Human-Powered Spacecraft is a game I got on sale on Steam for $0.59. In my never-ending quest to play through all the games I've acquired over the years (or at least try), I sometimes find new ones that are on such a good Steam Sale, that I just can't refuse them.
I'm honestly really not usually a fan of clicker games. I've wasted so much time trying to kill time on my phone with clicker and other idle games that it's really hard to come up with good reasons to get new ones; especially ones you have to pay for. While browsing through Steam, I came across this little game on sale and thought I'd go ahead and give it a try because I really liked the art-style and it looked like something a little bit different than what I had experienced before.
There are multiple different "levels" in this game where more and more upgrade options are unlocked at each stage with a different "goal" of progressing to the next stage. It isn't really anything huge to talk about; click, make money, upgrade, click, make money, purchase whatever the game wants you to purchase to start the next stage.
You end up having a couple ship problems including a fire, asteroids, and aliens sucking energy from the ship, finally concluding with a rogue computer trying to enslave you into forever powering the ship by peddling to generate electricity. The only real challenge to the game comes at the end when you have to figure out how to use the electricity-sucking alien to help you fight back against the rogue computer system.
That's... really the whole game. I have nothing else to tell about it. It's not an endless clicker where the game keeps on going forever and ever, there's a bit of a story to it. It's just a nice and short experience. I would love to be able to say this game is a good value, and at a sale of $0.59, it's very hard for me to say that it isn't, but when I seriously think about how much this game cost vs how long it entertained me, the $:hour ratio actually isn't that great. The total gameplay time for me was maybe an hour at most.
Verdict
Gameplay: As you may expect from a clicker game... you click and upgrade.
Sound: The music and sound design is very nice, I don't have any complaints about it at all. Right from the get-go I was sucked in by the great music rather than being driven away by annoying sounds and awful music.
Art: I like pixel art as a graphic style. I imagine pixel art must take quite a bit of time to design and draw and I think it has a lot of character that's simple, yet pleasing.
Replayability: You can't. Really... once you've beaten the game once (which took maybe an hour of gameplay at most), I don't know why anybody would want to subject themselves to that sort of pain and tedium again. It was fun to play once, but I have absolutely no desire to do so again.
SCORE: I really wanted to give this game 5/5 because I did find it more enjoyable than all the other FREE clicker games out there, but unfortunately it was too short for me to be happy with the end result. 8 / 10 will be my final score for Human-Powered Spacecraft.
A little over a week ago now we camped on the beach at Lake Diefenbaker with the dogs for the second time this year. This time we stayed for a little longer than one night; this time it was four days and three nights of lovely beach weather. What a dream it was out there... I can never get tired of spewing about how amazing it is to go outside in nature where there's next to no technology and nearly no people nearby at all.
During the last time we went camping we had borrowed a tent from my parents and during that time the zipper split and there was nothing we were able to do about it. So we decided to purchase our own tent online. This is the tent which arrived which was exactly what we were hoping for. We then proceeded to spray the tent with Camp Dry spray which is to help keep everything waterproof.
We started by parking a little bit closer to our little camp than last time which was up on a hill where we were able to take things down the hill and set up on the beach which was pretty pretty much out of sight from anywhere other than the water. The water level was a little higher than last time which also contributed to where we parked the car this time. We were able to set up our new tent in about five or ten minutes and from there everything else was a matter of sorting and finding places for things to go. Autumn follow me up and down the hill for most of the journey until she finally got tired and couldn't keep up with me.
Never have I seen the dogs so incredibly tired as I did on that trip. They were constantly running around and wrestling and chasing each other and anything you could possibly imagine to run themselves completely out of energy and then they would be so tired that they would sleep in the middle of the beach. I was incredibly surprised to find that they both managed to willingly step into the water at least once each. In fact, we were both very proud of Autumn for showing Furgle how to get around when he was stuck because he didn't want to get into the water and couldn't figure out on his own where to go next without getting wet.
Day 1: After getting everything set up and taking a rest for a while to enjoy the peace, quiet, and to rest my weary feet. We went on a journey through the water around the beach much farther than we had ever gone before. We saw absolutely beautiful sights and even got a video and some pictures without falling into the water or dropping our phones and wrecking everything. It was really quite a sight; I'll share the pictures and videos, but it simply won't do it justice. We found ANOTHER beach with not a soul on it which we wanted to continue exploring, but with only one pair of water shoes, we weren't able to continue any further without risking the health of our delicate feet.
Day 2: I woke up to a wonderfully quiet morning with no wind at all. Never have I seen a more calm body of water outside. I could have stayed there and stared out at the water forever, but eventually I pulled myself away from the amazing sight.
We finally REALLY got into the water and "swam". I still wasn't brave enough to go fully under water including my head, but I did make it to my lower chest and even managed to bring Furgle in as well where I learned that he's not too bad of a swimmer if he were only able to keep up his back end. We figure he would have a much easier time swimming and might even enjoy swimming if we were to get him a doggie life jacket. Autumn on the other hand is a fantastic swimmer and once she went into the water on her own and figured it's not so bad in there, she was in and out of the water like crazy as long as we were there too.
