=== 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

Our Winnipeg Adventure, 2019 - Part 1 -- Driving

Hello everybody, welcome back!

So it has definitely been a little bit since I've last made a personal post about my life, but here we go with our Winnipeg Adventure. Now this adventure, while it was definitely important and a fun time, I did not feel like it was of so much importance that I need to go on for 10 or 15 posts about it like I am still working on doing with our 2018 Honeymoon Adventure. I still want to tell you all about what we did and what it's like out there compared to living here in Saskatchewan, but the occasion connected to the trip was of less importance than us getting married; we really just wanted to go on a family trip.

Some people may think the drive to a location is the most boring part, but I feel like the drive to and from places is part of the fun. I mean, it's about a five-hour drive to get there or back in one direction. So you definitely either need to find a way to make the drive itself into a fun activity or to enjoy the scenery along the way. Whenever we go on a long drive such as this Carley likes to have herself a nap, or watch movies downloaded onto her tablet, or listen to music or some combination of the above. I on the other hand... I'm usually the one who gets to drive most if not all of the way. Now before you complain about me getting the short end of the stick, having to drive so much while she has so much fun... at no point do I actually ask her to take over driving if I'm doing well and feeling good. Surprisingly, I actually enjoy doing most of the driving. Besides, while Carley is a fantastic driver, she doesn't like to drive in unfamiliar places... especially when those unfamiliar places generally tend to be busier than our lovely hometown of Moose Jaw.

I don't know what the traffic is like for all of you readers out there where you live, but where we live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan the traffic is just not that busy. Really, the worst part about driving in our hometown is the parked cars on the street that make it difficult to see through. Other than that, you can get anywhere in the city you want by car in about 5 minutes... maybe 10 minutes on a slow day if you hit every single red light. I mean heck, you can pretty much walk / run from one end of Moose Jaw to the other in half an hour if you're determined. So let me tell you, driving around a larger place such as Winnipeg, Manitoba is quite a bit more stressful than driving at home. I find it absolutely crazy that driving from one place to another can take you up to an hour depending on where you're going and what the traffic is like; and all of that driving is done within the city. Thankfully we live in a world of GPS rather than paper maps so it is a lot easier to find our way around places than it would have been even just 10 years ago... With all the twists and turns and u-turns included in the GPS directions just to get from our pretty central apartment location to say... The Forks Market... I can't imagine trying to figure that out by paper.

Being around Winnipeg was strangely familiar in design and layout to other places we've been and other places we have lived such as Moose Jaw and Regina. A big difference between the small town living that we are used to compared to the larger places that we go to visit is that the parking everywhere there is paid parking for like a 2 hour time limit on it. Of course it could just be because we were basically situated downtown, or maybe it's just a thing that larger places have more paid street parking. Either way, we did learn the hard way that the street we decided to park on when we first arrived did not actually have unlimited parking after I think it was about 9 p.m.? As it turns out there was a little period of time between 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. if I remember correctly where there was no street parking allowed at all in that area because of rush hour traffic. Of course, we would have known that... if the location that we had parked had actually shown that on the sign; unfortunately the sign that we parked in front of was the only sign that did not show the time period where you could not park there. Luckily we had taken Isabelle's car seat into the apartment with us that night for the purpose of washing it out as best as we could because she spent the whole 5-hour drive there puking almost constantly because it was her first time having her car seat facing forward; it did not occur to us at all that she might get carsick on the way there. Turns out this was quite lucky because as we walked towards the location where the car should have been that morning... It wasn't there. So lucky us, on our first day there in the unfamiliar place of Winnipeg Manitoba we lost our car to a towing company because we parked in the wrong spot between 7 and 9 am; hooray for unexpected towing expenses!

Thankfully after a couple days we managed to find some nearby residential parking that did not have a time limit or needed to be paid for; it only required a short walk to and from the apartment we were staying at.

So there you go, and that is all there is to know about the fun we had when it came to driving around the city of Winnipeg. Join me next time for some information on the fun that we had with the events we were able to take part in while we were there.

