DZDrizzle
The Game Shelf
A small games site that grew out of four earlier projects and keeps adding more: a storybook you decode, a German course told as a spy story, a typing game with a penguin coach, a game about protecting a very small planet, a box of Penguin Explorer games made for touch, train trips through the German-speaking countries, and a garden where English and German words grow from shared roots.
Storm track
Time runs across. Height is maximum sustained wind, read from each status's METAR. The red ring marks the current position, and the cone ahead of it assumes conditions persist. A dashed stretch spans two weeks or more without a report, and the time axis breaks across it, marked // with how long it lasted.
Meteogram /the last two days and the week ahead/
Advisories /13, newest first/
-
Advisory 13 DZ Drizzle
The owner gained a private admin page with the shelf's numbers, counts only: profiles, saves per game, the busiest boards, links to Stormy Fans, stamps earned against stamps collected, and passkeys, over 7, 30, or 90 days or all time. Stormy Fans' admin page links to it. Shipped and in use. The owner's first look at the real numbers comes next, and later a redesign of the shelf's overall layout from mockups, with no date set.
METAR XGSH 120934Z 23005KT 8000 -DZ BKN020 13/07 Q1014 NOSIG RMK 59 TESTS= -
Advisory 12 TSTM Thunderstorm
A morning burst. The linked sign-in went live once the owner set its secrets, and stamps earned by playing followed: ten Stormy Fans stamps, one for each game and one for the Penguin Arcade box, such as Codebreaker for solving Alice, Bob & Eve's Book One or Green fingers for 25 Wortgarten pairs. The shelf works them out on its own server from the bests and saves it already keeps, and one press in the profile panel collects them on the linked card. The About section now spans the page in three tiles, and the footer gives the copyright year.
SPECI XGSH 120838Z 27018G32KT 5000 +TSRA BKN025CB 13/07 Q1009 RMK FREQ LTGICCG 10 STAMPS 54 TESTS= -
Advisory 11 PTCLDY Partly cloudy
A linked sign-in with Stormy Fans was built and tested on both sites: someone with a profile here reaches their fan card signed in with one press, a member there reaches the shelf the same way, so nobody signs up twice, and either side can unlink. The profile panel gained a Stormy Fans part. It goes live once the owner sets its secrets.
METAR XGSH 101710Z 24008KT 9999 SCT040 13/07 Q1015 NOSIG= -
Advisory 10 HURCN 1 Hurricane, category 1
Growth in scope the same evening. Wortgarten's second round added two beds and 59 more word pairs, and a German interface beside the English one, chosen from the browser's language. Each new pair was confirmed against two sources and checked again independently, and a German language check corrected 61 strings.
SPECI XGSH 241654Z 09070G90KT 2000 +TSRA BKN008CB 13/07 Q0985 TEMPO 0800 +TSRA RMK 137 PAIRS 11 BEDS= -
Advisory 9 TRPCL STM Tropical storm
A new game, Wortgarten, was picked, mocked up, built, fact-checked twice, and launched in a day: English and German words grow from shared old roots, and grafting the real sound changes, such as d to t and p to pf, makes both words bloom. It has 78 word pairs in nine beds, each confirmed by three sources, and two high-score boards, for word pairs and the best guess streak, and the Shelf now serves two more fonts itself. Stable and in use. A listen to the spoken words on an iPhone comes next.
METAR XGSH 241549Z 09035G55KT 3000 +TSRA BKN012CB 13/07 Q0998 TEMPO 1000 +TSRA RMK 7 BOXES 13 GAMES 78 PAIRS= -
Advisory 8 TURB Turbulence
Draw the Slide, in Penguin Arcade, was rebuilt: 20 harder slides in four chapters, with four pens, ice, boost, snow, and jelly. Most of the floor is water now, so a lazy line no longer wins, unlocked pens carry back to earlier slides, and three stars now means every star on the first drop. Its Least ink board started fresh, with the old scores kept.
METAR XGSH 231642Z 25022G38KT 9999 SCT045 13/07 Q1006 NOSIG RMK 20 SLIDES 60 STARS= -
Advisory 7 HURCN 5 Hurricane, category 5
A new project started and shipped on the shelf the same day: Sprachreise, kawaii train trips through the German-speaking countries, in four linked games, Schweizreise, Deutschlandreise, Österreichreise, and Liechtensteinreise, with about 880 questions between them. They share one box with a DACH-Express departure board, the first of the shelf's collections, where several games share a page of their own. Each was fact-checked against official sources, and the second checks made 22 corrections in Germany and 19 in Austria. Stormy Fans members can now collect a stamp for visiting with Stamp my card. Stable and in use. A signed-in Stormy Fans check-in is tried next, harder Draw the Slide levels for Penguin Arcade are being built, and what Sprachreise gets next is the owner's call.
