=== Adventure Town - Mobile Game Review, Idle City Builder - 10/10 ===

     Hey everybody, it's time for another game review. Recently I had my phone cut off; as a result, I haven't really been able to keep up with Idle Heroes because you need to have an active internet connection to be able to play. So I had to start searching for a game which would be lots of fun to play without getting bored of it, and which could be played without being connected to the internet at all times. After some searching, I came across Adventure Town.

     Adventure Town puts you in charge of a little town where you must build shops and houses to gain gold and direct your heroes to defeat monsters and complete quests to earn experience and progress further into the game. As you play, you have little heroes and townspeople who will go to each shop and "buy" items. As they visit the shops, they make gold for you until the shops run out of goods at which point you must restock the goods. As with many time-based games like this, an observant person will note that shorter timed tasks such as growing wheat over two minutes will make more goods if you're constantly playing the game, but will be less effective if you're only checking up on your game once every hour.

     Growing these plants makes goods which are given to the shops which then make you gold so you can buy more buildings to make more money faster. You can't go wrong with making more money. There's also the option of building houses which make money without needing goods. The downside of using houses is that they take quite a bit of time to make the same amount of money that could be made by growing plants and stocking shops... but they're quite useful if you're only able to check up on your game once or twice a day.

     Making all of this money doesn't just go towards building more buildings. In your spare time when you don't have room for more buildings and you're waiting for resources to upgrade these shops and houses, you have to do something to keep yourself busy. At these times you find yourself needing to use the heroes at your command to complete quests that you're given or to just plain kill creatures for either money, resources, or magical elixirs which are used to craft and upgrade things. These heroes can be defeated in battle and then must take a recovery period before they can be used again, but they can never die.

     As you gain levels, the monsters you face get stronger, have more health, and do more damage. This is one of the uses for all that money you're making; upgrading equipment to have more health, defense, or damage is incredibly important if you're going to get anywhere in a world like this. Some of the strongest items require crystals which you can earn over time by defeating monsters or completing bounties. The rest of the items cost simple gold which we already know can be earned easily enough. Upgrading items consists of buying new items and fusing weaker items with stronger ones to upgrade them once you've fused enough together. The new strength of these items can be used to fight creatures or to increase your chance to be successful at completing quests.

     I think the reason I like this game so much is because it reminds me of a game I played once upon a time. I can't seem to remember the name of the game, though if I saw it I would definitely recognize it. The whole premise of the game was that all you could do was build shops and buildings to help your heroes and you could influence their decisions, but ultimately it was up to them to decide what they wanted to do; similar to one of my favorite games called Majesty. Seriously, if any of you happen to know what game I'm talking about, feel free to let me know. I would love to find this game again and see if I could get it to work on a current computer.

     All of the monster-killing you do in this game goes toward the great purpose of upgrading your guardian statue. The purpose of which is to give you money once a day which increases each time the guardian levels up. More money means more buildings and better equipment for your heroes which means more monsters destroyed.

     As with most mobile games, this is a pretty simple game to play with not a lot of action and just enough going on to keep you busy if you kept the game open to kill some time. No consistent internet connection required, a good pace of progression to keep you interested, and reasonable tasks which aren't too difficult to complete. This all makes for a great mix of gameplay which would keep you coming back for more as often as you can.

     Adventure Town gets a 10/10 from me for being another great game which is likely to keep me busy for a few months without looking for something new.

~ Kyle Welykholowa ^_^

=== Crying, Babies, and Midterms ===

     So we've been handling our baby and wow, those midterms sure showed up fast; I didn't realize the spring semester would go by so quickly. Everything has been rushing by it seems with things to do every day followed by crying, crying, crying, and more crying... which results in sudden losses of consciousness at various times of the day when there is nothing immediately important to be doing. All of this however, is interrupted at equally random times of the day by more crying.

     This past month has been pretty much continuously assignments due at least every second day. As you may be able to imagine: driving 45 minutes to and from work every day, being short on sleep, trying to help with the baby, and then trying to get some school work done at the end of the day... it's a little bit difficult. There are times when things end up being late. There are times when things just don't get done at all. Currently, this includes booking a couple of my midterms... so I'm going to have to figure out how to still write those even though there is no available time to write them left in the system. Ugh...

     I look forward to the times when everybody is sleeping; the baby, the dog, and Carley. At these times I actually get some uninterrupted time to myself... for a bit. Inevitably someone ends up needing something. Carley needs a bit of help or attention or something to get done, the baby wakes up and wants........... I really don't know what, or the dog needs to get outside. I can't believe I'm thinking this, but the dog is probably actually the least needy at this time.

