Happy Birthday Smiler! :D
May. 31st, 2024 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYes, it's the eleventh anniversary of the opening of the coaster, with me spending the day doing things like wearing my Smiler shirt and costume pants, and watching the Smiler portions of the 2013, 2022, and 2023 Alton Towers fireworks shows --
And, as I suspected, getting my stupid period. *facepalm* Fortunately, I had an inkling that it was coming this morning before it actually showed up, so I had a pad already in by the time it made itself known. And while I've been feeling kinda tired and blah all day as a result, I still got a lot done --
Tumblr: Not my most productive day on here, but I did get some stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Spent the time before lunch going through all my tracked tags (to the tune of someone’s extended remix of various The Smiler themes, a video on all the times “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” appears in various Alton Tower musical themes, and a straight compilation of all The Smiler themes unedited) – ended up adding a gifset of a bunch of VTMB fledglings dancing in various clubs and someone’s repost of their old “Victoria as the Corpse Bride” role swap AU for CB to the Drafts. Then, as I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired on any of the posts I was working on in said Drafts, I instead got all the pictures for the next Chill Valicer Save update sorted (Galloping Gulch SimCity Founding; 70 in all)! So now I’m extra-prepared for NEXT week. :) And then I finished up this evening with a post about my teddy bear Smileon celebrating their “birthday” with their plushy friends, along with reblogging my own announcement post on the “Valicer In The Dark” series going live and someone else’s photo post about celebrating the anniversary with a cupcake at the park itself, sitting on the grass and watching the coaster. :) So that’s all good, at least!
Valice Multiverse – By contrast, it was dead quiet over here, so I ended up just chucking my “Valicer Dynamics in Gif Form” post into the queue and calling it a night. *shrug* Though I suppose I may as well give you guys the link to the post, if you were curious – have some silly gifs that make me think of my OT3.
Sims 4: Well, as it turned out, I had both CAS fun and building fun today in the old Building Save post-the-latest-patch –
A) CAS – Had to stop by and give my Building Save Smiler some new outfits in honor of their birthday! Especially since I already noted the last time I visited them that I needed to replace one of their old “custom content” formal outfits. Here’s the looks they got today:
First up, we have what I believe is an all-Vampires formal look, featuring a lovely fancy tailed tux with a bright yellow patterned vest; a black top hat; and a pair black shoes with white spats. Plus some lovely dramatic purple eye makeup and yellow eyeliner. I genuinely didn’t realize this tux had this swatch – I will have to keep it in mind for future save files where I use Smiler and need a formal outfit for them!
Next, we have another formal look that, as you might imagine, was at least partially inspired by me seeing that sparkly yellow jacket and going “Felix E. Lated Vibes!” XD But yes, Smiler here is sporting a sparkly yellow jacket and off-white shirt combo from High School Years; a pair of black base game pants with a belt (I have decided I like Smiler in belts); a pair of yellow shoes from Luxury Party Stuff (maybe not QUITE the right shade of yellow but it felt them); and some dramatic yellow Get To Work eye makeup paired with some winged black Luxury Party Stuff eyeliner. I liked the combo and felt it suited the look!
