Okay, this is awkward… I have to admit something. Hasmik’s time management is on point, which means she was first to upload her guilty pleasure game. When I saw the article, I internally screamed. Loud. For, like, 5 minutes. You guessed it, my guilty pleasure is coincidentally Facebook’s Tetris Battle as well.
It all started 3.5 years ago, when I was still young and innocent. I had just started studying Event- and projectmanagement at the University College of Artevelde in Ghent. It was the middle of the first semester and I had just finally found a fairly large group of people I felt somewhat comfortable with. I was happy and all was right until one day something out of the ordinary happened.
My group of friends and I were in class, getting lectured about event logistics. As I was in my first year and still filled with ambition and endless motivation, I payed attention to what the teacher was saying. Believe it or not, I would even close the Facebook tab on my laptop. It was the era where I had heard of 
Farmville and received countless invitations to play CandyCrush. But I had never ever in my life visited the mysterious Facebook Games pages. It was unknown territory for me and we all know that everything unknown is just very scary and unsafe. So I continued my days by ignoring invitations and just regularly stalked people’s profiles but that was it. Facebook did not reach any further for me.
Until the brief moment I lost focus during event logistics and looked at my friend Joyce’s laptop next to me. I could see the logo of Facebook but there was no regular news feed… No, Joyce was obviously playing a game. I knew what it was, it was 
Tetris. I had played it over a million times when I was even younger than I was back then but it didn’t look like my Tetris. It looked way cooler and faster and more exciting.
There it was, my first introduction to Facebook’s Tetris Battle. As I had never seen this game in my life, I was stunned, perplexed, petrified but most of all: intensely fascinated. But this is not where it ends. As I looked to my friend sitting next to Joyce, I saw the exact same screen on his laptop. They were playing against each other! Of course that was when I realized why it was called Tetris Battle, you competed against either a complete stranger or you could invite a friend to compete against you. Honestly, at that moment I felt more passionate about a game than I had ever felt about a living human being. And so trying to keep my cool, I “casually” asked Joyce where I could find the game because it looked “alright.” Little did she know that when she showed me where I could find the game, she actually showed me to a game I would from that moment on get addicted to. My family has not forgiven her, I have. And so it all began right then and there, in classroom L02.08 of our campus Kantienberg in the beautiful hippy city (no offense) that is Ghent.
You see, there’s yet another embarrassing fact you should know about me. Think of that one person in your social circle you just know is the most competitive of every single one you know. Well, I’m roughly about 13 times worse… I’m not proud of this, but for my upcoming paragraphs you should know this sad little fact about me.
In the beginning of my Tetris Battle days, I would only play this at home. I sucked too much to play it in public and I was scared my friends would ask me to battle against each other. You see, I didn’t want to lose against them. I was new to this, they would laugh, I would get angry and things would get very ugly real quickly. So the only safe environment to play and practice was home. But after a while, I finally understood the Tetris tactics. Oh yes, you read it correctly. It’s all about your technique and tactics. And man, did I get better fast. Please allow me to explain this game to you just in case you’d like to try it out.
Disclaimer: I am not to be held responsible for potential addictions to this, or any other, Facebook game. You might lose control of your life due to the constant need to level up or compete against other friends. Be warned.
First of all, there’s the top area with all your general information. The first number is the number of coins you received. You can receive coins by playing games. If you win your game, you gain 25 coins. If you lose, you win 10 coins. With these coins you can pay for game enhancers (more info later). The second number is the amount of notes you have. In my case I have 4, you can’t buy sh*t with it. It’s absolutely useless. The bar in the middle shows your energy. For each game you play, you lose 5/30 so technically you can only play 6 games in a row. Every 5 minutes there will be 1/30 added up to your energy. The last number is the level you’re in. I’m in level 66 and with each game I play there’ll be 25 xp added. This is all you need to know about that upper bar.
Fun fact about the energy bar: in my beginning days of Tetris Battle there was an energy bar of 60/60 and each game would cost you 1/60. I remember those days as the days where I would say “no” to having dinner with my friends because I still had 36/60 energy. Of course I would catch up with them at night in our favorite bar because wine was just as important. Sadly, I’m afraid it is because of people like me that they changed the energy bar. We lost our lives to it and my mom would complain a lot. Let’s not say this out loud though, can we?