     I'm certainly looking forward to being done with my classes so I won't have to be doing so much all the time anymore. Oh how I can't wait to have proper time to think each day after I get home from work. One day Kyle... one day.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Semester Two Is Complete! ===

     After a long and hard-fought battle with three tests in one day, I managed to complete everything to my own satisfaction. As usual, I think I did great on my tests, but did I really? I've had this feeling before where I think I've done amazing or at least really good... and then I get my test back with a terrible mark because I didn't quite follow something correctly.

     I already know it's highly likely that I'll be re-taking one of my classes from last semester and I'm alright with that. I would obviously prefer that not be the case, but everything hit me so hard these last couple months that all it took was one bad test to ruin a class. Fortunately I have an amazingly super supportive partner in my life and thanks to her I know everything will be alright.

     I've only got one more final to do on the 21st which is a typing test. I'm looking forward to it because I love typing, but I'm also a little sad that I haven't been able to practice my speed so much this semester. I think my accuracy has gone up, but part of the problem I've had this semester has been that I'm always so cold, which makes it quite difficult to use my hands faster. If only I had some gloves or something that didn't inhibit my ability to use a keyboard and mouse.

     Well anywhos, besides all this talk about school and whatnot, I'll be having a fantastic Easter supper with my family today! Looking forward to visiting with family and eating food? ABSOLUTLEY! Looking forward to driving all the way to Regina on my day off? Not exactly... but that's alright. It's all worth it for family and food.

Have a great day everybody! I'm going to get food today! :D

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Racing

     Why is it that so many people get so excited to watch racing? Don't get me wrong, I think powerful and fast vehicles are pretty cool, but cars are just so common-place to me that I don't find them to be very interesting. If I were to get myself past that first hurdle of vehicle boredom and then actually watch a race go on, I would then wonder why I'm watching bodies of metal, plastic, and rubber go around a track over 100 times for the next few hours.

     Something about watching engines rev around a track really gets some people to be quite excited, but if it's not the vehicles... what is it? It could be an endurance game; it does take a long time to go around a track 100 times and if you go too fast you'll ruin your car. So does that mean the entertainment is in watching drivers try to gauge how far they can take their vehicle before it needs to be fixed? Something tells me that's not quite right...

     There must be some kind of strategy behind racing, right? I haven't a clue what sort of strategy there is behind turning a wheel left and right and putting the pedal to the metal. Oh alright, I do understand that you have to practice to learn how hard to turn and how much to speed up and slow down for every turn. You also need to learn to shift gears at the right time and properly. But... why would people be interested in watching racing for that reason? I mean... you can't exactly see the driver doing what they're doing from the stands.

     I'm pretty convinced the real reason is because everybody wants to see a fiery car crash. I mean, maybe not... but that's probably why I would watch it if I did. Because I would want to see a fiery car crash. I'm sure there's more important things than that, but what other reason would there be to watch such a sport unless you're really into cars. As a nerd, I'm not too much into cars; I only know what I need to know to get from point A to point B not much more than that. Cars are a bit of a mystery to me in all honesty and I'm not really sure why someone would want to race them.

Anyways, have a great day everybody! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Midterms February 2017 - Part 2

     I haven't received the marks for my midterms yet, but I'm sure I've done really well. It feels great to be able to do so well on my tests with everything else going on at the same time. I haven't been able to put as much work into studying as I would have liked, but I'm confident that I've managed to pull through anyways. One of the advantages I have is that a lot of this work I have already learned through high school, or previous courses I've attempted to take, or just from being proficient with computer programs in general. I think this semester is going very well for me and hopefully next semester will continue like this as well.

     One of my goals in this year of my life is to learn to do some things so well that it's all muscle memory. So much so, that I'm comfortable doing things without having to think about it, but just doing it at a comfortable pace. Then, once I'm able to do that will come the speed of being able to do those things without having to think so much but still pushing myself to continue doing so just a little bit faster each time.

     Typing is a great example of what I mean. Previously, I have proven myself to be capable of typing at a very fast rate, but I get slowed down by having to use backspace a lot. So what I'm hoping to be able to do is have a much higher accuracy rate by slowing down a little bit and getting used to hitting things right the first time. It's honestly a little bit tough to force myself to slow down rather than going as fast as I can and performing the same as always. It takes a little bit of change to be able to improve. Sometimes that means doing something a little bit worse than before; in the end, you do better than before.

     This is something I would like to do better at with other things as well. Obviously I would like to have this amazing muscle memory when it comes to video games, but perhaps I could put enough practice into my violin to do so, or making crafts, or writing, or even just thinking in a certain way. I have noticed that I lose a lot of productivity to getting sidetracked or taking time to think about things for a while... but what if I was able to think and keep going at the same time? There's a lot of thoughts I've had about this sort of thing; knowing I can do better and be more productive in a lot of things. It's so easy to just sit and watch a show and not do anything of value in that time, but what if I could keep myself going instead of falling into that rut of non-thinking? Strange how some midterm tests make me think of these things.

Just something to think about. ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa