Exercise your minds with Plays.org

Assalamualaikum

MEANING : Working constantly without taking time to relax oneself could make one be bored and boring.

I believe that most of us have learned of this idiom before. Myself is included, as ever since I discovered its meaning in elementary school, THIS is the quote that I can honestly say I have lived by in my childhood and I still do now even though I have already become a fully-grown adult 😂

Games have always been a huge part of my life. Growing up, I remember how my siblings and I (the younger trio) would flock around our older brothers when they brought home the PlayStation console borrowed from their friend to play games together. 

Although we were only allowed to watch (since the console was expensive and our family was dirt poor at the time to compensate any damages), the younger us were still involved in the gaming activity somehow by becoming their translators.

Living in rural area in Kelantan, you could expect that not many of us village folks have good mastery of English. That's why the language barrier hindered my brothers' progress in the games because of some unfamiliar words in the games instructions and missions. 

So THAT'S where I came in, standing by with a dictionary in hand to look for the meanings of the unfamiliar words and translate the instructions into Bahasa so we could complete all the missions successfully. Good old days 😂

Fast forward to now, our siblings gaming "sesh" have long ended since everyone is busy with work and some are living far from home. But it does not stop our gaming interests since we can now play games on our smartphones (hooray for technology yay~). 

The only difference is that we play individually due to dissimilar preferences lol. My brothers prefer action games involving weapons strategies, meanwhile I would generally play any games from whatever genre if it happened to suit my liking.

 

My mobile games folder back in 2018. Can you tell what games they are from the icons? hehe

You see 9 apps, but the folder actually contained 12-15 lol. Puzzles, mystery, adventure, cooking, strategy, rhythm, board games, I'd play anything if it is interesting, free, and has good graphics. 

If the game has roleplay characters who are pretty/handsome? I'm sold as well lol. I remember how I actively tweeted about the characters in a Korean otome game I played before and my friends just could not fathom who the heck is this (2D) boyfriend I'm talking about because I'm clearly SINGLE? 🤣

Sadly, the number of games that I play now has dropped by a lot. Besides time constraint as I'm busy with my studies, there is also the storage issue. As my laptop is old, I have to attend my online classes and edit my video assignments using my phone. The required apps for those consumed SO MUCH storage that I had to delete many of my games to make room for them. So now, it became like this.

Class >>>>>> Games 😭

Due to that, I no longer download any new games to keep the phone storage at a safe level, so it won't be heavy and lagging. Besides, my attention span is not as high as before anymore. I could try one game before quickly losing interest in it. But exploring Play Store for new games is tiring and downloading them uses too much data (and the quality could be bad too) so I just stopped playing.

Luckily, this situation has changed recently as I can now continue my gaming pastimes without having to worry about the storage space anymore. And why restrict myself to keeping only a few games when I can play hundreds of games for free without having to download anything at Plays.org? 😁

Click the banner to visit Plays.org site.

They MEANT IT when they say there are A LOT of games in the site. Looking at the game catalog in their footer, I easily wavered and became confused in deciding "what game should I play first?" Because there's really just too many choices. And the screenshot below did not even capture the whole list lol

Click photo to enlarge.

For this, I am glad that Plays.org provided the "Random Plays" button so I can skip the hassle of choosing a genre and browsing the loooong list of games. I just need to make a single click and I'd get a game from any genre and difficulty to be played. Truly useful for indecisive people like me because if I choose on my own, best believe I might not start any game yet even after 1 hour of browsing 😂 

My Faves to save the games that we like, Random Plays to just be surprised with whatever games they serve at random lol

Besides being free to play and requires no downloads, the games in Plays.org also have various levels of difficulties, making the games in the site suitable for all age levels. They have it all from as low as 0.5⭐ difficulty that is enjoyable by children and adults, to full 5⭐ difficulty that is sure to drive us adults mental. And if we used the Random Plays feature, we're bound to meet each of them haha

Among the games of various difficulties that I got through Random Plays (in increasing difficulty level):

1) Mr. Bean Splash Art (DIFFICULTY: 0.5⭐)

Goal: Just colour or draw whatever you like in the provided photos.

Yes, there are 2 options either to "Colour" or to "Draw". But frankly I suck big time in drawing so I chose to colour instead (not that I am better at it though lol). The featured photo is the final look I created.

I tried to do some shading on the water, sky and bush to create "depth" but failed since I really am bad at fine arts 😂 I was lucky there is textured colour for the water lol. This game has all basic colouring tools and 10 different photos which would make for a fun colouring activity for both children and adults. Though I'd recommend using smartphones or tablets so it would be easier to control the tools.

2) Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Feel the Music (DIFFICULTY: 1⭐)

Goal: As Her Majesty Lady Gaga once said, JUST DANCE!!

As per the title, this is a music game. We can freely tap the keyboard, click the mouse, or tap the screen on any of the prepared instruments to produce some tunes and Daniel the tiger would dance along to it.

There are 3 weathers for us to set the music theme. Each represents an emotion; Sunny (Happy), Rainy (Sad), and Thunderstorm (Angry). Yet regardless of the weather, I *internally* SCREAMED when I played this because Daniel Tiger's dancing was soooo cute. Even when the mood is Angry, he still looks squishy lol. 10/10 suitable for young children and adults like me who like music and cute animals 🙈

3) Falling Cubes (DIFFICULTY: 3⭐)

Goal: OMG do I even need to say more? hehehe

CLASSIC TETRIS!!! My goodness this type of game never lost its charms to make me be so focused and addicted in arranging the cubes to form the lines. This game is literally added to my favourite list as it has been (and I believe will always be) one of my favourite games ever since my childhood.

4) Wild Cowboy Sokoban (DIFFICULTY: 5⭐)

Goal: Push all boxes so they would fit in the designated area. Brain wrecking!!

I LOVE THIS GAME!! But I also hate it lol. 

Love it because it is highly challenging and requires good thinking skills to figure out the right strategy to complete each level. Hate it because it is too difficult 😂 Right from the first level, the number of times where I have to undo the moves and even restart the game was very high since I either pushed the wrong box, or pushed the right box at the wrong step 💆🏻‍♀️

Which is why I was so thrilled when I finally finished the first level after so many attempts 🤧

In total, there are 60 levels in this game. But so far I barely solved Level 2 🙂

Besides this game, there are two other games with 5⭐ difficulty that made me panic so far lol:

🔸 Open Restaurant

Goal: Reach enough sales within the VERY brief time limit they gave us 🙂

I believe the most appropriate name for this game is STRESS-taurant. NEVER expect it to be as simple as how it looks (or if it'd be easier than the famous Diner Dash). The time limit was so short I even failed the first 4 attempts because I ran out of time to get the minimum sales to qualify for the next level 😭

The animation of the people is also minimal, so I don't know if they are angry for the long wait, if they're eating, if they're done eating, or whatever it is they are doing. I could only stand there waiting to clear the table and guide new customers in before the line gets too long and more hectic. As someone in the reviews said, this game really simulated the panic of waiters during peak-hours lol #truth

🔸 Fight Virus COVID-19 Simulation

Goal: DO NOT let the virus outbreak exceeds 70%!!

Panic. Just utter, sheer, panic. From containing the virus, treating the patients, and monitoring if there are any infected yet untreated patients leaving the premise, everything raised the panic level. Even in a mere game it's already chaotic, can you imagine how our COVID frontliners are in actual situation? 🙂

So, always mask up and keep your social distance to stay safe, everyone!!

Overall, I like the concept of this site. It ticked all the criteria I mentioned above for "games that I would play": interesting, free, and has good graphics. The games really have beautiful images and vivid colours. When I play on my laptop or phone, everything is HD haha. And since it's online, I don't have to download anything so there is less stress about lack of space in my devices ✅

In fact, Plays.org makes it even better as there are numerous game categories for more choices and NO ADS. It made the gaming experience smoother without being interrupted by annoying pop-up ads. I've had enough of those so-called "free" sites that suddenly pop "You won an iPhone!" or "Your phone is at risk!!" whenever we click on something in it. Like ma'am chile I just wanna play a game lol

Many of the easier games are also educational and children-friendly. Some have simple tasks with clear written instructions like Arthur Lunch-o-Matic, which would be good for children learning English. Some teach advanced stuff in simple and colourful games, like It's Glow Time teaching basic Statistics intro. So kids could have fun playing informative games in addition to reading the school notes.

If anything, I think Plays.org could provide the "filter function" to let us choose which level of difficulty that we would like to browse. Because games with 4-5⭐ difficulties are quite hard to find and browsing through each category could take a long time. Of course we can use Random Plays to somewhat save the time but it still depends on luck if we could get the more difficult ones haha

So if there's a filter (like e-commerce sites) where we can choose to see games with certain difficulty only, or maybe a low-to-high rank filter to arrange the easiest-to-hardest games (vice versa), I think it'd be easier for us to pick a game based on our mood, like "which easy games can I relax with today?" or "what game will stress me out today?" 😂 Then with all else above, Plays.org would become even better.

Thank you for reading.
Bye and Assalamualaikum.