A long time ago in a land far away, a became much enamoured of a book titled Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Written by Douglas R. Hofstadter, the book explored the similarities between the three gentlemen through the mediums of “Zen Buddhism, math, fractals, logic, paradoxes, infinities, art, language, computer science, physics, music, intelligence, consciousness and unified theories”. Yeah, it was tough read; but it got me fired up about recursion, and the work of M.C. Escher in whose homeland I was residing at the time. His impossible geometry was intriguing:
So I was very happy to find a new iPad game which no doubt Mr. Escher would have enjoyed (or sued) had he still been with us. It’s a graphical puzzle with very obscure, and completely irrelevant, storyline; something to do with helping a princess called Ida. You provide assistance by moving her around, and moving parts of buildings around with Escher-like consequences which are often surprising.
There are ten sets of puzzles and none of them are particularly difficult; just tricky enough to give you a twinge of satisfaction when you crack one. The real pleasure comes from the experience of play, with both the graphics and the sound being more art than game. You will probably spend no more than two, deeply enjoyable, hours finishing it; up to you whether you think it is worth $3.99. I did, but I am weird.
The game is called Monument Valley and it’s available for iPad and iPhone (most gorgeous on the iPad). It may be available on those Android devices too, I really don’t know or care.
Here are some screenshots; it’s a very pretty puzzle:
Comments 🔗
2014-05-17| Clive saysHang on - did we abandon 2048 already?
Darn, and I was just get half-decent with that, too.
Well, half-decent might be a relative term. My definition of half-decent was I got to the 2048 tile and a score of 29,380 - and I have the screen scrape to prove it… I thought that was pretty good until I saw “top gamer scores” in the billions: either these guys are outright cheats, or they need to get out and get a life…
2014-05-17| Clive saysWayyyy OT - sorry guys - but did you see the piece on 43rumours.com about Olympus developing a tracking AF solution? Evidently they’ve submitted a patent for it… Link here for the interested:-
http://www.43rumors.com/olympus-black-magic-patent-af-system-that-predicts-object-moving-directions/
No real clue as to whether this will be a firmware mod for an existing camera, or whether it will take new hardware to achieve. Given the typical camera company revenue mod, I’m inclined to suspect the latter [although, having said that, the most recent mod for my Canon 7D made a massive improvement to the camera].
If they deliver, one suspects that Spike may yet be tempted back into his polo photography… especially if the 40-150mm lens proves to be a good’un.
2014-05-18| Spike saysI played it a LOT. Got to 4096 and a high score of 51,444. Enough for now.
2014-05-18| Spike saysI reckon the E-M1 is enough for casual polo shots; just waiting for the 40-150….