=== Mobile Game Review - Tiny Tower - Idle Management - 7/10 =20=

Tiny Tower was one of the first idle management games I ever played on my phone. It seems like most of the mobile games tend to be somewhat idle games which makes sense as I imagine most people would play a game only temporarily while waiting for something on the go or between activities.

Tiny Tower is a game about building a tower of residences for people to live in and constructing shops for them to work in which earn money by selling merchandise which you can then use to construct more rooms.

There is a nice little tutorial sort of thing to start the game which directs you to construct certain rooms and stock shops and really gives you the idea of how to play the game. Completing his instructions gives you Bux which are used to buy upgrades and to stock shops faster.

As your tower builds up you'll see more and more different shops and people as you construct residences and your choice of room types. People move into the tower in one of a few different ways: They can appear in the elevator and want to be dropped off on a floor with a residence, you can pay for a new person to move in using Bux, or a special VIP can appear in the elevator who would cause a residence to completely fill up when dropped off on a floor with one.

The idle part of the game comes from stocking the shops and turning the game off for some time. While you are away, the game keeps selling the merchandise and gives you the profits once the game is turned back on. There is another idle income mechanic which is that once per day you'll earn rent from your residences.

In most games, earning the second type of resource income can be rather difficult or slow, but in Tiny Tower, you're able to earn it pretty easily just by logging in each day which causes fireworks to go off dropping Bux. The more days you log in, the more fireworks you get which means you get more Bux all the time. 

The Bitizens of the tower are the lifeblood of your operation; without them, you wouldn't have any rent, or anybody to work the constructed shops. They have different skills which affects the amount of discount you get for ordering merchandise to the shop they're working in. They also have a dream job which doubles the amount of stock for the shop while they're working there.

As a fun little side-thing to help keep people entertained, there's a Bitbook which is absolutely making fun of Facebook by having the Bitizens post updates and statuses and things which can be entertaining to read, but have no effect on the game at all.

Finally, as with all idle games, this game has a way to reset the game; this allows you to restart for the fun of having a new tower from square one, but keeping some of your progress and giving some sort of bonus for doing so which in this case is to give a golden ticket allowing you to super-charge one of your floors.

Is this a game worth playing? It's definitely well thought-out and if you put in the time to play the game, you can get quite into it. There are some times when the game can get a little slow which is something which does tend to happen when getting further into some of these idle games, but I do think this game is very worth it to play. The gameplay is engaging while it is running and gives you a reason to come back for rewards with each session. There are many mechanics and things going on which keep you having different things to do whether that's stocking shops or moving characters to their requested floors via the elevator.

I'm giving this game 7/10 for idle games because it is better than average, but the gameplay can get somewhat stale after a while, especially if you don't have enough time to actually spend a little bit checking up on the tower once in a while. Other than that, I do recommend this game to play.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Food Review - Aurora Sushi - Asian Cuisine - 8/10 ===

Just the other day we had a lovely dinner and a movie for a date day where we decided to go to Aurora Sushi in Moose Jaw. I'm a huge fan of Asian food and definitely don't mind doing the buffet thing, especially when I haven't had much to eat earlier in the day. If you've ever been to an I Like Sushi, this place is pretty much exactly that... without the cool iPads... and I think it costs a little more.

I'm not a fan of sushi, so that part of the place doesn't really appeal to me, but the buffet here is very good. The selection of things to choose from isn't as big as I Like Sushi, but the quality of the food is good and there are enough options that you should be able to find something to keep you happy. If you are a person who likes sushi, they do offer a selection of sushi you can order with your mean which doesn't cost anything extra unless you order extra things and don't eat it.

For the cost of about $25 per person for an endless buffet, bottomless drinks (which they refill OFTEN by the way), and a selection of sushi, I do think this is a pretty good place to eat. You aren't getting to take home any leftovers unfortunately due to it being a buffet, so you do have to go when you're hungry to make it feel like you've made good use of your money.

