Here are some photos from my Doctor Who day two days ago. We arrived at Sheffield station to discover… Daleks!

It was pretty awesome; they weren’t just still-standing un-interactive Daleks. No, these were walking (well, rolling) around and commenting on people. I loved how when I got close to one (with huge camera in hands) it said: “You would make a good Dalek. You are like a mini Dalek.” (don’t forget to read that sentence with the proper Dalek voice, otherwise it’s not that impressive).

There was even a cosplay 11th Doctor:

And of course the obligatory photo of me with one of the Daleks:

If you want to see more photos, check out my Dalek Flickr set .

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend a special Doctor Who day in Sheffield, all about the upcoming downloadable games. The day was brilliant and I’ve got tons of stuff to blog about: a Q&A with the creators, playing around with real life Daleks, a studio tour of the game creators offices and a hands-on demo session of the first game. Oh, and I got to see the upcoming Saturday’s episode… but I won’t spoil anything about that, just go watch it this Saturday!

The first of the four new Doctor Who games was revealed to be called ‘ City of the Daleks ‘, where for the first time the Doctor visits Kaalann, the Dalek city capital. This first episode will be available as a free download from www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho on June 5th 2010 for both PC and Mac.

I’ll be doing a more in-depth preview soon, but if you’re curious to know what the ‘City of the Daleks’ game is about, here’s a short description:

The TARDIS materializes in 1963 – and London is in ruins. The Daleks have seized control of time and the only chance of saving Earth lies in a desperate quest to Skaro, the Daleks’ home planet – before time catches up with Amy, the last survivor of the human race!

From what I saw the game looked great; easily accessible for those who have never really played games before, but with some smart game mechanics in place to make it more difficult for those of us who have. I think these games will be great to tell more Doctor Who stories!

What do you think so far of the Doctor Who games? Something you’re looking forward to? Or couldn’t-care-less?

For the math geeks among my readers:

Adorable, right? And… it comes with a matching clutch:

I’m not really a clutch type of girl (not enough space for gadgets), but I love the shoes! Both the shoes and the clutch are available on Schuh; the shoes for £59.99 and the clutch for £29.99 .

I almost forgot about this event! This weekend is the first Fan Fest , a two day Spy and Sci-Fi convention at the London Film Museum. There will be guest appearances (and signings) by a ton of stars from the Bond movies, plus an exhibition of props and costumes and even speed boat rides on the Thames!

Tickets (and more info) are available on the Fan Fest website . I might try to make it down there this weekend, but with the London Marathon happening on Sunday, I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to leave the house! Maybe Saturday…

Episode 171: “My life is brilliant, my love is pure”

Love this:

Now I want to see more of this Australian comedy group, Axis of Awesome!

I’ve been a bit Tron obsessed lately, so the moment I saw this T-shirt I knew I should get it:

I’m still not sure though whether to get the tee or the hoody; they both look awesome! Plus they both come with glow-in-the-dark ink… sweet. Both the tee and the hoody are available on Threadless for $20 and $45 respectively.

I love quirky jewelry and this designer is certainly unlike any I’ve seen. A(r)mor designs body chain jewelry, each design different than the other. I’m not sure whether I’d ever wear something like this (doesn’t exactly fit with my wardrobe), but I do find some of these pieces beautifully unique.

For more designs head on over to A(r)mor’s Etsy store .

Via Kingdom of Style

I haven’t blogged much about the Tron viral/ARG, but I’ve been following everything so far. About one and a half week ago there was a live event in San Francisco, where Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner’s character from the first movie) announced that Encom would be releasing an online version of their Space Paranoids game. And now there’s a trailer:

I think Alex from FirstShowing is right, in that Kevin Flynn will probably try to contact us through the game. There’ll be 15 new levels designed by Flynn himself, so there’s got to be something hidden within that. I’m guessing it’s going to be something collaborative, like the Dark Knight pixel picture from 2 years ago. Like each level represents 1 letter, but letter is only revealed after 100 scores above a certain threshold?

