Engaging and Educating iPhone Games for Toddlers

They are tender like wet cement. And you as a parent can make any impression at this stage. The toddlers, by nature, like to play games and indulge in activities that keep them fascinated. Why not use this character to make them educated, alert and well-mannered? iPhone games can really help you in this way. They have high graphics and stunning sound ideal to engage toddlers and cleverly fulfill your wish.

The iPhone game developers are smart as they make games that not only entertain kids but also help grooming them. Let's look at some of the best genres you can download on your smartphone and can make your child smarter!

Educating Games
iPhone games for education is quite a popular genre. The toddlers can learn basic math such as identifying the number of objects, single digit addition and subtraction and so on. Education game application on iPhone is not just restricted to mathematics as game apps for learning English language, Science and Environment studies are also available and popular.

Manner Teaching Games
I had come across few apps on iPhone that teach toddlers about day-to-day manners. Right from getting up from the bed, and brushing the teeth, the toddler is asked to arrange the routine tasks in the game. Such apps typically help kids learning how to behave well and learn good things.

Mind Sharpening Games
This is one of the favorite genres among parents. The parents certainly want their kids to be sharp and skilled. Mind sharpening games include puzzles and practical problem solving. They enjoy this type of game as solving the problems successfully help them developing self-confidence.

Alerting Games
iPhone game developers also build games that require toddlers to be alert all time. As in picking up a popping egg from many holes or saving the car from suddenly coming objects, the kids develop a real eye-to-hand coordination. Experts do believe that such cognition helps them becoming alert in real world as well. The gesture based iPhone game applications truly help kids developing good coordination between the senses.

Musical Games
This genre of game for iPhone is probably for those who are wonder kids and born artists! Such games have piano, violin, guitar or any such musical instrument that the kids can play and learn musical notes. As they tap the keys, musical sound is produced that amaze them. In fact, parents can assist their babies and make them play musical games on iPhone. Babies like it more because such sound attracts them.

Gesture Based Games
This new genre of iPhone games has created a boom among the toddlers. The simple reason is 'motion'. Kids and toddlers love to move and with these games, they even get entertained. Many sports and alerting games for iPhone are based on gestures. For instance, driving a train that moves on a railway track that has ups and downs, straights and rounds. The challenge for toddler is to keep the train on the track and not let it derail. They have to move or rotate the iPhone according to the tracks and the tracks that does not remain straight.

With these and many other genres, iPhone app games for the little ones are really good. All you have to do is choose the right ones and download them on your smartphone.

You can find iPhone games for toddlers on the internet. If you are very specific, you can hire iPhone game developer from offshore iOS apps development company and can have it according to your need. You can think of some innovative iPhone game for your kid and contact programmer for developing it exclusively for you.

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Thunderstone and Thunderstone Advance, Board Game Review

Thunderstone is a deck-building game by Mike Elliott, published in 2009, one year after Dominion hit the market, creating a frenzy with the introduction of a hot combination of game mechanics: deck building and card drafting. In games using these mechanics, players choose cards from a common pool laid out on the table, and try to gradually built the best deck of cards with which they will acquire the most victory points. The theme of such games may differ but the main idea remains the same. With this review we will look at 2 games, the original Thunderstone released in 2009 and the new Thunderstone Advance, which is a new improved implementation of the original game.

Game Overview

In Thunderstone, you are the leader of a heroic party of adventurers arriving at Barrowsdale, near Grimhold Dungeon where the first Thunderstone, an artifact of evil power, is kept. You seek to find the Thunderstone but in order to do so, you have to battle powerful monsters that guard the dungeon. You must build a deck of cards, consisting of adventurers, weapons, magic spells, food and other items.