Here we have a party-ready Smiler wearing one of the base game full-body party outfits – loving the sparkly dark yellow jacket and black pants, but I’m not a big fan of the red undershirt or, honestly, the tie. If I could get a version of this that ditched the tie and had like a black or yellow undershirt, this would be fantastic. *shrug* But you work with what you’re given. Anyway, the dark yellow Discover University shoes actually pair really well with this outfit (the texture goes well with the sparkly cloth), and I found some sparkly yellow eye makeup from Luxury Party Stuff to pull it all together! Which doesn’t show up well in the full-body shot, so here’s a close-up:
Yes, so I caught them at an awkward moment mid-blink, what can you do. XD Anyway, yeah, isn’t that a good match for the jacket? I love the glittery effect. Discovered this while working on the OTHER party outfit and realizing I got a LOT more makeup options when I took off the “masculine” filter –
. . .I forgot to take a fucking picture of the FIRST party outfit I made, be right back –
Okay, fired up the game again long enough to get this shot! This resulted in me playing around with the color filters, looking for stuff in purple and yellow, which led to me stumbling across this High School Years top and going “YES.” I mean, I would have gone “YES” even harder if the overshirt was yellow instead of purple, but this is still VERY The Smiler-ish, I feel. Plus it’s good for Smiler to have some purple-themed outfits, I feel – breaks up all the yellow and black! But yes, here we have Smiler in a black-and-white-checked long-sleeved undershirt with purple short-sleeved overshirt (not QUITE a fan of the high collar on the undershirt, but still), black belted base game pants (of course), white and black Get Famous shoes (to go with the shirt), and some purple-with-the-brightness-adjusted-to-better-match-the-overshirt Luxury Party Stuff eye makeup! *nods* I mean, I think it looks good. :P
Back to pictures I remembered to take before I closed the game the first time, here’s a quick “hot weather wear” fit I whipped up because, well, it is Unofficial Summer now. Featuring a Get Together hat that has a plant symbol on the front because that was the only design that had the right yellow brim (again, I need the help of modders to get me a plain version. . .or a version with The Smiler Logo on the front instead XD); a Perfect Patio Stuff light yellow overshirt/white undershirt combo; those base game yellow-and-black shorts I found and decided had to be Smiler’s from when I did the “SDX Swimwear” looks; a pair of yellow-and-black Get Famous sandals; and a yellow-and-black base game bracelet for their – guess it would be right arm, since they’re facing us – that I stumbled across looking at some of the bracelet options. I like the chevron one on their other wrist best, but this is still good!
And finally, Smiler in goofy heart-print boxers. Because they would. XD And because they were originally wearing flame-print boxers, and I was like “uh, way too Wickerman.” XD
B) Building – After I’d had my fun designing outfits, I then proceeded over to Newcrest and Avarice Acres to start my latest building project – the Ministry Of Joy nightclub! I attempted to look up pictures of the main The Smiler station building on my phone for inspiration, but those proved rather hard to find (naturally, most shots focus on the twisty-turny tracks) – I eventually settled on “big boxy two-story building with yellow pipes out the front for visual interest” as my starting point (the actual The Smiler station is gray, but I ended up making mine black to fit with the theme better). I didn’t do that much on the build beyond that, but I did:
I. Get the front entrance set up with a Vintage Glamour art deco door and a twisty yellow-and-black Moschino wall sculpture that I figured could be used as a “sign”
II. Change the lot type officially to “nightclub” and bought everything I needed to make sure the lot worked (getting a few different types of dining tables, bars, seating so I could sort through it all later and see what I like best)
III. Set up the stairs to the top floor in the corner (couldn’t resist the glowy yellow ones from Get Famous, even if they’re not technically time-period-accurate for Valicer In The Dark – then again, a nightclub itself isn’t really period-accurate, sooo)
IV. Get a basic layout going, with a front entrance hall, the beginnings to a bathroom to the left of said hall, and a big dance area with a sized-up yellow-and-black-checkered dance floor and yellow-and-black-striped walls (because THEME).
So yeah – not THAT much done yet, but it’s a good start! I’ll keep poking at it, see where it goes from here. I did actually find a decent view of the station in one of the videos I watched featuring The Smiler game during my workout (see below), so some revisions may be coming in pretty fast. . .
Writing: To my surprise, despite getting to it late and dealing with fresh Period Brain, I managed a double dose of writing today –
A) First up, I got another chunk edited on “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of,” with Victor explaining to Emily that he’d had no idea that her ghost was there when he wandered by the canal where she’d been dumped and asking her not to take her bad mood out on Victoria – only to get a shock when Nanny revealed that Victoria had gotten married to someone else. Despite Victor having only gone missing for a day. Of course, this led straight to the revelation that Victor and Victoria had actually only met right before their rehearsal – a fact that left both Alice and Smiler going “?!?” XD It felt good to make some progress here, but at the same time, I felt like Smiler wasn’t really involved enough – they only had a couple of lines throughout the whole chunk. . .