I'm scoring this place as a 8/10 because the food is very good and they're super diligent about refilling your fountain drinks compared to other restaurants where they tend to forget about you. If you're not going for sushi then there are other options for an Asian buffet which cost a little bit less than Aurora Sushi though the cost may be made up just by the refilling of the drinks. I would definitely highly recommend this place for a dining experience, especially for anybody who likes eating sushi.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Movie Review - Truth or Dare (2018) - Horror - 7/10 =9=

Truth or Dare? Oh, you don't want to play? That's too bad, you've been asked, so now you're in the game and if you don't take your turn and complete the dare, you'll be killed.

This fantastic movie is a Blumhouse production about a group of college students who go on a trip to Mexico where they party and drink. The main character Olivia gets bothered by another character named Ronnie whom nobody likes until a guy who called himself Carter steps in and convinces Olivia and her friends to go with him to the ruins of a nearby mansion where they start playing a game of Truth or Dare.

Carter reveals to Olivia that this isn't just a normal game of Truth or Dare, but it will follow them and they will have to follow the rules or they will die. Olivia returns to school and starts seeing Truth or Dare written around everywhere and hearing the words whispered, but thinks it's all a joke until she accidentally reveals her best friend's secret to a room full of people.

The movie continues with skeptical friends dying and the others trying to survive and find a way to end the game without themselves dying. Things are revealed about each of the characters which makes them more likable or not and in the end we didn't really care about them all too much because there just wasn't any time to get to know them and fall in love with them in the short time of the movie.

I really don't think this movie was quite as bad as the rest of the reviews that I've seen, but then again, I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to movies. I didn't think this was a super cheap movie and I enjoyed the story. Except for a jump-scare or two, this movie wasn't scary at all. I enjoyed it and would recommend watching it for a bit of fun, but not if you're looking for something to really scare the pants off of you.

Unfortunately there isn't too much for me to say about Truth or Dare. I didn't think the acting was too cheesy, the music and sound was good, and the story was reasonable. My personal score for this movie will be 7/10 and a recommended movie to watch for me as long as you aren't looking for anything super original as a new concept.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== What A Good Doctor ===

     So we've been watching this awesome show recently which has just been an absolutely amazing watch called The Good Doctor. is show follows some surgical residents including one by the name of Sean Murphy who has Autism. So far throughout the show, there have been a lot of cases of both patients and doctors who don't think he's capable of doing things the same as a regular person, but he continues to prove people wrong in many of the episodes.

     One of my favourite things about watching this show (usually with Kylie) is how much I learn about people with autism... and about my dear Carley. I won't go into super detail about it, but it turns out that Carley shares a lot of the characteristics as the main character in the show. For the most part, Carley is a pretty normal person and I love her very much. There are a few things which seem to make a little bit more sense to me as I realize she could be described as a high-functioning person with some level of autism.

     I don't know if I've explained this idea very well at all, but it certainly makes sense to me. Knowing more about our situation certainly makes things much easier for me to understand how Carley works and helps me to be much more calm in situations I wouldn't normally understand. Basically, this show is not only a fantastic show to watch, but it has also helped to change my life and my understanding of things in it.

     Now would be a wonderful time to go into great detail about how awesome the Fall finale was for the show, but I don't want to ruin anything for anybody who may be watching or may be interested in watching the show. So... I think I'll just leave you all to go look into it with the recommendation that you should all watch this series as it seems to have been accepted as the number 1 show at this time and I can personally say that it's the best show I've watched in a while. For anybody who used to watch House, this show was made by the same creators... so you can imagine this one is pretty awesome as well.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== PC Game Review -- Crown and Council - Turn-Based Strategy - 6/10

     Crown and Council is a really simple game made by the maker of Minecraft. The goal of the game is to conquer your enemies by attacking them in a risk-like fashion where a random roll done behind the scenes decides whether or not the money you have spent on attacking is successful.

     Unfortunately there isn't much to say about this game. The levels are randomly generated and range from large maps with lots of land to conquer, to small maps with only a few islands.

