StarJeweled - Or - That Spidery Thing Is, Apparently, A Colossus

For so long I was content to watch Dimli play StarCraft II, while I wandered around in my online worlds mourning internet squirrels. Then I saw him playing what was basically Bejeweled. I wanted to play too!

Turns out that SC2 has some cool little games that were available on the trial, and that StarJeweled was one of them. Furious downloading ensued and then pure confusion as I tried to figure out what each unit was and what it did. Thank goodness for tooltips! I wrote what countered a few of the units I knew (marines and siege tanks) that could come from the enemy base was but I didn't know the names of the units. Here's where pure ingenuity struck.

I wrote colossus as "spidery thing", ultralisk as "tusks", and mutalisks was "mutated gigantic bat". Hey, we were all new once! Some of us are newer than others for much longer....

Next to each unit I also wrote what countered them, both as a key to push and the name of what that key spawned, so I could learn the units. This way, as I watched my enemy's base and played bejeweled I knew what buttons to hit before the enemy units got anywhere near my base.

I'm not really good at twitch type responses in games (I walk into walls fairly regularly) so doing the above was about all I could accomplish in that mini-game. I never even tried to utilize the spell casting feature. It was all I could do to play the mini-game, watch the lane, and hit buttons on the keyboard! If you haven't played StarJeweled, you should definitely check it out. Very awesome little arcade game!

Dimli took care of the spells and defended our base, while my strategy was to save up energy and push out large amounts of high impact units quickly. This was pretty easy considering we were playing an AI that was set to the easiest setting. Imagine my complete and utter awe when "FOR THE HORDE - I mean - SWARM" rang out. Yeah, in my total glee we lost that game. I couldn't continue playing until he explained what had just happened!

The next game Dim told me to send out something that wasn't on my index card and by the time I found the key to push we had lost again. He immediately made me write down ALL the units available. I didn't mind losing, I was having fun. He on the other hand abhors the thought of letting anyone, much less a computer, best him.

During all of this I learned a little bit about the units, had a blast doing something in game with Dimli and eventually forgot everything I learned AND lost my index card. We rarely play StarJeweled now, what with Diablo III launching and the World of Warcraft expansion coming out in a few days, but I remember it fondly and every now and then I log in, write down all the units again and then promptly lose my poor index card somewhere in the disaster area that is my desk.

At some point I will find 12 index cards with the same information scattered on the floor amongst the wires back behind my desk.

Now if I have a few extra minutes to play and my CastleVille energy is all used up, I'll login to SC2 and get a 1v1 against the computer going, just to work on my macro (see that fancy wording from a n00b?! woot!), but if you're looking to have fun with someone who doesn't understand SC2 at all, but might have fun playing in game with you, I highly recommend both this game, and an index card that you tape down to your desk!

It's free, and fun and might help bring someone into the scene just a tiny bit. At the very least, you get to have fun with friends. What more could you ask for?