B) So I ended up rereading and lightly editing the “Make You Smile” ficlet that I have in my Valicer In The Dark master doc! This is the short that I wrote about Alice and Smiler’s first meeting from Smiler’s perspective (to practice getting into their head for future fics), and while I was pretty happy with it, there were a few bits I wanted to shine up (notably, Smiler reacting to Alice revealing she doesn’t have enough money for lunch – I always pictured them having a flashback to their own time on the streets of Silkshore shortly after running away from Kelman and The Sanctuary, I just made it a little more explicit). So THAT definitely worked for more Smiler-based fic-writing! Glad I was able to get the brain to cooperate.
YouTube: Just the one GrayStillPlays vid from the Subs tonight – “I Played Free Games With 0 Players!” More specifically, Gray checked out six games on Steam that absolutely no one was playing, saw what they were like, and gave them a rating based on what he would actually pay for them if they weren’t free. Oh, and in the multiplayer titles, he vowed to act like a monster to anyone who might log on and encounter him, just to make sure these games stay having no players other than him. XD The six games he got through were as follows –
I. Countrified – A survival Sim in the countryside near a giant nuclear reactor with no opening screen or tutorial, weird rocks that slowly regenerate themselves after you harvest them, nuclear zombie bears that get caught on fences so it’s laughably easy to defeat them, and a Geiger counter sound effect that just does not go away after you get irradiated. Gray was not surprised when no one ended up responding to his attempts to send cannibalism-based messages and said he wouldn’t pay anything for this trainwreck, so don’t even try it.
II. Office Run – An “endless runner” game where you play as someone racing through an office, trying to collect coins and files and stuff while avoiding obstacles like vending machines and file cabinets. And if you collected the alcohol that was floating around, it got you drunk at work and lowered your various bonuses. Gray thought playing it was much like actually going to the office, but liked that it was more of a finished game than the first entry and said he’d pay a dollar to play it.
III. Paunch – A 1v1 fighting game LOOSELY based on sumo wrestling, this was the only game where Gray actually encountered another human being, mostly because he HAD to in order to play. Though perhaps “play” was the wrong word, as when he DID get a duel, he discovered that this game ALSO had no tutorial, and it was EXTREMELY jank, with (the clone) characters ineffectually flailing at each other and limbs vibrating at high speeds if someone got pinned. If you played correctly, the game ended in a draw; if you didn’t, you won. Gray adored it and said he’d pay $2.50 for it. XD
IV. Birds Aren’t Real – I’m not sure what genre this one is, but the conceit was that you play as a pigeon surveillance drone (for actual pigeons) and have to do things like poop on people to plan tracking bugs on them and destroy anti-pigeon propaganda as you fly around suburbia. It was cute and cartoony, but Gray didn’t find it that engaging after he committed his initial poop attacks on people, especially since there wasn’t that much reward for completing your various tasks. He gave it a price of 99 cents just because he could knock people silly by dropping ginger ale on them along with all the pooping.
V. Personal Space – A top-down puzzler about social anxiety, where you play as a teenage pill-shaped blob who must navigate social situations while trying to start a relationship with his crush, starting with the senior prom and moving on through a party she throws at her house. The gameplay involves getting your character through various crowds of other polygonal blobs without them freaking out and finding safe, quiet spots to stand in to recharge. Gray wasn’t wild about the graphics (frequently commenting about how his character looked like a pill and some of the others looked like hot dogs and tongues), but he did admit that it was the most developed as a game, and he found the irony factor of being the only person playing a game about hating crowds amusing, so this game got a price point of $2.25.