Before beginning the game, you have to setup 3 different kind of decks. Remember that in each game of Thunderstone you won't be using all cards available in the game but each time the cards you use will be different:

Dungeon deck: There are 8 different classes of monsters. You choose 3 or more classes at random, take all monsters belonging to these classes and shuffle them to form the dungeon deck. Shuffle the special Thunderstone card with the bottom 10 cards of the Dungeon deck. Now you are ready to populate the hall which is the area where you fight the monsters, placed next to the Dungeon deck. There are 3 ranks of monsters in the Hall Area. The card farthest from the Dungeon deck is rank 1 and the one closest is rank 3. These ranks are populated with monsters from the Dungeon deck. The rank of each monster, is associated with a specific amount of Light penalty, subtracted from the heroes attack power. This element of the game tries to simulate a real situation in a dungeon, where the farther you advance into it, the less light there is, inhibiting you to properly see the monsters, thus lowering the power of your attack. Each point of light penalty subtracts 2 points of power from your attack. Monsters placed in rank 1, give a light penalty of 1 (thus attack -2), monsters in rank 2 give 2 points of light penalty (thus attack -4) and those in rank 3 give 3 points of light penalty (thus attack -6).Village deck. The village deck consists of Heroes, Magic spells, weapons and various items. Those are chosen randomly each time you play, using randomizer cards, just as monster classes are chosen. However there are 4 basic card types that will always be present in the village: Militia, Torch, Iron Ration and Dagger. In each game you will choose 4 different Heroes and 8 different Village cards to populate the village along with Basic cards. All these cards populate the village. Each time you choose to visit the village as your action, you can buy one of them.Starting Deck. Each player is dealt 6 Militia (6 Regulars in Thunderstone Advance), 2 daggers (Longspears in Thunderstone Advance), 2 iron rations (Thunderstone Shards in Thunderstone Advance) and 2 torches. This is your starting deck which you will gradually grow, filling it with cards from the village and monsters you defeat. You shuffle your deck and place it face down in front of you. Draw the top 6 cards of your deck and you are ready for adventure.

On your turn, you can choose to do one of the following actions:

Visit the village: The cards you have in your hand, give you a certain amount of gold coins. You can use this gold to buy cards from the village as you see appropriate. In fact that's what you will mainly do in your first few turns, as you wil probably not be strong enough to attack monsters in the hall.Enter the dungeon: Each hero has an attack power, indicated on the card. The combined attack power of all the heroes in your hand is your total available power to defeat monsters. Moreover some cards, like the torch, give you light, thus reducing or even eliminating light penalties. If you are strong enough to defeat a monster in the Hall, taking into account light penalties, you can enter the dungeon, equip your heroes with weapons if available, cast spells and defeat a monster. Each monster, when defeated, awards you with a certain amount of victory points and some experience points which you can use to level up your heroes.Rest. By choosing this option, you can rest and may destroy one card from your hand. It goes to the destroyed cards pile, not to the discarded pile.

At the end of your turn, you discard all cards in your hand to the discard pile and draw six new cards. When your deck is depleted, shuffle all cards from the discarded pile to form your new draw pile.

The game ends when a player collects the Thunderstone (by defeating a monster in Rank 1 thus causing the Thunderstone to move to that open rank) or it enters Rank 1 because a monster wasn't defeated. Players count up victory points from cards they have collected throughout the game. The player with the most victory points is the winner.

In 2012, a new updated version of Thunderstone was released: Thunderstone Advance. The first set of the new version is called "Towers of Ruin". Cards from original Thunderstone and Thunderstone Advance can be mixed together. Here are the most important new features of Thunderstone Advance:

Changed terminology: Light penalty is now called Darkness. React is a new ability that enables players to act during other players turns. Raid is a new effect that occurs when monsters are first revealed in the Dungeon Hall.Thunderstone: The Thunderstone card has been replaced by the Thunderstone bearer. Now the game ends when a player defeats the Thunderstone bearer or he escapes the Dungeon Hall (reaches Rank 1).Game board: Thunderstone advance comes with a double-sided board that serves more than one purposes. The game board helps to organize cards better as there are slots on it to place monsters and village cards. Additionally it provides a more balanced setup, by determining a specific number of each card type to be used in the game. There are 4 slots for weapons, 3 slots for items and 3 slots for spells. During setup village randomizer cards will be revealed and matching stacks of village cards will be placed on the appropriate slot. If all slots of the revealed randomizer card type have been filled, then another randomizer card is revealed. The two sides of the game board provide for novice and advanced play. The novice side is called "wilderness side". darkness rules are easier and there are 4 slots for monsters in the Dungeon Hall. Advanced side is called "dungeon side" with classic darkness rules and 3 ranks.Monsters: Monsters now have levels. During setup, one monster group from each level (1,2 and 3) is chosen randomly to populate the Dungeon Hall. This way monsters have balanced power and weird setups e.g. of most monsters being overpowered are avoided.New action: Apart from visiting the village, the dungeon or resting now players have the option to prepare for their next round, by placing as many cards they like from their hand on top of their deck and discarding the rest.New card types: Familiars are new special cards that can be gained after defeating a monster. Each one of them has one or more different abilities that require a certain amount of XP points to be used. Each player can have only one familiar during the game, placed face up in front of him. Curses have replaced generic Disease cards.Better graphicsNew starting cards: Militia has been replaced with Regulars who are leveled up easier and when equipped with a Polearm, while in the Dungeon, you may draw a card. Iron Rations have been replaced with Thunderstone Shards and Daggers with Longspears.

