PixlBit

I made a very minor update to Frothy Bird over on itch.io. The splash screen at the start was really bugging me, so I made it a little more acceptable and ditched my weird crafty font and just used the blocky font I used elsewhere. There are still several other minor things I'd like to fix up, but this is one I could do in a single evening without any real hiccups. 

So today was pretty laid back. I did a little reading of my textbooks. I had a pretty chill practice and took a nap. Sometimes I wonder where the days go by because I really don't do all that much in the day.

I've been a slug the last week. Just ask Bandit, he currently rates me as most boring human on the face of the earth (but he loves me anyway).

For some reason BaD has been really hard this year. I really have tried to think of things to write about.

Sometimes the simplest ideas can prove the most difficult but also the most satisfying. Take the iOS puzzle game Cyro, for instance. There’s some story about little creatures trying to build a bridge to the moon but what it all really comes down to is guiding a plank through a maze. Of course, the mazes are extremely intricate and, oh yeah, the plank is constantly rotating. You can bump the wall once and keep going but twice and it’s back to the beginning or the most recent checkpoint. Checkpoints are a godsend because they also restore your one hit point. The developer, thankfully, made it easy to control the plank. A circular d-pad on the left lets you easily move in any direction while a button on the right will restrict your movements to the four cardinal directions. And though the graphics are very minimalistic (nothing wrong with that), I love how much fun the developer had making the mazes. I’ve played the first two “worlds” and rarely has anything been abstract. One maze looked like wine being poured into a glass. Another was shaped like a human heart, complete with working valves! The dynamic mazes can be pretty tricky. I was stuck for a while on one that had moving gears that left little space to get through. Still, it’s very satisfying to best a tricky level. Cyro is a strange game but certainly a fun one.

So after the small success of The Huge Adventure, it was only natural that Crash would get a sequel on the GBA with Crash N-Tranced. I played this one before Wrath of Cortex, so this was the first Crash game that started to make me a lot more lukewarm to the series. This comes from two main problems: Repeating Huge Adventure's biggest issue and a lack of effort.

Persona Q confirmed for North American Release (link)!