2018-01-17 04:15:50 (edited by Dark 2018-12-01 13:42:32)

This is a counterpard to My list of Amazon audiogames found here, however obviously, this list is about the random stuff I've tried that aren't audiogames since believe it or not, I do! do other things occasionally big_smile.

This list covers audio toys and bits of fun, skills I find randomly useful (or not as the case may be), skills that  expand Alexa's functions etc. all are accessible, however again thanks to Amazon's silly geoblocking policy these are all skills from  the Uk. Feel free to suggest things to try out and add to this list, since like the audiogames list I'll be expanding it from time to time as I try new skills.
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7 minute workout

A lovely idea in principle. Get given a number of exercises and told to do them for 30 seconds. Only problem? The  dev planely assumes everyone is as much an exercise aficionado as they are, and some of these exercises are obscure.
While the ap does include notes on each exercise if you don't know what a half plank or a trunk curl is, the notes are very cursory and I have a nasty feeling I managed to strain something when trying to obey the instructions.
A shame, since if this one had better instructions it could be really awesome.

Animal game

Whether this is a game is debatable, but I'd call it more of an audio toy myself.
Get alexa to guess what animal you are thinking of. A little bit of a cheat since Alexa does ask questions that need an answer more than yes or no, eg "what colour is it?"
But still an amusing use of Ai.

Animal sounds

A counterpart to Bio Acoustics 101 which I mentioned in the other topic, though this one imho has  quality sfx and more frequent updates, indeed it was sort of annoying that the bio acoustics horse didn't exactly sound much like a horse where as this one does, though this one doesn't come with a quiz.

As a bonus it even has easter eggs such as the sound of a unicorn, shark  and a dinosaur big_smile.

Ambient sounds, bird sounds

Nice if you like to hear lots of bird song in the morning, which we do. Actually what is rather good about the ambient sounds skills is that the developers put enough time to recording a long enough sample to make the skill not be monotonous.

Ambient sounds fire place sounds

Actually used this one on christmas eve, as well as a few times to go to sleep, plus it goes wonderfully  with our electric fire. 
Like the bird sounds it's a good long sample with a lot of pops and crackels to listen to and actually is! rather relaxing.

Ambient sounds, distant thunder storm

I like storms, enough said. This one is actually pretty extreme to say it's supposed to be distant.

Ambient sounds thunder storm

Again a nice storm sound set, and one which is a little more thundery than the last.

Ambient sounds, rain sounds

To say this is supposed to be relaxing rain, it's actually more of a downpour! I know the idea of having ambient rain sounds  north England seems a bit pointless, but usually the rain here has the irritating habbit of being enough to be soaking, but not enough to actually sound nice drumming on the windows.
Plus I confess, the ambient sound of rain is also one with rather nice romantic associations for my lady and I.

Bbc news

Get the bbc news headlines on a flash briefing each day. This is one my lady and I find very handy for a general overview, especially when combined with sky news and do each morning.

Bbc

Not to be confused with aforesaid news which got renamed. Listen to bbc radio stations and podcasts and even save your favourites, probably more handy to people who know the bbc schedule rather better than I do big_smile.

Chewbacca chat

Partly one of the skills that enspired me to make this list, it's not a game, but my god is it randomly fun! ever wanted a conversation with your favourite walking carpet? Now you can! say anything to Chewy and he'll respond in his own inevitable wookie way. Actually I was inspired to try this by a book my brother got for christmas, a tourists's guide to speaking wookie.

What Mrs. dark and I find particularly amusing is how upset Chewy always sounds, (the poor guy never seems to be having a good day), even when you ask him a perfectly normal question.

From a technical standpoint, there are a nice selection of wookie noises on here and the random generation is pretty good, so even if you hear the same samples again, you don't hear them in the same order which is nice.

Classic fm

Exactly what it says, listen to classic fm, aka the Uk radio station Mrs. Dark and I listen to most with a handy Alexa ap.
Very nice you don't need anything else for this.

Daily inspiration

Activated this one by accident. Get a randomly inspiring thought, it doesn't work on your flash briefing, but you can activate it each day. Depends upon your tolerance for feel good slogans, I'm afraid the ones I heard were more annoying than encouraging, but your mileage may vary.