Before you play, you can choose to use enhancers; to make it easier to win. The shield protects you from your opponent’s sent lines, the next icon sends extra lines to your opponent in the last 40 seconds, and the last icon makes it easier for you to destroy the lines sent to you by your opponent.
Lines? Huh? What are you rambling on about woman? Please remain calm… Once you press the “Start” button, it’s time to focus and destroy your opponent. 
Here’s how. At first you need to make a nice construction, as high as you possibly can (see image for example). Once you’re almost at the top, you need to start eliminating them by making lines. The higher you can make your construction, the more lines you can make. Once you were able to make 
2 lines in a row, you will send a line to your opponent. The more lines you can make in a row after the second one, the more lines you can send. These lines start piling up and soon his construction will reach the top of his board. Once he’s reached that top, you’ve “knocked him out.” 
Unfortunately, your opponent can also send lines to you. By placing a block on the radioactive sign, you destroy that line. And just like before, when you’re able to destroy more than 2 lines in a row, there will be a line sent to your opponent. The main goal of the game is to cause as many knock-outs as you can within two minutes. The one with the most knock-outs won the game. As you can see in the last image, I knocked my opponent 4 times out. I won that game. Take that, sucker.
Alright this was quite harder to explain than I had thought. If you understood and followed my instructions, maybe one day you’ll get where I am now. Because I am at rank 110. And If I can believe the Internet, and we all know the Internet never
lies, this is the final one. So in a couple of days I’ll be finished with playing this damned game and I can finally go outside again.
You see, this is where I am three and a half years later. Still playing this game. My friends had all grown tired of the game after they reached rank 45 or something, but I didn’t. I must and will finish this game. By writing this all down, I can see now how sad this actually is. Though, I have the best rank of all my Facebook friends. That makes the competitive devil in me more satisfied than I care to admit. Take this, too, suckers.
But thank God for me, Hasmik already covered her Facebook’s Tetris Battle guilty pleasure. This means I don’t actually have to confess this and I can leave the embarrassing feeling that comes along with confessing this for her to live with. Sadly for me though, I have to discuss another guilty pleasure game. You can easily compare it with talking about having a sex buddy (yes, I said it). Society and your mom tells you you should feel guilty for having it, and you sort of do, and so you keep it quiet, but it doesn’t stop you from doing it anyway. And so it is time to reveal my second guilty pleasure game: Mahjong 4. Stop laughing at me.
So if I’m bored and I’ve had enough of Tetris for a couple of days I go to www.spele.nl and click on Mahjong 4. I understand perfectly that this is most likely the most boring game ever made but I. Love. It. This probably says more about me than I’m willing to admit. But perhaps we should not discuss that right now…
P.s.: this game is listed in the category of “popular games.” This makes me feel better about myself. Also, I’m very much aware that it is a dark time to live in when games like these make it to the popular category. Again, let’s not speak of this out loud. Please.
This game is the absolute opposite of Tetris Battle. It is for non-competitive, normal people a calm game and you’re only battling up against the time bar. The meaning of the game is to link two of the same tiles by connecting them with a line. The line can only make 2 turns, though. Once those two tiles had a connection they dissapear. When you were able to make all the tiles disappear, that’s when you can go to the next level. At the first few levels, time goes by slowly and there aren’t as many kind of tiles. At the final levels there are 3 times as many kind of tiles so it is more difficult to make a connection and time goes by way faster. If you can’t seem to make a connection, you can ask 6 times for a hint.
In each level, the tiles move in a different way. This is what makes this game more exciting and after a while more difficult. It’s never the same. As I told you, there are twelve levels. In the first level, the tiles just drop down without leaving any spaces in between the horizontal rows. In the second level, the tiles don’t move whatsoever. So if you can make two tiles disappear, two 
holes appear. The remaining tiles don’t move. In the third level, your field of tiles will get spilt up in the middle horizontally. In the fourth level it’s the same but vertically. Level 5 will work the same as level one but instead of dropping down, all the tiles will move to the left side of the screen. Level six works exactly like level two. In level 7 the tiles all move to the top of the screen. Up until level eleven, the way the tiles move have all occured in a way it has before. Level twelve, on the other hand, is a special one. There, all the tiles will move towards the middle. That is the only time it will do so. I must admit I have reached level twelve only a couple times. I wanted to reach there to make screenshots, but I couldn’t and so I got upset and frustrated. So yeah, the game gets on my nerves but I can’t keep myself from playing it… Why, I ask myself?