VI. Kudamono Party – Another puzzle game, this one saw your cloud character throwing fruit with weird anime faces into a large container, with similar types of fruit able to combine into bigger, more anime fruit if they touched each other. Gray found it INCREDIBLY weird (laughing incredulously at all the anime faces he recognized on the fruit), but got pretty far into it. He decided it was worth 50 cents because he THOUGHT he’d be willing to pay a dollar for it, but then said he’d probably feel like he was ripped off half the time while playing it. XD
So yeah – if you want some free games where you know you’re not going to be bothered by other players, give those a try! Gray especially recommended Paunch just for the jank alone. XD I personally was more interested in Birds Aren’t Real myself, but to each their own. :p
Workout: Last night on the bike this week, and because it was Smiler’s birthday, I naturally watched some of the stuff from my “Smile Always Alton Towers” playlist! :D Specifically, I rewatched “The Smiler Game - All AR Points” by CablesTwisted (a look at the old The Smiler game and showing off all the AR stuff it could do with the scanner, including unlocking the best version of all the in-game ride elements); “THE SMILER GAME!” by Eye Coaster (another look at the old The Smiler game, this time actually focusing on the actual game, how it played, and how you unlocked all the different inversions and ride elements); and “The Sanctuary at Alton Towers - What Once Was | Episode 1” by The Drop (a look at the history of the brief but memorable Sanctuary scare maze at Scarefest). All good stuff. :)
Other: Here are The Score Reports regarding the games my family and I played today –
-->We played a short round of beanbags this afternoon before my workout, and unfortunately I sucked – had a couple of strong openers, but couldn’t turn them into anything. :( Final scores were me 3-2-3; Dad W-W-2; and Mom 2-3-W. Meeeh. Maybe I’ll do better tomorrow!
-->Fortunately, I did better at Parcheesi tonight for game night – playing Yellow, I was able to win the second game thanks to some very lucky dice rolls, with Mom winning the first and third ones. :) And I even got to test out my Norse Foundry dice tray in the third game – the way we were rolling kept knocking over everyone’s pieces, so I went and got it, and voila, no more problem. :p My parents were actually quite pleased with it too, so it might actually become a staple of game night! Good purchase, me. :)
So yeah -- pretty full day! And I feel like I celebrated Smiler's birthday well. :) So now it is time to wrap up and head to bed. Cleaning Saturday tomorrow, so that'll take up my morning. . .and as for the afternoon, I've already decided I'm gonna skip the Sims 4 in favor of a "clearing my Watch Later" marathon. We shall work editing some more of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" into that, along with maybe some tumblr stuff. We shall see. For now, good night!
And, as I suspected, getting my stupid period. *facepalm* Fortunately, I had an inkling that it was coming this morning before it actually showed up, so I had a pad already in by the time it made itself known. And while I've been feeling kinda tired and blah all day as a result, I still got a lot done --
Tumblr: Not my most productive day on here, but I did get some stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Spent the time before lunch going through all my tracked tags (to the tune of someone’s extended remix of various The Smiler themes, a video on all the times “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” appears in various Alton Tower musical themes, and a straight compilation of all The Smiler themes unedited) – ended up adding a gifset of a bunch of VTMB fledglings dancing in various clubs and someone’s repost of their old “Victoria as the Corpse Bride” role swap AU for CB to the Drafts. Then, as I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired on any of the posts I was working on in said Drafts, I instead got all the pictures for the next Chill Valicer Save update sorted (Galloping Gulch SimCity Founding; 70 in all)! So now I’m extra-prepared for NEXT week. :) And then I finished up this evening with a post about my teddy bear Smileon celebrating their “birthday” with their plushy friends, along with reblogging my own announcement post on the “Valicer In The Dark” series going live and someone else’s photo post about celebrating the anniversary with a cupcake at the park itself, sitting on the grass and watching the coaster. :) So that’s all good, at least!
Valice Multiverse – By contrast, it was dead quiet over here, so I ended up just chucking my “Valicer Dynamics in Gif Form” post into the queue and calling it a night. *shrug* Though I suppose I may as well give you guys the link to the post, if you were curious – have some silly gifs that make me think of my OT3.
