MMO and RTS and FPS, oh my! What is a platformer? Should my toddler play a sandbox game? We define a few common video game terms and abbreviations.

What we’ve been playing

T.I.M.E. Stories – We enjoyed this RPG, although we haven’t beaten the base game yet. We can understand why it tends to be a love-it-or-hate it game. There are currently 4 other stories available: The Marcy Case, A Prophecy of Dragons, Expedition: Endurance, and Under the Mask.

Anitra played as many games using Knot Dice as possible, in order to write this week’s review. There are co-operative and competitive puzzle games, pathfinding games, racing games, an abstract storytelling game, and even a semi-cooperative building game.

Box of Rocks – a silly and fun trivia game. The group competes against the box of rocks! It would make a great icebreaker.

Andrew beat Zelda: Breath of the Wild, to no one’s surprise.

Overcooked, the co-operative cooking game. Fun, high-adrenaline. You have to communicate with your co-players in order to complete orders through the challenging layouts, which makes it an excellent couch co-op.

Type: Rider, a beautiful and compelling platformer based on typography and fonts. We got it as one of the “free” PS Plus games for May, but it is available for under $5 on just about everything: Steam, iOS, Android, and PlayStation.

Our kids are still playing the ever-present Disney Infinity, and are branching out from the sandbox (“toy box”) mode to a few of the themed adventure options.

Video Game Terms

FPS (first person shooter): first person perspective, your only indication of the player is a gun or hands. Can lead to motion-sickness. Examples: Goldeneye, Wolfenstein 3D, Marathon.

TPS (third person shooter): third person perspective, showing the body (or at least the head) of the player character.

Platformer: basically Mario. Jump around, get to the end of the level. A recent example of 2D platformer: Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, or Type:Rider as previously mentioned.

Puzzle Platformer: Navigate in the same platforming way, but with puzzles you have to figure out to get through the level. There is a special sub-genre called “Metroidvania” (after the first 2 of this type, Metroid and Castlevania), where you re-tread the same ground several times, discovering new things as you gain power or weaponry.

Shmup (Shoot-em-up): a scrolling battlefield with limited movement; kill waves of enemies and receive power-ups to kill more enemies. Examples: Gradius, Ikaruga, Sine Mora, maybe Geometry Wars?

2D and 3D are self-explanatory, but there’s also 2.5D. This is a game that is primarily two-dimensional but still have a depth component.

Turn-based game: I take a turn, then you take a turn. Action pauses in some way between turns.

Synchronous gameplay: everyone playing at the same time. No pausing.

Asynchronous gameplay: players do not have to be online at the same time to play the game together. Turn-based games lend themselves to asynchronous play.

AAA game: the big name, big budget games, the ones that are heavily marketed and available in Target. Gears of War,