I feel obligated to warn you about three things, though. First of all, turn your volume off. There’s always music playing in the background and it’s the kind of music they would play at a spa in India. So if you play it in public, you might have some explaining to do. Second of all, to finish the entire game, it takes up some time. So if you just have 5 minutes to kill and you’re not the kind of person who gives up on a game just because you’re running out of time, do not play this game. Lastly, you will get upset at some time in this game. It’s not a suggestion or a warning, just a mere fact, that at a certain point in this game you will see the time bar move up and up and up and you can’t find a 
combination and you will get angry. We’ve all been through this, so don’t feel out of the ordinary for getting to that point. It usually happens at level 6, but don’t give up. You can do this, I believe in you, Hasmik believes in you, the whole world believes in you. And if you fail, just blame Obama. We all do. Thanks, Obama.
I secretly hope you’ll try this game out. If you do and you enjoyed it, please leave a comment in the comment section bellow. Perhaps we should form a closed, secret group and have meetings and tea time in my old tree house (no worries, I’ll tell you the password to get in) on Wednesdays. And preferably after that go to the Prof or Den Echo here in Antwerp to play beerpong and do shots.
And here we have landed. Because I have had some time management issues lately, I poured my soul out about not one but two guilty pleasure games of mine. I feel very awkward right now for admitting all this to you, my dearest reader. Something in me says: “Ah Hannelore, now you’ve embarrassed yourself plenty already, why stop here?” And I would’ve if not for two things. First of all, I am not nearly as drunk enough to spill all my embarrassing secrets out. In fact, I am not drunk at all and it is a Wednesday evening. My peers will be ashamed of my behavior. And this is the second thing: this is the Internet. It’ll be on here for quite some time and at a certain point in my life I’d like to get a decent job where, for starters, I will get hired, and I’d greatly appreciate it if people would not laugh at my face as a result of reading this blog post. Also, I hugged the floor a lot lately in public and that was apparently also not really socially acceptable. Okay, I didn’t hug the floor. I punched it hard with my face and I suffered. Same concept, not socially acceptable. So I figured, instead of showering you with my embarrassing stories, perhaps I should spill the dirt of someone else’s guilty pleasure game. And that special someone evidently is Joyce. It only seems fair that, since she introduced me to the hellhole game that is Tetris, she should suffer, too. Am I right? Of course I am.
Are you wearing a pair of socks? If not, please put some on. So that I can knock. Them. Off. Her guilty pleasure game is: The – wait for it – Sims! The Sims!
Okay, this is not embarrassing at all. But I tricked you good, didn’t I? You even went to your closet to put some socks on just for me to be able to knock them off your feet, all for nothing. Call me sadistic, I don’t mind! But the fact that she doesn’t understand the concept of guilty pleasures certainly is embarrassing. This is literally how the conversation went: “Hey Joyce, this is for school. Can you tell me your guilty pleasure game?” And she answered: “Oh, uhmmmm, I like to play The Sims!” End of conversation. I facepalmed so hard that it almost seemed as if my hand went all the way through my skull and came out at the back of my 
head… Good ol’ Joyce, she will always make you laugh. Once, when we were still class mates, she ripped her pants open at a very unfortunate place. This was funny, too. Absolutely unrelated to the story, but I don’t buy the concept of oversharing.
I think we can all agree that this anekdote is the perfect way to end my story about guilty pleasure games. So this will be where I leave you. Right here, Right now. It was a pleasure writing this all to and for you. I hope you had a laugh every now and then. Thanks for sticking around.
Love always, me. (You know, Hannelore.)
P.s.: the only way to really get into my super awesome and cool tree house club on Wednesdays is when you tell me your guilty pleasure game. Make it juicy. I feel that this’ll be the only way for us to bound properly. And please do not say “The Sims” or “Fifa” or “League of Legends”. These won’t work, you will not get accepted when I hear you say this nonsense. “Dungeons and Dragons” is OK. By the way, the secret password to the tree house is “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.” You’ll have to sing it.
Over and out.
