Category: Gaming

My Favourite Games

By Sandeept

On July 21, 2025

In Game, Blogging, Gaming

This post is a response to the WordPress Daily Prompt on July 19, 2025:

What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why?

Although the prompt expects a single favorite game, I will list out my favourite games from all three categories.

In this post…

Favorite Card Games

I don’t play physical card games, but I used to play card games on computer. Windows came with different Among them my favourite were Hearts, Spider Solitaire, and Solitaire

1. Hearts

I enjoyed Hearts a lot although I don’t know how to explain it. Here is a gameplay found on YouTube.

2. Spider Solitaire

Spider Solitaire was probably the first game I play on my PC. The goal is to arrange all the cards into clubs, aces, diamonds, and hearts. It’s a simple game that does not demand much thinking. Here is a gameplay video:

3. Solitaire

Solitaire has the same principle as the Spider Solitaire, but it is tougher and more luck-dependent. Here is a gameplay video:

Favorite Board Games

1. Carrom

Carrom is one of the most popular board games in Nepal and India. My parents had bought me a board when I was seven and I used to play all day long with my sister, during my holiday (sometimes even alone). I was so passionate about the game that I had to win every match. When I didn’t, I often threw tantrums. I still have the board and discs at home although I have not played in a long time. I didn’t know there are international carrom tournaments and leagues.

2. Ludo

Ludo is another household name in the subcontinent. Based on both luck and tactics, ludo is a game that can be enjoyed by everyone. Online ludo apps are also highly popular.

3. Snakes and Ladders

It often comes as a companion to ludo and can be played with the same dice and pieces. The 10 × 10 board numbered from 1 at the bottom left to 100 at the top left with snakes that slide the pieces down and ladders that take them up add thrill to the game. Like ludo, it can be enjoyed by everyone.

4. Chess

Also called the Royal Game, chess is one of the oldest and popular board games. Despite catering to niche audience, its international tournaments are prestigious. As a rule-based strategic battle game, it attracts many sharp-minded people. Although I enjoy chess, I am not good at it. When I was young, I used to hear about the feats of Garry Kasparov and Vishwanath Anand. At present, Magnus Carlsen rules the game.

Chess is also one of the widely produced computer games with artificial intelligent bots playing and solving the game. Stockfish is the best bot till now, and it exceeds the capabilities of even the grandmasters including Carlsen.

Favorite Video Games

1. GTA Vice City

In 2006, a brother in my neighbourhood introduced this game to me, and I became almost addicted to it. I still play it sometimes. Although I have never completed the game, exploring its world is fun. It can also feel violent at times, so I often find myself taking long breaks before returning to playing it.

2. FIFA 15

This football game is one of my favourites of all time. The gameplay can be clunky, but I absolutely love the soundtrack it has. I often play it when I want my mind to relax a bit.

3. Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault

I got this game for free on EA Origin and loved it the instant I started playing. It begins with the training of a new recruit and end with the Omaha Beach Attack during D-Day. Although the storyline is linear and there are only a limited number of missions, I loved the gameplay and the range of missions for the year it was created (2004).

4. PUBG Mobile

In 2018, PUBG was so hyped that me and my friends all started playing it. For a mobile game, we found it smoother than many PC and other mobile games. The decreasing playing area also added to the thrill. I don’t play it now, but it influenced me so much that I read the Battle Royale book and watched its movie adaptation.

PUBG Ban: An Analysis

By Sandeept

On April 16, 2019

In Blogging, Family, Gaming, Nepal

It’s been about a week since the Government of Nepal imposed a ban on the First Person Shooting Battle Royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (popular as PUBG). The reasons cited were:

The game is addictive.

It is violent.

It affected the grade of students.

It lowered creativity.

The number of complaints that parents and teachers registered was the trigger behind the restriction.

Some reactions that I saw are:

“Excellent! Such violent games should be banned.”

“Good! Our children will focus on studies now.”

“The government encroached our freedom!”

“I had not played once before the ban!”

“As long as VPN is available, no worries!

Now, let me analyse the cause and effect.

#1 The game

As it is an FPS survival game, PUBG is inherently violent. However, this is not the first violent game. In fact, I have seen that most popular video games are violent. And they have been around us in silence for decades.

So, what exposed PUBG? I believe it’s the interactive mode. It can be played solo, or as a squad of two or four. In most cases, you need to move together. Communication is important. The words “kill”, “help”, “fight”, “guns”, “bombs”, and so on are going to attract the people around you. If you are a teenager and if your parents hear this, they might believe you are involved in something unpleasant or that the game is promoting violence.

Another problem the game has is that it is for teens. However, the nature of the game and online interaction be difficult even for adults. There is high chance of cyber bullying and it may be disturbing for some. But teens (and even pre-teens) play mature games (which have not been banned) all the time.

#2 Parents and Children

I see problem in our parenting. At the age of two, when a child does not want to eat food, they are shown YouTube videos. Soon they get addicted. By the age of three, the child starts scrolling the “smartphones”. When they reach four, they become aggressive when they don’t get the phones. They also start playing games and get furious when the parents don’t want them to play.

Though most teenagers today have not come through the path, they are naturally curious and are also dependent on peers in making decision. If someone says, this game is nice, they decide it is nice. As these teenagers also have access to smartphones (parents buy phones for them to meet their obstinate demands), they soon get addicted. Notion is that a child should stay at home. If a child does not go out, all is well! However, parents seldom take care of what their children do at home with phones and computers at their hands.

