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Sunday 26 May 2019

The Honeymoon Adventure - Day Two - Calgary Zoo Four

Well with our upcoming adventure to Winnipeg, I figure I should get a move on with posting the rest of our honeymoon adventure. So let us continue with the next leg of the Calgary Zoo: The Dorothy Harvie Gardens.

This part may have been my favourite of all; as much as I enjoy being inside... if I'm going to be outside, it may as well be in a warm environment with lots of pretty things to look at. Now this area was quite big on large areas of growing plants and things... in retrospect, perhaps I should have taken a picture of some of the beautiful areas and arrangements of flowers and plants and things; though to be fair, it was kinda raining and/or dreary at the time. If any of you live in an area where your city grows arrangements of pretty flowers and things, then you can just imagine that, only in the middle of a Zoo.

(As a side note: if you grow your own personal arrangements of pretty flowers and garden things, I would love to see your handiwork as I've been trying for years to grow even a single flower within my house and it never seems to work out.)

Within the Dorothy Harvie Gardens area there is a building which has some neat information on scientifical such as photosynthesis and how butterflies keep themselves warm using sunlight similar to how a solar panel works. Probably even cooler than that, is that there's a huge room inside the building which is kept at tropical temperatures so that they can grow real live plants of all sorts from different places as well as keep butterflies in there.

Let me share some of what I saw:


I could have taken so many more pictures of the plants, but with there being so many plants it would have been an almost endless stream of greenery that nobody would really be able to appreciate without actually being there. As you can see, I did manage to get some neat pictures of some of the giant butterflies that were there. Of course, it can be rather difficult to get a good idea of just how big some of these flying bugs can be; so here's a video to give you a much better visual of how huge these things are.


Isn't that insane? It definitely blew my mind. There are tons of these things flying around this greenhouse-type building. They also have a space for incubating butterfly cocoons as well where you can see through the glass rows and rows of hanging cocoons, all at different points of growth from beginning up to hatching. Of course... again... I didn't think to take pictures BUT IT'S REEEEALLY COOL YOU SHOULD GO SEE IT!

If you're at all a fan of animals, then you really should go to a zoo and check it out. Maybe some people would think it's cruel to lock up animals, but seriously... how would we get a chance to see this stuff and learn about them and appreciate them if we as regular people never have a chance to really see them in person?

Stay tuned for next time when I tell you about the Eurasia section.


~ Kyle Welykholowa

Friday 24 May 2019

Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 7 - Part 3

Oh my, we're going to have to start recording new videos right away. Looks like we have quite a bit of back and forth going on with the Lizardmen right now and a stalemate with the Orcs. Stay tuned for coming new videos.



This campaign and more can be found on my Age of Wonders page.

Check out more of my stuff!
- On YouTube
- On Twitch
- On Twitter

~ DaemonVirus

Friday 17 May 2019

=== PC Game Review -- Mall Empire - Indie / Casual - 1/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?
Today I bring you a review of the PC game Mall Empire. Now... the first thing I want to say is that by no means am I PURPOSELY looking for awful games to review. I'm just looking to pay some games and give my thoughts on them. Honestly I really want to like games I play and do give them the best chance possible to show me everything they have. I really REALLY tried to give Mall Empire a chance, but it just... isn't... good.


This game was released February 16th, 2017 on Steam. It is currently not in early access, and I'm sure that I must have gotten this game on sale, because there's no way this is worth $4.49 CAD. As you can see by the art-style, Mall Empire is not a premium game, it's definitely a casual / indie designed game from a small team.

Gameplay:
The goal of Mall Empire is to design a mall in which many customer want to visit and spend their money, allowing the player to make money, buy more things, make a bigger mall, and make more money.


The first thing you'll need to start your "empire" is to spend hearts to unlock shops. Hearts are earned by having an open mall and having customers visit the mall. Every once in a while you get a heart just by having customers coming and going throughout the day.


After you've unlocked shops by spending hearts, you have to spend money to build those shops in your mall. Each shop has a different starting amount of stock and makes a different amount of money for their product. As each shop sells product, it gains experience and eventually levels up which allows the player to put points into either more stock which allows you to sell more during each day, or more quality which allows each stock item to sell for more money.


There is a day/night cycle in this game which really doesn't serve too much of a purpose other than to reset the stock levels of the shops and give a break in the customers coming to the mall.


Other things the player is able to do with their money includes investing in advertising (which brings more customers to the mall), residential (which brings more customers to the mall), or Office (Which can affect some maintenance costs... or bring more customers to the mall).


If you reach some set requirements such as making so much money or having so many customer visit, the player can then level up their mall to gain access to more shops, more investments and more combinations of shops to make more money with when arranged in set patterns.

Graphics:
The graphics of this game are, well... it's a functioning game. Graphics aren't the most important thing on my list of stuff to care about when playing a game, though it is nice to have something pretty too look at from time to time. Considering the price tag of this game, I wasn't expecting much and I was probably able to get Mall Empire on sale for somewhere between $1-$2 if memory serves me right. So I didn't take the design of the graphics too harshly when deciding how I felt about the game.

