastery and for some reason this simple, casual and kid friendly game is insanely addictive.

Waaaaay too addictive...!

There are 75 challenges afterwards to reach grandmaster rank (of which I've done 48, they're getting tough!) so it's not like you will run out of things to do too quickly. If you're looking for an in betweener game or diversion then you might want to give Peggle a look. I give it four balls out of five, just from its addictiveness! >.<

The Fifteen Minute Quest

Fifteen minutes is the optimal amount of time for an MMO quest or activity. This is one of the guidelines to Cryptic's Neverwinter Foundry, and while I initially scoffed at such a low number I am now seeing just how right they are especially when comparing it to other online games. Casual gamers play in small chunks of time, and in that chunk they have to be able to do something they feel is rewarding, or at least get one step closer to some goal.

The main problem stems from the fact that there is no individual "save" feature in MMOs, and really - I don't know how you'd implement one to begin with. A solo game you can usually start and stop at your leisure, just like table top games - and more importantly you can continue where you left off when you decide to resume (though that would be tricky with more complicated setups like Arkham Horror or a Warhammer 40k skirmish unless you left the table as is).

In comparison, it really "burns" when you undertake something that takes so long then come up empty: Failing at the last boss of a long dungeon run, or losing connection in GW2's SAB Tribulation mode, or being defeated by Tequatl (I imagine. Haven't bothered waiting to fight him). Each of those have to be restarted from scratch if you want to try again and for someone time poor, that would be extra annoying - especially if there were alternative shorter activities they could have done instead.

Quitting Time! Guess we'll just have to restart this from scratch tomorrow.

I imagine that's the main problem with my first "spacious" quest. It starts in a tavern, you can talk to everyone (though you don't have to), there's a little bit of puzzle solving and a fair bit of exploration before any combat even begins. People look at the average time of one hour and simply skip it for a faster run through something (or a few "somethings") else. Well, I've learned my lesson. My second foundry quest is coming together nicely and is going to be more "condensed" than I originally planned and hopefully will only run to the 15-20 minute mark. The story will still be there, but there'll be less fluff. Should be interesting to see how well it does in comparison.

If you play Neverwinter Online and want to try my first foundry quest (despite the length) it is:

One Step to Darkness [NW-DNJC9SK7A] 

You'll probably need to use the short-code (NW-DNJC9SK7A) without the brackets in a few of the tabs before you can find it. I always appreciate more play throughs and feedback!