Sims 4: Well, as it turned out, I had both CAS fun and building fun today in the old Building Save post-the-latest-patch –
A) CAS – Had to stop by and give my Building Save Smiler some new outfits in honor of their birthday! Especially since I already noted the last time I visited them that I needed to replace one of their old “custom content” formal outfits. Here’s the looks they got today:
First up, we have what I believe is an all-Vampires formal look, featuring a lovely fancy tailed tux with a bright yellow patterned vest; a black top hat; and a pair black shoes with white spats. Plus some lovely dramatic purple eye makeup and yellow eyeliner. I genuinely didn’t realize this tux had this swatch – I will have to keep it in mind for future save files where I use Smiler and need a formal outfit for them!
Next, we have another formal look that, as you might imagine, was at least partially inspired by me seeing that sparkly yellow jacket and going “Felix E. Lated Vibes!” XD But yes, Smiler here is sporting a sparkly yellow jacket and off-white shirt combo from High School Years; a pair of black base game pants with a belt (I have decided I like Smiler in belts); a pair of yellow shoes from Luxury Party Stuff (maybe not QUITE the right shade of yellow but it felt them); and some dramatic yellow Get To Work eye makeup paired with some winged black Luxury Party Stuff eyeliner. I liked the combo and felt it suited the look!
Here we have a party-ready Smiler wearing one of the base game full-body party outfits – loving the sparkly dark yellow jacket and black pants, but I’m not a big fan of the red undershirt or, honestly, the tie. If I could get a version of this that ditched the tie and had like a black or yellow undershirt, this would be fantastic. *shrug* But you work with what you’re given. Anyway, the dark yellow Discover University shoes actually pair really well with this outfit (the texture goes well with the sparkly cloth), and I found some sparkly yellow eye makeup from Luxury Party Stuff to pull it all together! Which doesn’t show up well in the full-body shot, so here’s a close-up:
Yes, so I caught them at an awkward moment mid-blink, what can you do. XD Anyway, yeah, isn’t that a good match for the jacket? I love the glittery effect. Discovered this while working on the OTHER party outfit and realizing I got a LOT more makeup options when I took off the “masculine” filter –
. . .I forgot to take a fucking picture of the FIRST party outfit I made, be right back –
Okay, fired up the game again long enough to get this shot! This resulted in me playing around with the color filters, looking for stuff in purple and yellow, which led to me stumbling across this High School Years top and going “YES.” I mean, I would have gone “YES” even harder if the overshirt was yellow instead of purple, but this is still VERY The Smiler-ish, I feel. Plus it’s good for Smiler to have some purple-themed outfits, I feel – breaks up all the yellow and black! But yes, here we have Smiler in a black-and-white-checked long-sleeved undershirt with purple short-sleeved overshirt (not QUITE a fan of the high collar on the undershirt, but still), black belted base game pants (of course), white and black Get Famous shoes (to go with the shirt), and some purple-with-the-brightness-adjusted-to-better-match-the-overshirt Luxury Party Stuff eye makeup! *nods* I mean, I think it looks good. :P
Back to pictures I remembered to take before I closed the game the first time, here’s a quick “hot weather wear” fit I whipped up because, well, it is Unofficial Summer now. Featuring a Get Together hat that has a plant symbol on the front because that was the only design that had the right yellow brim (again, I need the help of modders to get me a plain version. . .or a version with The Smiler Logo on the front instead XD); a Perfect Patio Stuff light yellow overshirt/white undershirt combo; those base game yellow-and-black shorts I found and decided had to be Smiler’s from when I did the “SDX Swimwear” looks; a pair of yellow-and-black Get Famous sandals; and a yellow-and-black base game bracelet for their – guess it would be right arm, since they’re facing us – that I stumbled across looking at some of the bracelet options. I like the chevron one on their other wrist best, but this is still good!