Now I did find that there are quite a few spelling errors and issues with translation. English was not the first language of the design of Mall Empire and that's okay. In fact, even though there were many spelling errors and issues with translation, I still had a little bit of fun with it right up until the end.

Sound:
For the game sounds there isn't much to talk about. It's not that the game sounds aren't great... there just aren't any. Not even basic sounds for building or clicking on buttons or collecting income. Nothing.

Though there aren't any game sounds, the designers were at least nice enough to put in some music. The music is actually quite nice to listen to and in my opinion doesn't get annoying at all. The issue I have with the music is that it doesn't really seem to fit the gameplay. The way I would describe the music is some sort of endless arcade kind of thing... but more like something I would expect from an endless arcade shooter or a bullet hell, not a management game.

Replayability:
I really don't think Mall Empire is very replayable at all. I mean, I played it one time and quickly found that the gameplay formula got very old VERY quickly. Maybe it's just because I'm a strategy gamer, but I didn't find purchasing shops, building shops, and annoyingly clicking on each shop and then another following button just to collect income to be a very fun thing to do without any change other than what is available to construct for little pixel guys to walk past.

Even with that in mind, I still managed to keep myself playing all because the music was enjoyable enough to give it ago... right up until this:


Now you may wonder... what? If you look at the top-most construction in each picture, you'll see what I'm talking about. I was pretty alright with Mall Empire until I ran into this issue where I couldn't build an elevator on that second-level space. No matter how hard I tried, I could build anything BUT an elevator.

Well sure (you might say), why not just build it somewhere else? Simple: I don't want to; that wasn't part of my design. I didn't PLAN to not be able to build something because of a glitch in the system. Most times glitches exist in games I don't care; they're usually rather funny, but when a glitch seriously demolishes the entire point to the same so badly that what is supposed to be done CANNOT be done... it's a problem.

SUMMARY:
Though I was able to endure the many issues in the game from translation to lack of sounds, the gameplay just was not engaging enough at all. I could have put up with it all if not for the terrible glitches which make the game unplayable in the way it was meant to be played.

It's at that point that I realize the gameplay itself is just terrible. If it was at least playable, it wouldn't be on the bottom of the lists. Unfortunately I cannot even recommend this game while it is on sale. I'm giving Mall Empire 1/10 because of all of this.

As a sidenote: this really seems like a game for people who are obsessed with getting achievements. Because this game was so terrible, I didn't spend much time playing it... and still somehow managed to get 122/400 achievements.


~ DaemonVirus

Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 7 - Part 2

Uh oh, we're getting close to the end of what I have already recorded from months ago. I'm going to have to start recording new videos again soon with my continuation of this fantastically amazing game!



This campaign and more can be found on my Age of Wonders page.

Check out more of my stuff!
- On YouTube
- On Twitch
- On Twitter

~ DaemonVirus

Monday 13 May 2019

A Working Family - Carley Got A Job!

Okay, so if you've somehow been living under a rock and are not aware of such recent events, then now is your time to find out that Carley... Got a job! Finally we are a fully working family.

I'll be honest, I was starting to think that maybe Carley wouldn't get a job, or would at least have to settle for crummy part-time minimum-wage job. I'm not really sure what it is... for some people it's really easy to get a job and for other people (myself included), getting a new job is a process that takes months upon months of constant applying to everything that a person may or may not have qualifications for. It's insane to me how hard it can be even to get a minimum-wage job while being totally qualified for everything being applied for.

So with a large amount of perseverance, my wife, the house cleaner and child a reader of the century, gotten herself a job in a retirement home as a care aide. This makes complete sense to me; she has always had a soft spot in her heart for the elderly, even more of a soft spot then she has for children. Now she gets to help care for the elderly and tells me nearly every night about how much she loves what she does and how good she is at it... I mean seriously, she's already training new people to do the things she just learned to do and getting things done that nobody else has been able to get done in a looong time.

I have to say, I couldn't be more proud of Carley for not only finding herself a job, but for finding one that she's great at and really enjoys being there for. I could see her making a career out of what she's doing now even more than I could with childcare. I really think this is something amazing for our family and a great start to something new that will open up many opportunities as we more forward and grow our family.

Everybody, please join me in congratulating Carley Welykholowa on her new job, and wishing her tons of good luck and good fortune as we work towards our next goal.


~ Kyle Welykholowa ^_^

Sunday 5 May 2019

Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 7 - Part 1

Hey everyone! It's been a little while since I was last actively posting videos on YouTube, but now that I'm back in action, we've got lots on the way for everyone to see. Let's start a new scenario that I honestly have no memory of playing like... ever. Wish me luck! :D



This campaign and more can be found on my Age of Wonders page.

Check out more of my stuff!
- On YouTube
- On Twitch
- On Twitter

~ DaemonVirus