Dragon facts

For someone who loves dragons this was a must, though the problem is three out of five facts it tells me were things I know, which either means I know my dragons, or the skill is too pedestrian big_smile.

Fidgit spinner

More of an audio toy than a game (hence why it's been moved out of the games list), but one that is actually quite fun in a pointless way. Spin the spinner and see how many spins you get, get a high enough number of spins and you can level up.
Each level you get five or six new spinners to play with, each with a new audio sound and different special abilities.
I'm not sure what the special abilities do, but being able to spin over the rainbow or at the rainbow's end on a rainbow spinner with a tinkly sound is sort of nice big_smile.

My only major problem with this one is that it doesn't save, but since the random numbers are relatively generous getting through the different levels and seeing the spinners doesn't take too much repetition.
I'll admit that I was surprised to find this one as amusing as it was.

Golum

Talk to us my precious, but why do we sounds like Alexa? we isn't a woman is we precious? and our voices isn't made by electronicses no it isn't my precious! no!

Random quotseseses from Lord of the ringses it has my precious. But we doesn't like synthses my precious! no! we doesn't sound like Alexa's voices do we my precious? we should squeeeeeeeze! those developerses! my precious yes! nasty they, is, lazy they is. and they doesn't know what we sounses like does they my precious.

Take Golum's advices they should my precious, and throw this skill into the cracks of doom.

Goodbye

Actually a skill we use quite a lot. Say goodbye, goodnight etc  and Alexa says goodbye back, though in fairness I don't know how much functionality is Alexa's or whether the skill is being launched everytime we say goodbye.

Harry potter, would you rather

Would you rather kiss Severus snape or Draco Malfoy? would you rather eat a meal at the three broomsticks or at the Burrow with the weaslies?
This one is so wonderfully odd it is fun, and a nice party game to play with your significant other (especially if your significant other is a Harry potter fan).

Jerasic bark

Not as good as the Miow or Chewbacca chat, but nice if you like hearing dogs bark, still a shame the responsiveness isn't better and that it doesn't have as many samples, also you can't bark at it and have it bark back, which is disappointing.

Btw, Reever didn't take any notice whatsoever!

Joke of the day

Get alexa to tell you a joke each day. Jokes range in quality from very cruddy ones to actually rather amusing, such as "its very hard to say what my wife does. She sell see shells on the see shaw", and "there's a new store opened called moderation. They've got everything!"
And my lady and I are sad enough people to actually enjoy even the crappy ones big_smile.

Joke of the day flash briefing

Have Alexa' read the joke of the day as part of your flash briefing. Goes very nicely if you listen to the news each day, especially if you change the order and have it at  end of your briefing rather than at the start to cheer you up from all of the grim current world events, or alternatively if its one of those days of terrible jokes, show you that things could always be worse big_smile.

Love poems for her

Whoever wrote this skill, they are no poet, listen to their rhymes, and you will know it. I tried it myself, on my lovely wife, she had not heard worse poetry, in her entire life!

In fairness we didn't expect this one to actually be any good, but how bad! it was was almost amusing in and of itself.

Miow!

As Mrs. Dark is a cat lover (as well as a dog lover), we had to give this one a try.
Converse to Alexa in cat! what is particularly nice is that Alexa responds to actual Miow! sounds, so you can have a wonderfully random feline conversation! there are also lots of cat sounds sampled, which make this one more like a conversation and less like random samples playing, even if it is! random samples playing big_smile.

Meet my friend

Incredibly pointless, have Alexa greet people who you introduce it (or her if your seriously messed up), to. Actually rather silly and a nice way to make visitors laugh, or at least the friends we tried it on laughed big_smile.

Monster madness

Okay this one is more of an audio toy than a game hence why I'm putting it in this list. From the maker of Harry potter letters and animal letters, it’s a really silly game where you take turns opening random doors.
Some have monsters, some have animals, some have other things which gain or lose you points.
The supposed "challenge" is that you are never told your score or other people's and occasionally get the chance to trade scores, but as its not too hard to keep track of two or three other score counts this wasn't exactly difficult.

On the plus side, the sounds, the random descriptions, the weird music and general fun of the game is well worth a try once or twice, especially if you have a significant other who is just as likely to laugh at the idea of a meal at a zombie restaurant costing you an arm and a leg as you are big_smile.