~ Kyle Welykholowa


Back to Winnipeg Adventure

Jaw Surgery Adventure - The Day Before =5=

With nerves at an all time high, off we went to Saskatoon one day before surgery day. I enjoy the drive of a road trip, but Carley decided she was in the mood to drive us there; I have no complaints about her wanting to drive places so that I don't have to drive all the time.

Carley driving gave me the perfect opportunity to search for a place where we could stay for the night. Honestly I just looked for something less expensive that wasn't a bed and breakfast or some kind of weird shared kitchen and washroom sort of thing. As it turns out, I picked the perfect place right across the street from the Cheesetoast Restaurant. Carley wasn't allowed to have anything fatty to eat the day before her surgery so we figured why not have some cheese toast along with whatever else we decided to order? She didn't even eat the cheese toast that came with her meal... But it was very tasty for me.

After food we found there was a Ruckers only a couple blocks down the street from the motel we stayed at. We definitely spent a couple hours there and probably could have spent a few hours more if we had more money to burn; some of those games are pretty fun and addicting. Let me just tell you, there's a Crossy Road game at the Ruckers there which is basically a slightly dumbed down version of the Crossy Road mobile game which is SUPER fun and I would have gladly spent the entire time there playing that if I had my own tokens... but I let Carley have most of the tokens to play the games she wanted to play. I now have Crossy Road on my phone to play in my spare time thanks to that experience.

I think we successfully distracted Carley from the coming Surgery and kept her spirits quite high that day before heading to the hospital. We finished the night off with some cake we took home from the Cheesetoast Restaurant and watch The Shawshak Redemption from start to finish because it was conveniently starting right as we got back to the motel and I had never seen it before. Then it was off to dreamy sleepy land for the rest of the night.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Road Trip To The Beach ===

     This past weekend we decided to go on a road trip to the beach. What a wonderful time we had! I won't tell you exactly where at the beach we went because I don't want to give away our special little place to everybody in the world, but I will tell you that there are many places along the coast of Lake Diefenbaker which are so calm and peaceful with nobody else around.

     I would love to post a bunch of pictures along with this post of our trip, but unlike last time when I proposed to Carley, I decided not to bring my phone with me this time. I'm pretty sure if I had brought my phone, I would have been worrying about what time it was and wanting to take all sorts of pictures and being distracted the whole time. So as it turns out, not bringing my phone was one of the best choices I could have made because it just made my trip all that much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise.

     Honestly, I would have loved to have stayed there even longer. The water was warmer than last time; still a little bit chilly, but I was able to wander around without my feet freezing off. I enjoyed there being nothing other than the sounds of the winds and the waves to listen to while I wandered around and looked at the beautiful landscapes. I don't think I can explain how amazing it feels to be there away from all the technology and people and everything stressful in the world. It's just nice to BE for a while out there.

     This time around we brought some company with us. Rather than only going with myself and Carley, we decided to invite Carley's sister Tori to come along. The extra company was quite nice to have an additional person to talk to and hang out with for a while. Tori is very much like myself and likes being away from all the people so the two of us can happily be around and enjoy the silence for quite some time. I think I have a greater capacity to enjoy being outside to take in the peace (though I do understand her want to be back home where all the rest of the fun is).

     There was another guest we decided to bring along this time as well. Our fantastic dog Furgle got to come along with us on his first road trip. I was incredibly concerned that he might just decide to go run off into the distance or find a person and chase them rather than listen to us, but as it turns out he's quite fun to have along in the wild. He listens pretty well and even pays attention to us rather than wandering off the whole time. Our sweet Furgle isn't the biggest fan of water, so he spent a lot of time standing on the edge of the dry land and whining at us because he couldn't reach us. Maybe we're cruel, but we made him join us in the water a bunch and learned that he can swim quite well when he must.

     I doubt we'll be able to go again this year, but maybe there'll be some time for us to go on a couple family hikes somewhere nearby in the Fall time. Here's hoping there are much more fun adventures for us to go on in the coming months.

~ Kyle Welykholowa ^_^