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In my ongoing mission to keep the masses entertained during the writers' strike, I've been seeking logical Mac gaming replacements for the shows you can't live without during these dark days. Tonight's very special episode:

Lost
Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: Marshall, Will and Holly, on a routine expedition, meet the greatest earthquake ever known. High on the rapids, it strikes their tiny raft and plunges them down 1,000 feet below. I think.

Confession!

I've never seen an episode of Lost. Many people tell me it's a good show, and a slightly smaller number tell me I'd like it. Of course, an even more just slightly smaller number of people also told me I'd like that talking pig movie from back in the 90s. Know what? I didn't. At all. "The talking pig will teach you how to be human," they said, and they were wrong. Only thing a talking pig can teach me is how to be a talking pig, and that's not something I need to learn this late in my life. It does remind me of a rhyme I once wrote, though:

You say that I'm a sexist pig
I guess that's what I am
Now cut a piece off of my hide
And cook me up some ham

But I digress. I haven't seen an episode of Lost, but I did see a few moments of an episode early in season one,. Some guys were in the cockpit wreckage of an airplane talking to the pilot who was once hot for Felicity and now reads peoples' minds and twitches his head a lot on Heroes, when he was yanked away by something and maybe probably killed. It's that "something" that bothers me, as it wasn't a dinosaur. If you're going to crash people on an uncharted island and have something attack them, you make that something a dinosaur. Even Sid and Marty Krofft understood that. And you don't create your own dinosaur...what's the point? Dinosaurs are already the coolest thing that ever happened to this planet, and your tiny Hollywood brain can't top that. Don't try.

My coworker watches the show, and he tells me there's some kind of smoke monster (Quick! It's the smoke monster! Hide in a restaurant or bar in Arizona, California, Delaware, New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey (casinos exempted), Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont or Washington!) and some kind of giant polar bear or abominable snowman on the show. I sure hope it's a giant polar bear on the uncharted tropical island, because...abominable snowman? Really? Last I checked, abominable snowmen aren't dinosaurs. They're lame-o-saurs. Heck, even that dorky dentist elf from Rudolph kicked an abominable snowman's ass.

Although, honestly, I'd watch Heroes if the elfin puppet dentist was on it. You'd have that Party of Five guy and the curly haired guy (who kind of looks like Yukon Cornelius, anyway) and then this little puppet elf who's thrilled about all of this because surely airplane crash survivors are going to need some dental work done, right?

But you're not reading this article in search of awesome dinosaur puppet dentist television, you're looking for games to replace your TV shows during the writers' strike. So, if you need your fix of uncharted island survival between now and whenever the writers start getting their money, I recommend Aspyr's Virtual Villagers. This game, developed by Last Day of Work and originally published by Big Fish Games (both of which are related to Lost in title, anyway), gives you control over a large number of people as they try to survive on a deserted island. No plane crash here, though. They were fleeing a volcanic eruption, and apparently did so by sailing to a neighboring island. Not sure what they did for a living before they got there, but it apparently wasn't survive, because they've forgotten everything that entails: gathering food, researching technology, erecting buildings, making babies...they can't do any of this without your help. I guess this means I'd be okay in such a situation, as I can easily handle 50% of those.

Easily, baby. 50%. Whoooooooooo!

It should be noted, however, that, unlike in Lost there's no "hatch" in Virtual Villagers. This means that what you see in the game is what you get in the game. That's unfortunate. See, TV show writers can have their cast find a hatch on an island, then do nothing with it until they figure out what they want to have under that hatch. No such luck with video games, unless the developers release an expansion pack. I checked, though, and I can find no reports of a Virtual Villagers: Under the Hatch expansion pack.

And so, unfortunately, the similarities between Lost and Virtual Villagers end with the whole on-the-island-trying-to-survive thing. Well, that and they both have a jolly, overweight, unshaven prospector who likes to lick metal.

But there is a benefit. If you neglect to watch Lost for a few weeks, it changes nothing. What happens is entirely up to the writers of the show (or so the producers want them to believe). If you neglect to play Virtual Villagers for a few weeks, they could all die by plague or starvation or smoke monster. Okay, not smoke monster, but maybe by second hand smoke monster if your TV is too close to the computer. Regardless, there's a greater incentive to stick with the game because, if you don't, you could turn on the computer to find your villagers pushing daisies.

Hey...

Learn more about Virtual Villagers.

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