Tag Archives: grass

Puzzle Craft (iOS) Review

Developer: AT Games | Publisher: Chillingo Ltd || Overall: 9.5/10

Seldom do games made for a smart phone really impress me.  Puzzle Craft did.

Puzzle Craft is a charming, fun, and simple puzzle game that is the most fun I’ve had with any single phone game yet.  I originally downloaded and played the game to completion about a couple years ago, and introduced it to a some people.  Every now and then I hear about how those people still play it to this day, long after I uninstalled it.  I fully intended to review it, but I never got around to it.  I took pictures of my end progress, but somewhere along the way I forgot to do anything with those screenshots.

Puzzle Craft is the story of your people and your town that you create from scratch.  As you progress, you build out your town, hire more workers, earn gold, and endlessly match a variety of different resources.  As long as you meet a minimum match requirement (the base is three), you can string together as many other items along the way by drawing lines through them only once.  Being able to go in diagonal directions, you have to think outside the box and can get some long matches going.  With limited turns, it is very important to try and maximize each turn you take as it costs resources or Gold to do so again.

There are only two locations to play the matching game — the farm and the mine.  The farm requires only 30 Gold to begin farming.  The mine requires 100 Gold, but you can also use the resources you gather from the farm matching game to begin a mine matching game.  Eventually you gain enough resources to progress your town and gain experience by matching.  Some buildings allow you to gather new resources, use new tools, and eventually new obstacles present themselves within the unique matching games.  The game slowly ramps up in complexity and difficulty to keep things fresh.  You’ll need to learn how to use tools to elongate your turns and set up big matches — it is very important to learn how to maximize your earnings as furthering your buildings and experience will require pulling out every trick you can muster.  Unfortunately, when doing long matches, your finger can also get in the way of seeing what direction you want to go — it can be a bit cumbersome at times to figure out the best path as a result.  I suppose this could be part of the challenge, but I doubt it was designed with that intention in mind.

One of the most satisfying things about Puzzle Craft, is that everything you do adds toward your progression.  As you learn tricks on how to be efficient when farming and mining, you’ll be able to quickly get ahead of the game and build a lot of buildings fast.  A nice part of the building process is you are given the freedom to choose which plots buildings can go, which allows you to customize your town.  Some buildings can only be used in one location, however.

Buildings are very important and offer rewards on cooldown.  Depending on the building it might offer you tools, resources, gold, or simply be part of the cosmetic look of your town after its initial benefit is earned.  You might have learned that it is very annoying to have to try and tap anything on the very sides of your phone, especially if you have a case protecting it.  Unless you know what buildings do what, you have to take a chance that you might place a building in an inconvenient location for your finger to tap.  Sometimes buildings are placed behind other buildings and you end up tapping the wrong one and you are put into a different menu, away from the town, then must try again and be more precise in your tapping.  Considering all of those bonuses are endless and only require time before they are replenished, you deal with it, but it would be nice if there was some sort of catch-all button, as once you build out your town to capacity, it can be a chore to click 50 things every time you start it up after a few hours.  It would have been nice if there was a way to move buildings around, but there is no option to do so.

Gold is essentially the primary resource in the game, and with gold you can buy or do practically anything.  When you grind your resources in the farm/mine, you can sell extra resources for gold at the Market.  Gold is the limiting factor of the game, and if you had a lot of it, the game’s challenge would go away.  Initially when I started playing there was no way to buy gold, but with an update sometime last year (shortly before I uninstalled it) they added an option to buy.  If you play enough, you’ll have as much gold as you could ever desire, so the impetus to buy is pretty low.  Considering once you get to the end you can Reset the game to the beginning and start anew, I’m not entirely sure what happens to the gold you might have bought.  You can look at this more as a “cheat” rather than something that allows you to play longer.  I did get a bit disappointed when that was added, but it didn’t take away anything from the core gameplay, so it is easily overlooked.

Workers are also a nice cosmetic addition, walking through your town when hired.  As you hire more workers, they benefit you in specific ways and you can become more efficient.  You can only hire up to five of each worker, so you have to plan for which workers will benefit you the most at the time of your progression.  They cost resources, so you may have to decide between a worker and a building at times.

The art style really grows on you, and as you get used to it you see the charming aspects it has to offer.  The animals and the vegetables have a lot of character to them, and the workers and buildings all fit in and have unique art.  There are lots of colors and you really feel like you’re in a old time utopia town making your denizens happy with your progression.  The music isn’t terrible, either, and the sound effects also add a bit of fun as the chickens cluck, pigs oink, and the cows moo when you match them.  Different tools also have different sound effects and the dynamite can be satisfying along with its visual action.

Late in the game, you are able to open treasure chests which offer nice bonuses.  To open treasure chests you have to meet the requirements of the treasure map, which may be something like matching 14 grass.  To open the chest at this point, you need to drag your finger through 14 grasses before ending up on the chest.  There are also different levels of chests, and they may require more rare resources being matched to have them open.  This adds a challenge to the game in its later stages, but also can mean nice rewards.  There are also items to collect that appear in your archaeology hut, and once a collection is complete, you gain a permanent buff.