Name of thrones

Get your game of thrones name. Actually have Alexa generate a Martin sounding name for you. Unfortunately, the names don't come with any history or information or details of when you might be slane in inter house politics in a grizly way, so while this is a fun idea, the execution doesn't go far enough to be interesting.

Pandora's box

Tell Alexa to open Pandora's box and be amused at the dire consequences or Alexa's wimpiness for not opening it! big_smile.
There seem to be several responses which is nice, and lots are random, though it's a shame this one doesn't have sound.

Puzzle runner memory

This one is definitely more of a random audio toy than a game, however it's so silly it's actually rather fun.
Be presented with two options, eg "you come upon two doors, left or right", or "A ghost train, scream, or shriek!"

Choose an option by saying it, however only one option is right. A wrong choice will kick you back to the beginning and you need to start over, remembering the choices you made. Ten right choices you win. New options appear each day, though this really isn't a thing I could play daily.

For fun for a strange five minutes though, especially with the rather random sfx.

Question of the day flash briefing

Okay much as I enjoy the actual question of the day skill, this I have to say is really rather dire. Basically it tells you as part of your flash briefing what percentage of people got the previous days question answer right or wrong. The problem? whenever we tried it it never had the right previous day question, usually one from ages ago, also the stats it read out with that question seemed wildly different to the stats in the game.
Better just listen to what the actual question of the day game says when it gives you the question and keep your flash briefing shorter.

Skill finder

One problem with Alexa is that you can't look at new skills or even list your own skills efficiently, it tells you them in groups of three and constantly asks "do you want to try that one?"
So this i thought might help, particularly to find new games.
Sadly no! it's functionality isn't that much more than Alexa itself, and when a skill which perports to help finding skills tells you to go to the website that is pretty dire. Also doesn't help that it's supposed "daily skill" where it tells you about one random skill each day has had the same bloody dice game skill on there for weeks!
Rather pointless really, and a shame since it could've been very useful

Sky news

Get a headline report from Sky news. This works with flash briefing so is handy to do daily. Very nice for my lady and I, especially when combined with the bbc news headlines for getting an overview of what is going on.

Sorting game for Harry potter

Not really sure if this is a game or not (hence why i've moved it to this topic), but hay. Take the sorting hat test. What is quite nice is there seems to be quite a range of questions, and the questions aren't simple (don't expect to be asked if your favourite animal is a lion, snake, eagle or badger).
Both Mrs. Dark and I wound up in Ravenclaw, which is a bit odd, though second time through she ended up in Gryffindor.


Startrek auto destruct sequence

#Especially amusing for people who have their Amazon word set to "computer!" you can now set auto destruct and hear the count down. Sadly you can't use this to  bluff any aliens out of getting off your vessel since everyone knows it is just for fun.

Tell lord Vader

Ever wanted to tell lord vader to search the hoth system? now you can. Sort of amusing, but your responses need to be quite precise, also a shame there are no authentic darth sounds with this one.

Tongue twister

Sort of an extention of Alexa's own function to hear a tongue twister, however where Alexa on its own only seems to know a couple, this skill has more, albeit none I heard were particularly unusual and there seems to be a relatively small number. Still good if you want a random laugh tying up your tongue.

Translate it

Enabled due to a discussion with mrs. Dark about the latin for mouse, then found it won't do latin big_smile.
Still it will do aa lot of other languages, including Welsh, though not vietnamese or croation apparently.
handy for getting sentences translated, although sometimes Alexa jumps in before I'd finished speaking which could be rather amusing and exasperating.

Steven king facts

Okay this one is a wee bit disappointing since all the facts it has are fairly general ones you can get from wikipedia or wherever else. We were hoping for a steven king trivia game.

Werewolf

find out what werewolves in your local area are up to and join the daily howl! a random daily skill telling you odd things about werewolves, how to avoid vampire slayers and other fun facts!
Quite amusing for a bit of fun, though I'm disappointed the song "hungry like the wolf" hasn't appeared as a recommended Werewolf music choice yet big_smile.