SPECI XGSH 231515Z 090145G175KT 0500 +TSRA OVC004CB 13/07 Q0915 TEMPO 0200 +TSRA RMK 6 BOXES 12 GAMES= -
Advisory 6 HURCN 5 Hurricane, category 5
A morning of releases across the shelf. Alice, Bob & Eve gained Eve's Mailbag, a replay mode with endless new letters to crack for every cipher, harder as they go, and Book Two, The Meadow Post, with six new sealed chapters, from password fingerprints to a final unmasking. Doppelleben's typed story adventure now covers all nine weeks, up from two, and Tippi's learning tools came over in Doppelleben's own style: spaced repetition, tap tiles on phones, the German voice, and a daily session. In Tippi's Unterwegs outings the story's newest lines stay in view when an answer panel or the phone keyboard opens. In Penguin Arcade, the box of four Penguin Explorer games made for touch that joined the shelf on 21 October, Snowy Sled Race answers touch at once and Iceberg Dash has a hold-to-go-faster button.
SPECI XGSH 230953Z 090145G175KT 0500 +TSRA OVC004CB 13/07 Q0915 TEMPO 0200 +TSRA RMK 13 CHAPTERS 9 OF 9 WEEKS= -
Advisory 5 HURCN 4 Hurricane, category 4
A follow-up release in the morning. Six more outings arrived, emoji now show on older phones and Windows 10 too, Word Family Tree offers real words as answers, and Verb Factory and Verb Igloo gained themed rounds. Both releases went out after the full set of tests passed. The owner picks what comes next, likely built in the next session: Unterwegs in the daily Heute session, untimed Abenteuer practice for verb forms and word order, or more outings.
SPECI XGSH 230756Z 090125G150KT 0800 +TSRA OVC005CB 13/07 Q0935 TEMPO 0300 +TSRA RMK TIPPI 20 GAMES 19 OUTINGS= -
Advisory 4 HURCN 3 Hurricane, category 3
A big Tippi release just after midnight. A fourth lane, Unterwegs, sends Penelope, Tippi, or Pinguini on outings to real places such as the supermarket, the doctor, the bank, or a hotel: the words and phrases come first, then a short scene to handle, at three levels. Eight more quick games joined, the six mockups among them: Prep Lock, Penguin Duel, Verb Factory, Verb Igloo, Word Family Tree, and Im Büro, plus Ice Memory and Domino, which share a level ladder with Pair Match. Word Blaster was made clearer, and every page on the Shelf now shows a preview when its link is shared.
SPECI XGSH 222201Z 090105G130KT 1000 +TSRA OVC006CB 13/07 Q0955 TEMPO 0400 +TSRA RMK TIPPI 20 GAMES 13 OUTINGS= -
Advisory 3 HURCN 2 Hurricane, category 2
A burst of work on Tippi, one of the four games. A learning rework shipped, with two lanes, Heute and Lernen, meanings asked both ways round, and a fix for the same words coming up again and again. Four new quick games joined it the same day, each playable on a keyboard or a phone: Gender Detective, which collects article clues in a notebook, Phrase Builder, Recall Ladder, and Echo, for listening and writing. Tippi now has 12 quick games, up from 8, and 4,206 learning items and 157 preposition phrases, each with hand-written example sentences. Six more game ideas were drawn up as playable mockups; the owner picks which to build, and they follow as soon as chosen, likely in the next session.
SPECI XGSH 221958Z 09090G110KT 1500 +TSRA OVC008CB 13/07 Q0970 TEMPO 0600 +TSRA RMK TIPPI 12 GAMES 4206 ITEMS= -
Advisory 2 HURCN 1 Hurricane, category 1
Tippi joined as a fourth game, a typing tutor for German with a penguin coach, merged in from a project of its own.
SPECI XGSH 210124Z 09070G90KT 2000 +TSRA BKN008CB 13/07 Q0985 TEMPO 0800 +TSRA RMK 4 GAMES= -
Advisory 1 TRPCL STM Tropical storm
Launched as one games site for three projects that had been separate: Alice, Bob & Eve, Doppelleben, and Asteroid Defender 3D, each still its own game. The site added optional profiles, signed in with an email link or a passkey, saves that follow a player between devices, and public high-score boards. Confirming the details on the privacy page comes next, then perhaps a quick way to switch games from inside a game, within a few days.
METAR XGSH 210102Z 09035G55KT 3000 +TSRA BKN012CB 13/07 Q0998 TEMPO 1000 +TSRA RMK 3 GAMES 10 BOARDS=
Pilot reports /comments/
No reports filed yet.
File a pilot report
Submissions need JavaScript.