=== Mobile Game Review -- Bricky / Blocky Farm - Farming Progression - 7/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?

Hello everyone, welcome today to a review of... Bricky Farm? Blocky Farm? I'm not EXACTLY sure which one is the truth at this point as the game name on the app store says Bricky Farm, but when the game is loading it says Blocky Farm. The game at this point appears to have a little over 70,000 downloads on the app store as a free game.

Gameplay:
Farming. Farming games are quite popular these days. It's an easy concept to understand where you plant a seed and it takes time to grow dependent upon what kind of seed it is which determines how long it takes to grow, what it's worth, and potentially what it can grow into. What a fun style of gameplay!

There's even options for customizing the look of your animals including chickens, cows, and pigs with sunglasses and hats and things. Animals are quite important as the crops which are grown can be made into food which is fed to the animals who then produce resources which are used along with other crops to bake cookies and make cream and all sorts of other options which all takes more and more time as things get more and more complicated.

What I don't really get is that there's a pet dog in the game which you're given to take care of and some quests are given every once in a while to take care of the dog as well... I haven't really found much use in this though other than it spends money and gains experience in the process.

Speaking of quests and things... a lot of the gameplay revolves around completing orders from people who visit the farm and ask for things or by a nearby board of orders to be delivered by your own truck. There appears to be more which can be unlocked including a train, a fishing boat and possibly even more!

Graphics:
If you've played anything like Crossy Road or other voxel-designed game, then that's the art you're looking at. Definitely a cute design which has been done well in the past and is still done well to this day. Personally I prefer anything which has a painted look to it, but I don't mind the bright colours coming at me in Blocky Farm.

Replayability:
This game... is... alright. I would actually say it's one of the better mobile games out there, but it still tends to lose my interest. Not because the game is bad or poorly designed, but because of the time limits on everything. When I play a game, I want to be able to lose myself in it without having to take pauses all the time... which is exactly what free-to-play games tend to do. ESPECIALLY when they rely on advertisements to make money which all requires people coming back over time when new ads are available to watch. So yeah... I get it. I would come back to this game and play it more if there weren't other games I'm interested in playing.

SUMMARY:
It's an alright game that I would again say is something I'd come back to much more if I didn't have other games on my radar. I'm happily giving Bricky Farm or Blocky Farm (whatever you wanna call it) 7/10 because I think it's well-made, but seemingly unfinished and unfortunately it may never finish based on the research I've done. I guess we won't know until we wait on it for a little while.

~ DaemonVirus

=== Food Review - Burger Cabin - Burgers - 7/10 ===

Recently while out for a hike we stopped at the Burger Cabin in Wakamow Valley in the southeast area of Moose Jaw. There are always places which are talked about throughout cities and this was one of them which we hadn't been to yet; perhaps that means we don't get out enough to explore the very city we live in. No matter the reason, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food made at this location.

I'm always a fan of onion rings anywhere I go even though Carley hates anything to do with onions and would rather not be anywhere near me after they've been eaten... so I got some onion rings to see how they rate compared to other places. They're great!

I also got myself chicken strips because I'm not really all that much of a fan of burgers (though I will eat them if there aren't any other good options). I was quite pleased with the chicken strips and honestly if they didn't make very good chicken strips, I would be concerned about the quality of the rest of the food. Carley got herself a burger which she was quite pleased with and I'm sure she would happily get another one if we went back.

The only thing that went wrong with the meal was that I asked for a large drink and only got half of one which was also somewhat flat. The good news is that me only having half of a drink was no fault of their own, but rather was because a sneaky Carley drank half of my drink on the way to the picnic table. The flat drink was obviously because their Co2 was running out and I don't blame them for that either, it happens every once in a while.

The location of the shop is what really makes this a special place for me. It's not down town or even in a residential area really. It's more of a destination place for the purpose of eating outside and enjoying fresh air at the same time because you're having a lovely meal in the park right by all the trees and water and everything else that's nice in the area.

So all in all, I would say this was a good place to go. The food isn't super special, but the location is great, which for me earns it 7/10. If you're looking for a nice place to eat in Moose Jaw, check this one out and let me know what you think.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Tiny Sheep - Mobile Game Review 8/10 ===

     So even after saying I would stop playing Egg Inc., I find myself still playing it just because--oh wait... this is Tiny Sheep. I don't often find idle games to be a lot of fun, but recently I have found a few which I believe are worth mentioning.