Wheel of time Trivia

Again handy facts about the series if you wanted to know about a particular group, however it wonn't respond to character names or other keywords. A nice idea to have a WoT database (since the book series is massive and full of characters), but a shame it can't have the functionality of a true woT wiki at your fingertips

Would you rather

Would you rather have squirrels for hands or bicycle wheels for feet? Would you rather eat the food you most hated for a week or  your favourite food for a year? What is particularly amusing is that you get  what percentage of players agree with you.
Dull on your own, but fun when playing with someone else, especially when said someone else is your significant other with whom you can have random debates about how exactly said squirrels would get grafted onto your hands and whether any squirrels would actually be harmed in the  process or indeed whether the squirrels were endangered red squirrels or not big_smile.

Word of the day

Get a random and extremely funny description of an odd English word each day. This is the flash briefing counterpart to the Word of the day quiz skill and runs along side it. Actually really fun and extremely amusing and one my lady and I do every day, though recently they changed their main announcer to a rather grim sounding guy with a new jersy accent and a far less competant reading manner than the normal chap which is a shame.

Word nurd

A useful skill for me, ask Alexa how to spell words. True, alexa will do this by default, but the word nurd skill lets you have words spelled letter by letter or repeated, plus seemed far more accurate in what word Alexa picked up.

Wiki brains

Extend Alexa's ability to look up stuff on Wikipedia. Good in terms of being more accurate at picking things out and better with facts, but still has the essential problem Alexa does with wikipedia, namely  it only reads the top heading of the article not the hole thing, which makes this skill less use than it could be for answering questions or finding out random facts.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-17 18:04:33

A few additional ones:

Chuck Norris Facts:
There are a few ways to activate this one, and there are a couple different versions, but some of them are pretty amusing

Woof WOof:
Just tell this to Alexa and  be amused

Ambient Sound; Box Fan:
Seriously....  But, yeah... It actually works.

Beam Me Up:
Amusing, especially if your wake word is Computer, like mine is.

Stream Twitch:
You can have Alexa enable Twitch and then  activate a given stream and listen in.

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-17 19:39:02

super alexa mode. to activate, recite the konami code. for those living under a space rock, it's up up down down left right left right b a start.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2018-01-17 19:56:01

I was happy to find that Google Home also has the Harry Potter sorting hat! It doesn't have the HP would you rather though but you can talk to Dusten from Stranger Things.

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2018-01-17 21:12:40

Lol I'll have to try those, I'm particularly amused at the conami code (I still remember that one from mk3).

I'll update my list with thoughts when I have tried some more.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-18 02:56:11

Here's one. It's called distance between. to use it just say, "Alexa, distance between Tampa Florida and Seattle Washington", and Alexa will tell you the number of miles between the two locations. I wish she would also tell you in what direction the second location is from the first, so the above example would result in "The distance between Tampa Florida and Seattle Washington is 2,500 miles to the northwest as the crow flies.

2018-01-18 13:18:10

On that note, you can also has her:

Population, Population density, and area of a city/state/country.

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-18 16:24:11

A few of these are things Alexa seems to do automatically without a specific skill.
I tried "beam me up" and Alexa responded anyway even though I haven't enabled the skill. Similarly, Alexa will tell distance to! a certain location from the current one, even if not distance between two specific points which is odd.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-18 17:55:44

I discovered that too. You don't need a skill to ask Alexa how far away some place is, where it uses the Echo's current location as one end of the how far question. But if you want to be able to ask the distance between two locations where neither location is your current location, you need the Distance Between skill or something similar.

2018-02-08 11:33:11

Okay, updated this with a couple more I tried the other night big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-24 06:03:51

Okay updated this one with a few random things, especially the Golum skill big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-01 13:43:04

Just to let people know I added another random audio toy to this list, Monster madness.

Definitely more of a toy than a game, but lots of fun either way.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-02 11:48:29

Hey dark.
Quick question: Why didn't you include Jeopardy and team jeopardy. I think people will love those. Side note, I suck at them. tongue
Ted talks is cool as well as radio mystery theater and the Xbox skill

2018-12-02 13:40:45

@ryok, this is a list of the none! game related stuff I have tried, which is why its here in offtopic. For the list of games (including jeopardy), see This list in the articles room

Jeopardy is on there, my lady and I play it each day. I'm not sure what ted talks or radio mystery theatre are exactly but I can check, likewise since I don't have a xbox I haven't specifically tried xbox skills.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-01-19 01:27:00

Greetings all!

TED Talks, come from the "(technology, entertainment, design) conference."

You can find its Alexa skill  here