Day 3: This was the day all about walking around the nearby town or whatever you would call it. I'm pretty sure there isn't any kind of convenience store in the area, so what exactly you'd call it I"m not too sure. As with everything else in the area... it's absolutely beautiful there. Would I consider living there? ABSOLUTELY! Though... considering there doesn't appear to be a store in the area.... I'm not so sure it would be possible to live there during the winter unless you had the capacity to store A LOT of frozen and canned foods. It was on this day that we found out there's a public washroom in the park... huh... that would have been good to know a little sooner.
Perhaps this would be a good time to mention that we had come by the idea to go for a super long walk around the village area because the dogs had run away. I swear, you turn around and look the other way for a minute, and suddenly your four-legged furry friends are long-gone. This wasn't exactly unexpected either; they normally wander away down the beach or jump up the hill and explore up top until we call them back and then they come running. This time however, they didn't come running back; they were completely out of sight. I don't know if they honestly went exploring over the hill and continued on until finally they ran into people on the far other side of the golf course you have to pass to get to the village from where we were.... or if they saw a bird and chased it until they lost it and then saw people. Thankfully people are awesome and friendly and Carley's number is on Autumn's collar so the people who caught her gave us a call and let us know where to find them. It was after all of this and we had gotten back to our camp that we figured... why not go for a walk around the place and see what it's like here?
So other than the dogs running away for a little while, the whole trip was very awesome and super rewarding. We managed to make multiple fires using firewood and nearby dry grass as kindling as well as some firestarters. We cooked steaks, chicken nuggets, tomato soup, and of course we found the time to roast marshmallows over the fire. Let me just say, marshmallows over a fire is one of the absolute best things ever; what made it even better than usual was the fact that we had picked up some jumbo marshmallows. Normal-sized ones get that nice crispy outside and totally melt on the inside, which is of course pretty awesome... but these ones had an even better thing about them which was a gooey center which wasn't quite totally melted. BEST. MARSHMALLOWS. EVER.
Now I find myself getting ready to head out for ANOTHER camping trip. On one hand, sure I'll probably find some way to have fun out there, and on the other hand, I just want to spend some nice time at home for a while without feeling like I'm always just trying to keep up with the next thing that's coming up. Please please please oh world of mine... could you slow down just a bit after the upcoming wedding?
I never imagined I would ever be asked the question "Would you like a teddy bear?" while walking down the street.
We had just dropped off the car at Kal Tire so they could check if there was anything wrong with one of the tires which I found was quite low on pressure. On the way back home Carley decided she wanted some Taco Time, so we made a detour to make our way past the restaurant for some lunch. As it turns out, the Moose Jaw Fire Department was just finishing up their lunch at Taco Time as we were coming down the street.
I thought it was pretty cool to see the firemen out and about. They drove towards us after getting into the firetruck and really surprised us when one of them came hanging out the passenger side and offered us a stuffed moose while asking "Would you like a teddy bear?" This totally made our day and now Isabelle owns a stuffed moose!
I've heard of awesome things happening to people on the street all the time, but I think this is the first time anything like this has happened to me. I'm so grateful for that happening and feel amazing that even though it was so hot and felt kinda lame to be walking so much in the heat, we were in the right place at the right time.
If you ever get the chance, you should do things like this to other people. It'll make you feel great! ^_^
I can't believe I've held off on reviewing this game for so long. I've played Fallout Shelter before, uninstalled it out of frustration, and now here I am playing it once again. It constantly draws me back in no matter how much I try to resist.
Welcome to Fallout Shelter. You are the new overseer of vault *insert number here*. It is now your task to build a shelter and keep an community of people alive and well with everything out there in the wasteland trying to get inside and kill you in some way; or perhaps everything will go down in flames.
Fallout Shelter is a game where you begin with a few dwellers and you are tasked with putting them to work to gain resources and grow your population. To start, you must balance three resources which are power, food, and water. Power is the most important resource because all of your rooms require power to run and they will shut down if you don't have enough. Food is the next resource which is needed to keep your dwellers healthy and to naturally heal their wounds. Then you have water which is needed to keep your people from being irradiated which lowers their maximum health.
Once you have these under control, you can start thinking about expanding your population. For this you need money which is most easily gotten by completing quests and rushing rooms. The downside to rushing rooms is that there is a chance to fail which causes some sort of hazard such as fire or enemies to attack the room. Every time rushing a room succeeds, the chance to fail gets higher... but the rewards increase as well.
Now that you have money and a growing population, you'll need to think about keeping your people healthy and treating the radiation from the enemies that enter the shelter and the wasteland itself. Stim packs are used for healing injured people and are used to fight off radiation poisoning. These are very important as the enemies get stronger and radiation is more common as you explore further into the wasteland.