First Impressions:

Upon opening the box of Thunderstone, you see a number of cards and some xp tokens. Artwork on the cards is beautiful and detailed. And then comes the difficult task of reading the rules. Although the rulebook is well written, there is so much information in it that one needs some time to absorb it and put it into use, especially if you never played a similar game, like Dominion. But even if you have, Thunderstone provides advanced mechanics along with extensive terminology and may at first discourage you from playing it. Of course things get a lot better if there is someone willing to explain the basics to you, this way taking away the burden to read all the 24-page manual.Thunderstone Advance makes a better first impression by providing a board (it's also a double-sided one), which helps you to easier get involved in the game and understand what's happening. There are slots drawn on the board for monsters in the Dungeon Hall as well as village cards and all seems better organized and gamer friendly. The two-sided board serves as a way for both novice and advanced players to enjoy the game experience. When you reach the point of understanding how the game works, gameplay is smooth and you will soon find yourself very engaged and captured by the theme, striving to find the right combinations of cards to build a working, and hopefully winning, deck!

Components:

The components of Thunderstone are only cards and some xp tokens. Cards have beautiful and carefully designed artwork. In Thunderstone Advance, things get even better. There is also a gameboard, which gives a sense of organisation and cards are redesigned with more variety in colors, even more detailed graphics and more clear card layout. (Thunderstone: 7/10, Thunderstone Advance: 8/10)

Gameplay:

Gameplay is interesting and gets you really involved. The game mechanics are well-thought, blending the theme with game actions and abilities. I think the idea of using the light / darkness element is a really brilliant one as is the ability to level-up your heroes with xp won from beating monsters in the Dungeon Hall. There are many more small details that enhance gameplay like dungeon effects and spoils, and all prove that gameplay has been designed very carefully. However, during setup, it is possible that weird combinations of village or monster cards will come up, making the game hard to beat, or somewhat uninteresting. Good news is that this problem has been eliminated in Thunderstone Advance, which provides specific number of slots for different village card types, as well as monsters of different levels. In Thunderstone advance, the extra option of "preparing" as a game action, allows you to design your next hand and provides more flexibility and the ability to utilize better your strategy. Moreover the replacement of Militia by the more efficient Regulars is a very important improvement, allowing players to enter the dungeon quicker and somewhat reducing the existence of "dead cards" during late game. The power of the game lies in developing the best strategy to win, by using the best combinations of cards and in the right amounts. (Thunderstone: 7/10, Thunderstone Advance: 8/10)

Learning Curve:

The game has a rather steep learning curve. The first game will last a lot more than 60 minutes and you probably will have to go back to the rulebook and look up some details throughout the game. However, after this first game, things will run smoothly and you will probably feel glad for all those small details in the game, that make it a bit complex but, in that way, more interesting too. 6/10

Theme:

The element of theme is dominant here, in contrast to Dominion, and you constantly feel the urge and anxiety to reach further down the dungeon and beat those despicable monsters. There are many elements that contribute to the sense of immersion like the light/darkness element, curing diseases/curses with Clerics and more. 8/10

Replayability:

With dozens of different heroes, monsters and village cards, no two games will be the same. Randomizer cards can be used during game setup, to randomly choose heroes, monsters and village cards that will be available in the game. If you like the deck building/card drafting mechanic of the game, you will probably spend many hours playing this game and enjoy it a lot. A number of expansions have been released and more will be released in the future, bring to the game more heroes, monsters and village cards as well as new card types, thus enhancing replayability. 8/10

Fun:

The game offers many thrills and can be fun, although there is little player interaction. Maybe an improvent in this field, should be included in Thunderstone advance, with village cards that would mess more with opponent's decks. 6/10

Pros:

Nice artworkGameplay with depthReplayablityImmersion

Cons:

Minimum player interactionSomewhat complex rules

Overall: Thundertone: 7, Thunderstone Advance: 7.3

Find out more about Thunderstone Advance at:

http://www.boardgamemaniac.com/Games/By-Genre/Strategy-Games/Thunderstone-Advance-Towers-of-Ruin-l102.html

Maria Panagou is the owner of http://www.boardgamemaniac.com/ website. If you liked this article, feel welcome to read more articles about board games, plus find informative game presentations, strategy guides, a comprehensive sleeving guide and more by visiting the above link.

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WoW Loot Farming - Two Spots Where You Can Farm Valuable Loot

WoW loot farming isn't exactly the best way to make gold in this game. However, it's 100% profit. The only thing that you will be investing is your time.

Although the best gold farming method is buying and reselling stuff at the Auction House for profits, you can make decent money if you know where, what and how to farm. So, here are two excellent spots for WoW loot farming.

The Underbog - Sanguine Hibiscus

Sanguine Hibiscus is a herb that doesn't require Herbalism to be picked. It can be found inside The Underbog in Zangarmarsh. This herb is required in stacks of 5, to complete a quest that grants reputation with the Sporeggar faction. Many players raise their reputation with this faction nowadays, to be able to buy the Tiny Spore Bat that the Sporeggar Quartermaster sells.

Now, farming Sanguine Hibiscus is not very difficult at all. All you have to do is just go to The Underbog and gather all the Sanguine Hibiscus nodes that pop between the entrance and the bridge that leads to the second boss. Then simply return to the entrance, exit, reset and repeat. You usually get about 20-25 Sanguine Hibiscus per run. The plant-like mobs inside and the spore bats also drop this herb and you can grind of them if you want.

A stack of 5 hibiscus sells for up to 100g sometimes. The average price for a stack of 5 is 50g though.

Shadowmoon Valley - The Doomwalker

The second WoW loot farming spot is in the eastern part of Shadowmoon Valley. The Doomwalker is the guardian of the entrance to the Black Temple. Although is a difficult mob to defeat with a level 80 tank, it shouldn't be a problem to defeat with any level 85 class. Rogues might have a problem killing this boss, but I can't tell you that for sure, I haven't tried it with my Rogue.

The most important ability of the boss is its Crush Armor, an armor debuff that stacks and reduces 10% of your armor per stack. If you accumulate too many stacks, the boss' attacks will become considerably powerful. Anyway, as I said, with a level 85 character, with a bit of mitigation, and some pots, this boss shouldn't be difficult. However, to make sure you kill it, a Hunter, a Death Knight or Paladin are the most indicated classes to farm it.

The Doomwalker drops various epic BoE items which look cool and players will buy them to change the appearance of their armor. Some of the items like the Ethereum Nexus-Reaver or Talon of the Tempest sell for over 1000g.

The part that sucks about this boss is that it has a 2-3 days respawn cooldown. And if you're not there when it spawns, someone else will kill it. I usually have my Hunter logged there and check the spot every morning.

Now, if you're going for some WoW loot farming, I'm sure you'll like the two spots I've mentioned here.

However, if you want to farm gold like a pro, follow this link and learn everything about WoW Loot Farming.

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Review - FEAR 3

If you have ever played a F.E.A.R game before, you will know what to expect when you open up a copy of F.E.A.R 3. A dark, generic, corridor shooter with occasional jump scares and a tacked on slow motion mechanic. While the first in the series set the standard on the next-gen series of consoles, it has since been overshadowed in its genre superior survival horror games.The only problem is, the developers of Fear 3 seem not to know this. They rely on the tired and overused "monster closets" and occasional Alma sighting to scare you. These scares work the first few times, but quickly grow tired as you travel through the short campaign.

Speaking of which, this game has one of the shortest campaigns that i have played in a while. 8 missions long, one could easily finish this game in about five hours, and that's on the harder difficulties. These few missions also follow the FPS stereotype. You have your rescue mission, your vehicle mission, and an escape mission. Really the only one missing is a stealth level, which probably would have been one of the most fun levels in the game, had it been made. The slow motion mechanic lends itself to stealth game play leading to a bevy of opportunities that were not exploited.