The story behind the ARG so far is that Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared 7 years after the events of the first movie; nobody has heard of him since, including his son. But there is a group called FlynnLives who still believe he is alive and that “he is out there, that he’s waiting for us, and that he will return when the time is right”.

If you’re interested in playing along, just sign up on FlynnLives.com . You can still earn badges for all of the previous steps, except for the live events (which I don’t have anyway).

Via FirstShowing

Episode 171: “If you want a book for your toilet or something”

I’m loving the new Doctor Who episodes. I had my doubts whether or not Matt Smith could pull it off, but I’m falling in love with his Doctor. And Karen Gillan as the new sidekick companion is great too; funny and cute, but with a mysterious back story as well (I so think the main mythology of this season will have to do with her).

Anyways, yesterday there was a special Doctor Who event at the Soho Apple store with a live Q&A with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Stephen Moffat:

Via robynschneider

I’ve been mainly playing Final Fantasy XIII the past weeks and those of you who follow my tweets will know how frustrated I am by it. It’s not that it’s a bad game, but I really don’t like how linear FFXIII is; the first 30 hours there’s basically only 1 way to play the game. So when I got a review copy of Rune Factory: Frontier, it felt like the perfect antidote to the linearity of FFXIII: this game is so open and non-linear, there are tons of ways you can play it.

Title : Rune Factory: Frontier
Type : Puzzle, Nintendo Wii
Number of players : 1
Release Date : Out in Europe since April 1st (released in US last year)
Cost : £23.97 ( on Amazon )

Rune Factory: Frontier is the third title of the Rune Factory series, but the first to appear on the Wii (the previous two were for the Nintendo DS). The original was a spin-off of the Harvest Moon video game series, and takes the farming aspect of the Harvest Moon series, but adds a dungeon crawling sword wielding side to it. I haven’t played any of the predecessors (neither from the Rune Factory series or the Harvest Moon series), but you don’t need any knowledge about any of those games.

This game starts with your character Raguna waking up to discover he has amnesia (of course). He moves to a new town, gets his own farm and some tools to start farming. Oh, and you get introduced to a bunch of girls, who you can potentially woo and marry. There are barely any forced tutorials or anything like that; the game just lets go and gives you the freedom to do whatever you want.

You start the game with the main activity of farming. You get a couple of seeds, a hoe and a watering can, and your own little field where you can sow and grow your crops. After sowing seeds, you have to water your crops once a day, until they are fully grown and you can harvest them. It of course depends on the type of seeds how many days it takes for them to grow; turnips (the seeds you start the game with) take 4 days. One minute in real life is one hour in the game world, so 24 minutes is one day.

Next to farming, you can dungeon crawl. You can buy a proper weapon (like a sword) or you can be cheap and use your hoe. Either way you can start dungeon crawling and destroying monsters straightaway (well you’re not actually ‘destroying’ them, you’re sending them back to the First world or something like that). Besides those two main activities, you can also learn to do other stuff, like cooking and fishing, but you have to find the right tools to start those (mainly by talking to the right people).

And then there’s the ‘love’ game. There are twelve girls in the village you can woo (and eventually end up marrying), each with different likes and dislikes. Each of them (and each of the other NPCs you come across) has a “Love Points” bar that increases as you show them affection. You do this by giving them presents they like (for instance, one girl might like turnips, another one roses). The girls are a bit stereotypical (you have the librarian, the inn keeper’s daughter, etc), but it’s still a lot of fun, figuring out what to get for each of them.

Rune Factory: Frontier is a cute RPG and one that requires more than a few hours of dedication. I love how much freedom the game gives you, letting you focus on those parts of the game that you like (instead of having to do everything). It’s perfect for someone as neurotic as me, trying to collect and create all the items (seriously, if I didn’t have video games, I’d be a crazy cat collector or worse: stamps).

Rune Factory: Frontier is available on Amazon.co.uk for £23.97 and on Amazon.com for $29.99 .