And finally, Smiler in goofy heart-print boxers. Because they would. XD And because they were originally wearing flame-print boxers, and I was like “uh, way too Wickerman.” XD
B) Building – After I’d had my fun designing outfits, I then proceeded over to Newcrest and Avarice Acres to start my latest building project – the Ministry Of Joy nightclub! I attempted to look up pictures of the main The Smiler station building on my phone for inspiration, but those proved rather hard to find (naturally, most shots focus on the twisty-turny tracks) – I eventually settled on “big boxy two-story building with yellow pipes out the front for visual interest” as my starting point (the actual The Smiler station is gray, but I ended up making mine black to fit with the theme better). I didn’t do that much on the build beyond that, but I did:
I. Get the front entrance set up with a Vintage Glamour art deco door and a twisty yellow-and-black Moschino wall sculpture that I figured could be used as a “sign”
II. Change the lot type officially to “nightclub” and bought everything I needed to make sure the lot worked (getting a few different types of dining tables, bars, seating so I could sort through it all later and see what I like best)
III. Set up the stairs to the top floor in the corner (couldn’t resist the glowy yellow ones from Get Famous, even if they’re not technically time-period-accurate for Valicer In The Dark – then again, a nightclub itself isn’t really period-accurate, sooo)
IV. Get a basic layout going, with a front entrance hall, the beginnings to a bathroom to the left of said hall, and a big dance area with a sized-up yellow-and-black-checkered dance floor and yellow-and-black-striped walls (because THEME).
So yeah – not THAT much done yet, but it’s a good start! I’ll keep poking at it, see where it goes from here. I did actually find a decent view of the station in one of the videos I watched featuring The Smiler game during my workout (see below), so some revisions may be coming in pretty fast. . .
Writing: To my surprise, despite getting to it late and dealing with fresh Period Brain, I managed a double dose of writing today –
A) First up, I got another chunk edited on “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of,” with Victor explaining to Emily that he’d had no idea that her ghost was there when he wandered by the canal where she’d been dumped and asking her not to take her bad mood out on Victoria – only to get a shock when Nanny revealed that Victoria had gotten married to someone else. Despite Victor having only gone missing for a day. Of course, this led straight to the revelation that Victor and Victoria had actually only met right before their rehearsal – a fact that left both Alice and Smiler going “?!?” XD It felt good to make some progress here, but at the same time, I felt like Smiler wasn’t really involved enough – they only had a couple of lines throughout the whole chunk. . .
B) So I ended up rereading and lightly editing the “Make You Smile” ficlet that I have in my Valicer In The Dark master doc! This is the short that I wrote about Alice and Smiler’s first meeting from Smiler’s perspective (to practice getting into their head for future fics), and while I was pretty happy with it, there were a few bits I wanted to shine up (notably, Smiler reacting to Alice revealing she doesn’t have enough money for lunch – I always pictured them having a flashback to their own time on the streets of Silkshore shortly after running away from Kelman and The Sanctuary, I just made it a little more explicit). So THAT definitely worked for more Smiler-based fic-writing! Glad I was able to get the brain to cooperate.
YouTube: Just the one GrayStillPlays vid from the Subs tonight – “I Played Free Games With 0 Players!” More specifically, Gray checked out six games on Steam that absolutely no one was playing, saw what they were like, and gave them a rating based on what he would actually pay for them if they weren’t free. Oh, and in the multiplayer titles, he vowed to act like a monster to anyone who might log on and encounter him, just to make sure these games stay having no players other than him. XD The six games he got through were as follows –
I. Countrified – A survival Sim in the countryside near a giant nuclear reactor with no opening screen or tutorial, weird rocks that slowly regenerate themselves after you harvest them, nuclear zombie bears that get caught on fences so it’s laughably easy to defeat them, and a Geiger counter sound effect that just does not go away after you get irradiated. Gray was not surprised when no one ended up responding to his attempts to send cannibalism-based messages and said he wouldn’t pay anything for this trainwreck, so don’t even try it.
II. Office Run – An “endless runner” game where you play as someone racing through an office, trying to collect coins and files and stuff while avoiding obstacles like vending machines and file cabinets. And if you collected the alcohol that was floating around, it got you drunk at work and lowered your various bonuses. Gray thought playing it was much like actually going to the office, but liked that it was more of a finished game than the first entry and said he’d pay a dollar to play it.