In the weapons this game follows the mold again. Hey look, a three round burst assault rifle, or a sub-machine gun that looks like every other sub-machine ever used in a game. The two most unique and entertaining weapons are not even available until the game is halfway over and you won't even finding yourself having fun with them either. Realistically, you could beat this entire game with just the starting pistol and slow mo, giving you little reason to do anything else.This isn't saying that the shooting isn't satisfying, far from it. There is nothing more satisfying than lining up that perfect pistol headshot or turning a soldier into goo with a shotgun, I just wish that there were more ways to do it. But when you combine that with a somewhat clunky cover mechanic, that sometimes leaving you hanging in the wind.

FEAR 3 suffers from the same problem as most FPS games this generation, where it has monochromatic gray backgrounds and mediocre graphics. Occasionally it has some good areas that could be used for some more exciting or creepy fights instead of just passing on through during one of the "haunted phases" (not a game definition) During these phases, the screen becomes slightly blurry and something freaky might happen. The only downside to these situations is that during these phases there is no chance of being attacked by an enemy, removing all tension from the situation.

If it sounds like I hate this game, I don't, I love it. They added a level of persistence through the single player that didn't exist in any of the previous games. You earn new character levels through completing different types of challenges. these new levels bring either more magazines for your guns, more grenades to carry, and more slow mo time. The only disappointing thing is, you progress through the 21 levels pretty quickly, achieving them all by the time you are finished with your second playthrough. Once you are level 21, you feel like a god compared to when you had started playing through the game. You have twice as much time in slow motion, twice as many magazines for your guns, and twice as many grenades in your pockets.

To add to the replayability factor, as you beat each mission you unlock another character with a different play style. Instead of starting off with guns and grenades like your first character, you play as a psychic ghosts that can possess, levitate, crush, or shoot people with psychic blasts. This changes the way you play the level the next time through and adds to the shelf life of the game.In the end, this is a great game, but it is deeply flawed and could do with improvements to both the story and the gameplay. Even with the magical talent of John Carpenter behind this game, the story is still crap. I love this game, I just wish it was better.

7/10

This review was written by Tom Blaich, the staff writer at the website Games Cave. This primarily video games based website was started by Tom in early 2012 and is accessible through here, http://www.games-cave.com/, where you can find more of his reviews, plus articles, features, lists, and news stories that interests fans of modern video games.

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Puzzle Games That Challenge Your Mental Skills

Puzzle games are an interesting way to keep you challenged. These games stimulate you to think, and keep you busy thinking strategically and analytically to help solve a puzzle.

Sudoku is a very famous puzzle game that challenges its players to solve a 9x9 grid with the numbers 1 to 9 bearing in mind that a number does not get repeated in a row, a column or any of the 3x3 boxes that fill the 9x9 grid. This game has various levels ranging from easy to hard, and the simplest form of the game is the 2x2 puzzle, which is suitable even for children.

Another puzzle game which can keep you engaged for hours is the Tower of Hanoi. This is a simple game that has got simple rules. You need to arrange rings from one rod to another using the least number of moves keeping in mind that a bigger ring may not rest on a smaller one and that only one ring may be moved at a time.

A Tangram puzzle is another challenging puzzle that can keep you hooked on for hours. In this game you are given a design and number of shapes. You need to recreate the design from the shapes that you have been given. This game requires the imagination of its player and some analytical thinking in order to get the design right.

Another exciting puzzle game is Reverse. The computer version of this game allows the user to place his piece on the board, following which the computer will play its turn. On the next turn, the user places a new piece on the board and all the pieces that fall in between the old piece and the new piece belonging to the computer will instantly become the user's pieces. The winner is the one who has the most pieces on the board when no more moves are possible.

Jewels Gear is another interesting puzzle game which concerns a number of jewels on a board. The goal of the player is to clear up the board by tilting it.

Hangman is a puzzle game that requires its players to guess a word, and the only hint that he/she is given are the few letters that belong to the word in question. The player can take only a limited number of measures to correctly guess the word without being hanged and losing the game. This game can be played individually as well as between two players.

Puzzle games strengthen one's ability to analyze things and to find logical solutions. They help in slowing down the aging process and is a wonderful recreational tool for those who want to spend the evening playing beneficial games.

We provide the best info about free puzzle games. For further details please visit the provided link.

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