     Tiny sheep is a game where you clone sheep in an effort to make money by selling different kinds of wool based on what farm you have. You have to make more and more sheep which passively earn you money until your farm value is high enough that you can upgrade your farm to the next wool type. The visuals are fun and if you enjoyed Egg Inc., you'll enjoy this game as well. The biggest different really, is in whether you would prefer chickens or sheep.

     Now, recreating a previous formula in a new way is not a bad thing at all; this game is certainly fun. The problem I see with recreating something in a different image is that it either has to have some improvements, or it won't be terribly more interesting than the previous iteration. Unfortunately for me, this game is so incredibly similar to Egg Inc., that I feel as though I have to give it a lower score than I gave to Egg Inc. Tiny Sheep does make you feel like you are progressing quite quickly due to using large values of money and giving you lots of large bonuses through watching ads, but upon closer inspection, it feels to me either as though the rate of progress is the same as before, or less.

     I'm not sure what to say about this game that hasn't really already been said in my Egg Inc. review (which I keep mentioning a lot, and for that I'm sorry). I do really like the visuals in this game; I think I actually like them more than Egg Inc. You still have birds (drones) to tap on to make extra money, there is golden wool (golden eggs) for more important long-term research, and you're still filling barns (hen houses) and driving your wool (eggs) off to the world for profits.

     Tiny Sheep is a fun game, but it isn't a new game. It's not bad, but it's not something fresh. I'm going to give it an 8/10 for Idle Games for those reasons and put it to rest after having just got it, because I already know this game inside and out.

     Have a great one everybody! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Egg Inc. - Mobile Game Review - 10/10

     I've been playing this game for a few months now because it's just so much fun. Egg Inc. is an idle game where you press a button to hatch chickens which then run across your screen into a hen house where they then lay eggs for you to sell. As I read that, it makes the game sound incredibly interactive, but really the chickens laying eggs and making money from the eggs being sold is just something that is implied behind the scenes.

     So this game looks nice. It has a sort of art-style that I like to see and it's a pretty simple game. The most interactive thing about this game is that you get to shoot down drones which either make you large amounts of money, or golden eggs. Money is used to upgrade your eggs and farm so that you make more money faster and to hatch more chickens faster. Golden eggs are used for epic upgrades which persist even if you prestige.

     Prestige is a common thing to see in idle games. It's a way to make the game last longer by starting over again from the beginning, only with the added bonus of, say... + 1% to the money you make for each object you have related to the prestige system. In this game, it's another type of egg called a soul egg.

     (If you couldn't tell, a lot of this game revolves around eggs.)

     I found Egg Inc. on the Google Play store by accident just because I was browsing and instantly fell in love with it. I think it's a great adaptation of the idle genre. A game where you make progress, then continue to make some progress even while you're not playing the game. It starts off quite quickly even without any prestige. You soon find yourself unlocking new eggs, selling your farm to start a new farm where you make more expensive eggs over and over again. Everything goes great! Until you hit that roadblock...

     Like every idle game, it ropes you in with the promise of fast and rewarding progress. Completing missions left and right for those oh so valuable golden eggs. Upgrading your egg to the next level again and again. Until finally, you find yourself with a quest that takes a looooooooooooong time. And when I say long, I mean some of these quests would take a week straight of holding down that "hatch chicken" button until you finally get the number of chickens required to complete the quest. Or longer if you leave the game to hatch chickens for you while you're not there. And during this time, you either can't upgrade your egg because that would cause you to have to start over with no chickens... or you just don't have enough farm value to upgrade even if you wanted to.

     Now, when I say this, I don't mean this is a bad game by any means. That's just part of the idle genre. The game wouldn't last very long if it didn't come to a point where you have much much MUCH higher goals to reach. But at this point... if you're like me, then you want so badly to continue playing because you want to 100% the game. But at the same time, if you have better things to do and more fun things to move on to, it's just not worth it to continue playing.

     Even after saying that, I absolutely recommend this game. I got my girlfriend hooked on it too just by asking her to hatch a few chickens for me while I was busy. If you want something to keep you busy during those times when you're bored out of your mind, this game does deliver. Even if you don't finish the game up to the very end, I absolutely think you should give this one a go. At this point, I firmly believe this is the best idle game I've played.

     Egg Inc. gets a 10 / 10 from me for the idle genre. Have a great day everybody!

~ Kyle Welykholowa