While there is a long end game to play once you’ve completed your village, it can become old fast as it is very grindy.  The exciting part of the game is building up your town and making more buildings.  Once the game changes its focus to completing treasure chests and defeating enemies, it becomes a little frustrating at times and not as light-feeling as it is when you initially start the game.  Fortunately you are able to reset the game and start from scratch, so you are able to play as you see fit.  If you are really good, you’ll have so many tools you don’t know what to do with them.  Tools can be frustrating to use over and over as it takes two clicks to use them, and if you have 80 of them to use as extra, you’re going to have to click 160 times to use them all.  Some tools become redundant and obsolete as you progress, but you are still stuck with them as the only way to get rid of them is to use them.

Puzzle Craft deserves a lot of attention.  It is such a great smart phone game to play, and without being pestered to buy in-app credits every ten seconds, you really feel like the purpose of the game was to have fun rather than sell you endless amounts of digital goods or peddle ads to you all of the time.  A rare thing to see in games, nowadays.

California Water Saving Tips

California is in a perpetual drought.  We need tips!  Tips that will help save water!!!

– There are a number of ways to save water, and they all start with you.

– Rip out all of your grass. Dirt needs to be watered a lot less than grass.

– Use only paper plates and plastic-ware.  Water isn’t used to make those things.

– If you want to take a 15-minute shower, just don’t eat a hamburger.  You save water in what is probably a completely different state than California, and you don’t have to feel bad about it.  Those damn cows drink as much water as a 25 minute shower at least.

– Only use water from water bottles, they are probably not from California, maybe.  The likelihood goes up if you buy something labeled as a foreign country or place.

– Use vodka to make your Kool-Aid.

– Don’t drink water, drink your own sweat. It’s like recycling your own water.

– Bathe in fire.  It kills more germs.

– If you take a shit, remove the shit from the water, take it to work and flush it there.

– Wash your hands with your pee.

– Import ice from the North Pole/Antarctica.  It is melting anyway.

– Move out of California.

– Continue to disappoint your mother and harvest her tears.

– Shoot people who use water.

– Travel back in time and use the water before its gone.

– Use only your hands to drink water.

– Don’t eat fruits or vegetables.  You won’t waste water having to wash them.

– Keep a pitcher of water next to the toilet, that way any toilet water that splashes out goes down you and not on the floor.

– Reuse leftover water from the nuclear reactor to cook your spaghetti.

– Don’t cook food that requires water.

– Don’t buy fruits or vegetables that originate from California.

– Freeze water, that way it expands and you will have more water.

– Wash your laundry in another State.

– Don’t wash your clothes.  Use them one time and then return it to the store.

– Don’t take a shower.  You’ll save like a bajillion gallons of water a month.

– Put food coloring in your toilet.  It will mask the unpleasant color your unflushed piss and poo water will create naturally.  Don’t let FoodBabe know.

– Upgrade older toilets with rocket capability.

– Turn off the water while you brush your teeth.  That will save 40 gallons a minute.  That’s up to 250,000 gallons a day for a family of 6748.

– If your toilet was installed before 1992, thank the plumber.

– Consider a dual-flush toilet.  It will flush your toilet twice and use twice as much water.

– Take showers instead of luxurious baths.  You’re getting clean here, and only babies take baths.

– Don’t have children that use water.  Birth only dirt babies.

– Avoid having fun with water.  Fun wastes water.

– Avoid recreational water toys, they use water.

– See a leak you can’t fix?  Learn how to by going to plumber’s trade school for a year.

– Steal your water from a multinational corporation that isn’t based in California.

– Remove the cement from your driveway so that water can flood your home and not drain into the ocean.

– Start calling California “Arizona” instead of “California.”

– Plant alien plants that require human blood to live.

– Consider converting your home into an alien spaceship that does not require water to run.

– Start a compost pile in your bedroom.  This keeps the compost pile from evaporating its precious water.

– Don’t jerk off in the shower anymore.  Or just jerk off without the water on and then clean up afterwards.

– Plant water-hating plants.

– Hire the 10 year old kid next door to rip out your irrigation system.

– Catch water in an empty tuna can.  Then drink it.

– Use your hanging basket plants as pinatas.

– Only have sex in the Jacuzzi, the swimming pool needs too much water.

– Make your swimming pool tacky by removing waterfalls and stupid bullshit that makes it look nice.  Then you won’t want to swim in your pool anymore and you will contemplate just getting rid of the whole thing.

– Get rid of pesky pets that need water to survive.  Pet Rocks are coming back in style.

– Post a hotline in bathrooms that people can call so they can finish their shits faster.  I don’t know how this saves water, but I can at least take a shit since I’ve been waiting for 10 minutes!  God damn!

– Water-shame people who keep water in a bottle that is clearly not purchased from a store new.

– Do not drink processed water, it is unhealthy for you, similar to processed meats.  It is not as nature intended!

– Clean water is man-made, therefore it is unnatural and unhealthy!  It takes a lot of water to make clean water.

– Don’t put water inside water.  You lose the water you are putting inside of the water as it becomes just one water.

– Appoint a water ambassador to the ocean and beg it for rain.

– Marry or seduce a televised meteorologist and convince them to say there will be rain coming on the news even if it isn’t true.

– Strike up a conversation with a plumber and ask them how the plumber the seven seas.

– Lick dishes of their food and dirt instead of rinsing with water.  You can also get a dog to do this.

– A recent study showed people care about water usage.  Ain’t that cool?

– Destroy all decorative fountains you see.  Especially ones that are not yours.

– Don’t wash your car ever.

– Pee in the shower.

– Pee outside.  Select a private space near a bush you don’t particularly like and go at it.

– Don’t let children maintain a swimming pool.  They suck at math.  It is dangerous because they might miscalculate how much water to put in the swimming pool and that would suck for when you were having sex in there.  There is also a higher chance of them seeing you since they are responsible for the swimming pool.

– Get your girlfriend wet everyday and then water the plants with her.

– Start using wet humor instead of dry humor.  Or in this case, drought humor.

– Kill anyone who is doing a rain dance in California, they are obviously failing and are probably making things worse with their awful dancing.  Then water the plants with their blood.  It rained after all!

– Grow some clouds and then explode them all over your plants.

– No more sex in the shower.  Or just have the water off if you have sex in there.

– Lick things clean, such as your car or yourself.

Essay on the Iceman

I wrote this in 6th grade for class.

The Iceman is the best preserved human ever found. He was found in Italy. Nobody knew where he came from or who he was.

The Iceman’s clothing was a cape, shoes with grass on the inside (found only in the Alps), a leather sole in each of his shoes, and ibex shoelaces. He also had a coat made of animal skins and a leather pouch. The Iceman is about 5,300 years old. He was said to have lived in the New Stone Age or “Neolithic Epoch.”

The Iceman had some tools. His tools were: a flint knife and a metal blade ax made of copper with a wooden handle. He also had a quiver of arrows, and a wooden bow.

His copper blade ax had a wooden handle but strangely enough the Neolithic Epoch was before the Copper Age when Copper was first found, so what was a Neolithic man doing with a copper blade for an ax? That’s something that we might never know.

Squacklecast Episode 16 – “The 1.5 Year Hiatus”

This entry is part 16 of 38 in the series The Squacklecast

Welcome to what could be said is “Season 2” of the Squacklecast!

The main things to link here are:

 

We talked about lots of other stuff, like:

The Coachella line up.

Facebook buying Oculus

The Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man movies, as well as the DC comic book properties.

There’s toooo many Whedon’s on my lawn!

See ya guys next year!

The Automatic Egg Thrower

Dear Mike,

I hope that you will appreciate my new invention.  It is an automatic egg thrower!  I assure you it will be of really good use.  You can use it for social groups that are bothering you or people who will not get off your lawn after you asked them nicely to go or get off.  Then you can load eggs in the egg thrower and shoot them till they run away!  You will laugh at their facial expression!  There is a brochure that comes with it so you know how to launch eggs with the egg thrower.  My egg thrower is going to both the Self-Defense convention and the Joker’s convention!  All the eggs that miss your targets will be good nourishment for your grass so you do not have to pick it up.  After you throw eggs at somebody they will negotiate with you and do as you set out to accomplish.  I insure you they will.

 

Your best friend,

davepoobond

 

PS Write back soon!!!!

Funny Search Terms

Sometimes people find Squackle with odd or funny search terms.  They’re so funny or weird sometimes, that I feel like I need to share it with the world.  Not saying that there isn’t a lot of weird shit on this site, but there are times where I just don’t expect certain search terms to actually lead to Squackle.  Also, I wouldn’t mind being the number one search for “what sound does a beaver make.”

Here’s a list of the exceedingly funny search terms as I see them, newest on top:

pictures of guyz fucking there girl friend

how to say huge ass in a fancy way

boy inserting finger in girls asshole sexy hd pics

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i want to be a cashier and i dont have experience so can google teach me some lessons

sexy ladies sex fuck hard

what is a good porn name for a girl named ann catherine

why the f*ck are asian women so attractive

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i want to download a beautiful and sexy lady age under 26 that has a lot of photos on facebook

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knock knock jokes about livers

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Football players asses

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Joke #18571

This guy was watching TV as his wife was out cutting the grass during the hot summer. He finally worked up the energy to go out and ask his wife what was for supper.

Well, his missus was quite irritated about him sitting in the air conditioned house all day while she did all the work, so she scolded him. “I can’t believe you’re aking me about supper right now! Imagine I’m out of town, go inside and figure dinner out yourself.”

So he went back in the house and fixed himself a big steak, with potatoes, garlic bread and tall glass of iced tea.

The wife finally walked in about the time he was finishing up and asked him, “You fixed something to eat? So where is mine?”

“Huh? I thought you were out of town.”