Parents themselves are also ignorant of the effects of social media and long hours of gaming on their children. So, they don’t talk with their children. They try to impose a restriction without proper reasoning. That’s counterproductive as restriction evokes curiosity.

#3 Government and the limitation of restriction

The government did what parents wanted and imposed a ban on the game. They recognized the problem but without understanding the limitation of the restriction.

As said earlier, there are numerous interactive, survival, strategy games available on and off the internet. Internet is the modern Hydra. You cut a head, another takes its place. Today PUBG created problem, tomorrow some other game will. How many games will government shut down?

Not just games, social media could also be behind poor performances and violent inclinations. Will the government ban social media? If there is enough complaints, there is a possibility that they will be banned.

Until then, let me enjoy my freedom!

Battle Royale: PUBG, the movie, the novel

By Sandeept

On October 12, 2018

In Review, Blogging, Book Review, Game, Gaming, Movies

PUBG: “The original Battle Royale game”

My best friend Anish introduced me to PUBG. The concept was simple. Maximum of 100 players dropped into an island fighting each other and the winner was the last one standing. It looked interesting but my phone could not meet its specifications. A couple of months later, Ashok (my friend from college) discovered an emulator for desktop. At least a dozen of us downloaded the emulator and the game. When the game downloaded, it said: “The original Battle Royale game is now installed on your device.”

The term “Battle Royale” intrigued me. I had seen the term before in Wikipedia when I read about the game but I had somehow skipped it. That time, I guess I only wanted to know why the game was popular. I did not give it another thought. While playing the game (and after going through a lot of “funny moments”, which were not so funny), a thought came into my mind, What if I could write a novel based on the game?

That’s why I looked if there was a novel like that. And (unfortunately for my creativity) I found the Japanese movie. Curious, I went through the Wikipedia, movie was actually inspired by a Japanese novel.

Battle Royale: The Movie (2000)

The Kinji Fukasaku movie destroyed my PUBG experience. It was unlike any of the games I had played. It felt scary, tumultuous, and even childish at times, but mostly it felt nauseous. I mean, who would be in a right state of mind when you are forced to kill your friends in an island. Crazy situation dictates crazy measures but the madness of the fifteen-year-olds disturbed me.

The movie, in my opinion, is not the best in terms of execution but the idea itself felt great. What would happen if 42 students are forced to kill each other in an island by the government? The question hooked me till the end. The outcome of the movie was not unexpected. I actually knew who were going to survive but still I hoped Kawada survived. The end of Kitano (former teacher and BR Programme Supervisor) too felt comical and I thought it could have been better.

Battle Royale: The Novel (1997)

Koshun Takami, the author of the novel sent the book for a horror competition in 1996. The horror of being killed by your own friend is inexplicable but the book is more like dystopian adventure. The dispute of genre probably helped the book. Takami’s book became a best-seller and controversial because of its violence. It was banned in several countries. Even the Diet (Japanese legislature) was interested. Then later, it was made into a movie. I felt so excited when I read this history.

And I (wrongly) thought the movie was dark! The novel is even darker. It’s been inspired from the Pro Wrestling Battle Royale as described in the “Introduction” section. (You must have noticed a real long list of inspirations by now.) “I feel like puking,” Shuya Nanahara and Shogo Kawada say often in the book. That’s what I felt. Yes, the novel is even more nauseous than the book.

The book explains the motive behind the initiation of the Battle Royale Programme aka the Programme clearly than that in the movie. It goes in length inside the minds of each character to give the reader complete information about them. This scheme is great mostly and feels boring at times, but I love Takami for taking the risk. The end of the Programme Supervisor Kinapatsu Sakamochi is not comical but I did not feel the satisfaction. I wanted Nanahara to kill him instead of Kawada. Kawada did have personal issue with the government and Sakamochi is a government official but Nahahara had a personal vendetta against him. Sakamochi had raped his caretaker Anno and had killed his brotherly best friend, Yoshitoki Kuninobu.

Differences

Both the Battle Royale novel and the movie have the same basic premise: 42 students forced to kill each other by the government. However, the novel is about the revolt against atrocious Fascist government, while the movie is about the adult-teenagers (teacher-student) relationship. The attack on Kitano in the beginning and then his love for the disciplined Noriko (despite being the Program Supervisor) emphasize this. The movie also might have been made in a lighter tone to make it approvable for 15+.

The book is not just about the teenagers and the adults. It is about the system that has been economically successful but does not tolerate protest. Any protester is a threat to the government who is removed immediately. The Programme is about creating mistrust among people, to keep them divided and to rule upon them. It is a story of how three students deceive the government by trusting each other—an act that was totally unexpected in the state of chaos. Government is the villain in the book. Kinpatsu Sakamochi is only a scratch in a very long and webbed list of villains.

PUBG, on the other hand is a sort of distraction to the youth. A way to let out your frustration so that you can start something anew in an efficient manner. (I am reminded of Fight Club, which I watched today.) The game is addictive and I love the way it has been executed. However, in some years I feel it is going to fade away. I don’t know why. I just feel it. (Let’s say like Kawada’s sixth sense in the novel.)

To conclude this review…

I found the book and the movie influential, though the movie has a lot of issues. (Stephen King and Quentin Tarantino haven’t praised them just to make them popular.) Battle Royale also inspired gaming franchises, which will keep on increasing the popularity of both the book and the movie.

I still have a lot of things to say about Battle Royale—book and the movie, as well as some of the individual characters. I won’t include all of them here. I will come up with more essays on this topic. (That’s a sort of influence, isn’t it?)