     I would say the game is fun to play for a short time, but gets boring quite quickly. The best way I can describe the experience would be to say... imagine playing Risk many times again and again and again in a short time. Sure, Risk is fun, but there isn't much to it. After a while it gets a little stale.

     So I'm giving this game 6/10. It's not really anything new, but it is cute and it's also free, which means if you're looking for something to kill time that doesn't cost anything, I see nothing wrong with recommending this game to you.

~ Kyle

Banished - Game Review - 7/10

     This game, I have put so many hours into. Partly because I'm a perfectionist and I don't like to leave a game without 100% of the achievements finished, but also because this game is a nice city-builder.

     My first instinct is to call it "casual". I'm not actually sure if that's accurate or not. I mean, you aren't really playing against anything besides the elements, and basic human survival. The goal of the game is to make a settlement/village/town/city/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. You don't have to worry about being attacked by anything besides tornadoes and fires. It's just you and your people. As long as you make sure they have enough food and supplies, they're good to go.

     So in terms of a city-builder, this is a really fun game. Even though you don't have to play "against" anything, and don't have any specific goal besides making a city and keeping your people alive... this game captures enough attention to keep me playing it even when there's only one achievement left to get... that takes FOREVER I might add.

     The only thing about this game I can REALLY harp on is the fact that it slows down a ton as your population increases. I assume it's a problem with having to render/calculate every one of the sprites in the game. Figuring out what each and every one of them have to do, because they all have their own lives. I would imagine the more powerful your computer, the better the game would run at higher populations. Now, I have a pretty beefy machine... and my game starts to crap out around 200 population. I've searched for fixes for this kind of thing and unfortunately haven't really come across anything. I'm pretty sure it's just the way the game is made/encoded.

     Now, saying that. I do highly recommend this game. I have found it very interesting to learn how to take care of my people. If you're into tackling achievements, then that's what really makes this game worth it's money is the time you have to take to figure out how to get those elusive achievements.



     I'm going to give this game 7/10 for a city-builder. I haven't played many of them, but this one caught my eye. It could be better, but it's not bad at all.

~ Kyle

Aeon Command - Game Review - 8/10

     This post is going to be pretty short compared to the usual. Nice and short, just like Aeon Command.

     If you've ever played one of those flash games where you make units and they move across the map and attack your enemy, then you've played Aeon Command. I wouldn't call this a bad game. It's definitely not my favourite, nor does it have the strategic complexity that I prefer, but for only $3.29 on Steam, it did provide me more than 3 hours of entertainment. Granted, once I figured out how to beat the game... most of the rest of the time was spent farming wins until I could get the last research only because I wanted the last achievement.

     This game is simple, and that's not a bad thing. It's meant to be a simple "tug 'o war"-type game and it's done really well. If you're looking for something more hardcore and intense, then this game won't be for you. However, if you're looking for a cheap casual way to spend a little bit of time, then I would give this game a recommendation, especially if you can get it on sale.



     I'll give this game 8/10 for this type of game.

~ Kyle

To Sleep Or Not To Sleep

I find myself thinking more and more these days that I don't have enough time. I can find more time in the day if I don't sleep.... Unfortunately, if I go that route, I'm usually exhausted throughout the day. I suppose I could always quit my job... but it's the only thing I have to pay my bills right now unless I ask my parents for help, but I'd really rather not do that.

So I found two things that have helped me a ton so far. 5-hour energy shots, and wake me up caffeine pills. Oh wow. Now I'm not a coffee guy. I can't stand the taste of it. I don't even like the smell. But I now realize how awesome caffeine is. I feel so awake and productive! If you're finding yourself short on energy, I definitely recommend these. The energy shots are a little on the expensive side, but they do work wonders. Same with the pills, energy like you wouldn't believe. Also, you have the option of how much caffeine you feel you need if you take the pills.

I'd would definitely recommend these options to anybody looking for an energy solution.