I’m forcibly reminded, yet again, that human behaviour is hard to predict. When we challenge someone – it’s easy to imagine how they might react. Probably negatively of course. But sometimes even positive behaviour can result in someone behaving negatively, and that I find hard to explain.

All of this to say – I’m once again traveling. This time it’s not anywhere hugely exciting. Just to Park City Utah for some much needed relaxing time skiing, which is probably an oxymoron if every there was one. And of course a bit of Sundance for me, and a lot of Sundance for my husband and our friends. Nestled in amongst the skiing and the movies is even a bit of competitive bridge playing – so all in all, I’m hoping for exciting times.

But how is this related to addictive behaviour? Ah – as always, I do have a point. When I travel, particularly long airplane trips which define boring, I entertain myself by watching movies or playing games on my iPad. Right now – I’m actually writing this blog en-route between Montreal and New York City, but that’s not the norm. The norm is to play video games.

And I’m finding that video games are getting more and more addictive. I refuse to pay money by the way – so I only play free to download games, and I blissfully ignore all their attempts to get me to spend money. But don’t tell the designers. If they figure out how many of us make rather hard use of their offerings with out contributing even a penny to their coffers – I’m sure they will come up with some underhanded slight of hand method to make us cough up some dough.

But right now – all my favourite games are free. Well, free if you don’t mind blanking out for 30 seconds or so every few minutes while they show you a mindless commercial for yet another addictive computer game.

I will admit, and I suspect the same can be said of most of my readers, I have actually done the dirty deed of downloading an app that was shown to me first in another app. Twice actually. I felt bad about doing it – but I guess that generated some money movement somewhere in the great mystery that is the internet, as one app developer paid another app developer.

So – what apps do I find addictive I hear you wonder. Here is my current favourites – roughly in order of time spent playing them (and watching their commercials).

#1 Most Addictive – Criminal Case. I’ve been playing this game for almost 3 years. No joke. It’s been a long long time. I played it when we were just criss-crossing the US, and now I’m traveling the World. Currently I’m in Indonesia solving a murder that involves a young woman and a subversive group called ‘Sombra’. This is a search and find game with the occasional other type of puzzle. Nothing particularly hard to solve, but I think the graphics are very cool – and I’m enjoying the evolving story line. Best of all – it can be played off line. Which means that you don’t need Internet. This is a huge advantage over others of it’s type.

#2 Most Addictive – Harry Potters Hogwarts Mystery. The biggest downside to this game is the WIFI required aspect. So if you don’t have a strong WIFI connection – no game. The idea is simple, you are a student at Hogwarts, several years before Harry Potter will arrive. There’s slightly younger versions of the popular teachers like Snape, Dumbledore and Flitwick, plus a new teacher who you meet in the 4th year and who teaches Care of Magical Creatures. You can adopt pets (I have a Cat, an Owl, a Toad, a Dog and a Rat), you can adopt Magical Creatures – (I’ve adopted a Niffler and a Fairy), and you can explore the school. Like Criminal Case, I love the graphics, I think going to the classes is a hoot – and I’m continuing to play because I’d love to adopt a flying horse! This game is a demanding time waster though. Energy is recharged a one point per 4 minutes, so it takes about 2 hours to get back to full ‘strength’. You can get extra energy by spending real money (nope – not doing that), picking up bits of energy here and there around the school (I like clicking the stick and watching a young Fang run out to chase it), and by spending gems. But the easiest thing is just to wait. Again, not a difficult game, and probably a snore-fest if you aren’t a Harry Potter Fan, but I am, and I love it.

#3 – Woody Puzzle – This is a new game on my iPad – and it’s a version of Tetris that doesn’t allow for rotations. It’s un-timed, and not limited. You don’t use up energy that needs to be topped up by failing, you just start again. The only down side is that every start again requires watching a short commercial – but that’s not a huge price to play for a game that is really quite strategic in it’s way. No WIFI required – so you can play whenever you feel up for it.

#4 – Garden of Words – This game, and Woody Puzzle, were downloaded because of marketing on my other games. Again this one has no energy to rebuild, you keep working on the puzzles until you solve them, or give up and ask for a hint. The concept is actually kinda fun. There’s a ‘plate’ of 5 or 6 letters – and a cross-word format to fill in by picking letter after letter. A bit like scrabble, if scrabble was really easy to play and very forgiving. There are apparently over 2000 word puzzles to solve – if one believes the marketing. Again – no WIFI needed – so you can play any time you want. This game is apparently available in other languages – even though I play my games only in English, I’ve been seeing ‘commercials’ for this game in French. I think it knows I’m in Quebec.

So – those are the games that I’m playing while I travel today. If you have a moment – I do recommend them, at least do the free download and give them a spin. You have nothing to lose except time… And maybe that’s what’s really wrong with these games – they steal time!

Signing off because the plane is landing and they are definitely going to expect me to get up and get out!

The Soup Lady