There's such a balance of resources and actions which must be managed to succeed at this game. And at any point it's so easy to completely forget about that high-level dweller you sent out into the wasteland hours ago and is now dead. You'll lose your most important things by sending out high-value items with a high-level character who'll die because you forgot to bring them back home before you went to sleep for the night. You'll run out of resources and lose your base from expanding too quickly or building your base in such a way that one catastrophe spreads throughout your whole base and kills all your people. This game will frustrate you so much, but for some reason you'll keep coming back to it because you just thought of a different way to do something which might work better than last time.
This game is absolutely addicting. I'm giving it 9/10 for how amazing it is. Sound design is good, art style is fantastic, and gameplay is top-notch. The only thing I'm taking a point away for is the controls. In a crisis situation, it can be VERY difficult to select the correct character and send them to the right spot... so you'll lose characters because you tapped the wrong person or didn't manage to select the right guy in time before he lost his last bit of health. Despite the occasionally frustrating controls, I absolutely recommend this game to everybody. I'm still playing it... again.
This is the story of camping for nerds. Last weekend we went on our first trip of the year out to our favourite spot at Lake Diefenbaker where we did a trial night of camping. Surprisingly, this went very well and I would like to go out again for a longer period of time.
We could have gone for longer, but we had no idea what Autumn was going to be like as this was the first time she's been out on that type of trip with us. Furgle had a wonderful time which I think was even better than last time because he had someone of his own energy level to run around with instead of just following us the entire time. We also weren't really sure how Isabelle was going to handle sleeping over at my parents' house considering she hadn't stayed there for the night before (though I wasn't terribly concerned about that because she HAS stayed for the night away from us before).
So what is this craziness all about? I know, I know... I'm a NERD! What is someone like me doing OUTSIDE in the FRESH AIR??? As it turns out, even though I really like being inside in a dark hole playing games and doing whatever with technology, I also really enjoy being outside in the calm fresh air. Do I like walking down the street with a bunch of cars racing past? It's alright, but not my favourite. What I REALLY like... is going outside somewhere nice and quiet and enjoying the peace. There's something about the lack of man-made sound that really gets to me for some reason; really makes me feel at peace to have that every once in a while. I would gladly spend an entire day wandering around in a place like that. This is why we need to go back again (even if the water still isn't warm enough to swim in) for a longer period of time. Like... maybe four days next time would be perfect.
Sometimes I forget that there's always things going on at home. Unless I'm relaxing and reading a book while everybody else is sleeping, there's probably something going on. I almost always have music or a show playing in the background or off to the side of whatever I'm doing. So sometimes I find myself driving down the street without the radio on and the window down just because it's nice to have some kind of getaway from the constant noise. Maybe that's why I like hiking so much, because there's just the peace and quiet of wandering around in the nice weather... unless I feel like listening to music.
We had a fantastic time out at the beach; our special beach. The first thing we did was set up a 10-man tent which was a little bit confusing at first, but once we realized what was going on, it was a pretty easy system to figure out. We had time to wander up and down the beach looking for interesting things and to gather "firewood". Everything was rather damp, but that didn't stop us from getting a fire started anyways. It wasn't any sort of large blazing conflagration, but we did get something self-sustaining and it felt like a nice accomplishment... and the marshmallows tasted great.
I'm already looking forward to the next time we get to go out, though that unfortunately probably won't be until late July. I guess we'll just have to get out for some nearby hiking and picnics to hold us over until then.
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.
So I started recording this the same day as my last song, but there was a part that I wanted to do again because the first time just wasn't quite right. I really hope you all enjoy this one because I had a ton of fun working on it and I'm quite proud of how it turned out. I think this is the best and most comfortable I've really been singing something fully.
Please let me know what you all think about it. I'd definitely like to do more, but I could always use some feedback to know what I can do better for next time.
Some people might find it annoying to hear the music of their neighbor going on really loudly... but as it turns out, she actually listens to good music. If not for her, I wouldn't have just found the artist Kygo. Apparently a Norwegian DJ who has made some really good remixes and things including a remix of I See Fire by Ed Sheeran which I REALLY like.
So now I have some new music to listen to all because of my upstairs neighbor who plays her music way too loudly for any reasonable person to ever do. And oddly... I don't mind at all. Music has been pretty important to me recently. Without it, I don't know if I would have made it to where I am right now. It motivates me to get things done; to post on my blog for all you wonderful readers out there, and to make videos for anyone who likes those.
Things feel good right now. This feels the start of a new chapter in my life story. I feel like I have something meaningful to do for the world, even if it's only for a small number of people. But it still makes me happy to have had an effect on even just one life out there. Some people might think it's silly, but I have a want, a need, a goal... to make other people happy. If this is how I can do so, then this is what I want.
By this time next year, if I had one hundred people who enjoyed reading my words, listening to me talk or sing, watching my videos I think I would be happy. That would be one hundred people who's lives I'd have changed and made just a little bit better than before. Maybe I'll reach that goal, maybe I won't. In time, I'll see where life takes me. I have an ever-changing story that may be foreshadowing one thing, but may turn out as something completely different. The only way to find out... is to keep reading what will be written.