III. Paunch – A 1v1 fighting game LOOSELY based on sumo wrestling, this was the only game where Gray actually encountered another human being, mostly because he HAD to in order to play. Though perhaps “play” was the wrong word, as when he DID get a duel, he discovered that this game ALSO had no tutorial, and it was EXTREMELY jank, with (the clone) characters ineffectually flailing at each other and limbs vibrating at high speeds if someone got pinned. If you played correctly, the game ended in a draw; if you didn’t, you won. Gray adored it and said he’d pay $2.50 for it. XD
IV. Birds Aren’t Real – I’m not sure what genre this one is, but the conceit was that you play as a pigeon surveillance drone (for actual pigeons) and have to do things like poop on people to plan tracking bugs on them and destroy anti-pigeon propaganda as you fly around suburbia. It was cute and cartoony, but Gray didn’t find it that engaging after he committed his initial poop attacks on people, especially since there wasn’t that much reward for completing your various tasks. He gave it a price of 99 cents just because he could knock people silly by dropping ginger ale on them along with all the pooping.
V. Personal Space – A top-down puzzler about social anxiety, where you play as a teenage pill-shaped blob who must navigate social situations while trying to start a relationship with his crush, starting with the senior prom and moving on through a party she throws at her house. The gameplay involves getting your character through various crowds of other polygonal blobs without them freaking out and finding safe, quiet spots to stand in to recharge. Gray wasn’t wild about the graphics (frequently commenting about how his character looked like a pill and some of the others looked like hot dogs and tongues), but he did admit that it was the most developed as a game, and he found the irony factor of being the only person playing a game about hating crowds amusing, so this game got a price point of $2.25.
VI. Kudamono Party – Another puzzle game, this one saw your cloud character throwing fruit with weird anime faces into a large container, with similar types of fruit able to combine into bigger, more anime fruit if they touched each other. Gray found it INCREDIBLY weird (laughing incredulously at all the anime faces he recognized on the fruit), but got pretty far into it. He decided it was worth 50 cents because he THOUGHT he’d be willing to pay a dollar for it, but then said he’d probably feel like he was ripped off half the time while playing it. XD
So yeah – if you want some free games where you know you’re not going to be bothered by other players, give those a try! Gray especially recommended Paunch just for the jank alone. XD I personally was more interested in Birds Aren’t Real myself, but to each their own. :p
Workout: Last night on the bike this week, and because it was Smiler’s birthday, I naturally watched some of the stuff from my “Smile Always Alton Towers” playlist! :D Specifically, I rewatched “The Smiler Game - All AR Points” by CablesTwisted (a look at the old The Smiler game and showing off all the AR stuff it could do with the scanner, including unlocking the best version of all the in-game ride elements); “THE SMILER GAME!” by Eye Coaster (another look at the old The Smiler game, this time actually focusing on the actual game, how it played, and how you unlocked all the different inversions and ride elements); and “The Sanctuary at Alton Towers - What Once Was | Episode 1” by The Drop (a look at the history of the brief but memorable Sanctuary scare maze at Scarefest). All good stuff. :)
Other: Here are The Score Reports regarding the games my family and I played today –
-->We played a short round of beanbags this afternoon before my workout, and unfortunately I sucked – had a couple of strong openers, but couldn’t turn them into anything. :( Final scores were me 3-2-3; Dad W-W-2; and Mom 2-3-W. Meeeh. Maybe I’ll do better tomorrow!
-->Fortunately, I did better at Parcheesi tonight for game night – playing Yellow, I was able to win the second game thanks to some very lucky dice rolls, with Mom winning the first and third ones. :) And I even got to test out my Norse Foundry dice tray in the third game – the way we were rolling kept knocking over everyone’s pieces, so I went and got it, and voila, no more problem. :p My parents were actually quite pleased with it too, so it might actually become a staple of game night! Good purchase, me. :)
So yeah -- pretty full day! And I feel like I celebrated Smiler's birthday well. :) So now it is time to wrap up and head to bed. Cleaning Saturday tomorrow, so that'll take up my morning. . .and as for the afternoon, I've already decided I'm gonna skip the Sims 4 in favor of a "clearing my Watch Later" marathon. We shall work editing some more of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" into that, along with maybe some tumblr stuff. We shall see. For now, good night!
