App updates: LOE, Yut, IPM & MC

I pretty much gave up on Exponential Idle.  I can grind a little on breaks or pit stops, but this has been 3 weeks straight of nothing new, just numbers getting more excruciatingly slow.  Skip it.

Oddly, after all the fun I had with Tiny Rails the first few nights, it does get repetitive.  There is an overall story that they really want you to follow, finding new cars is amusing, but the trip between towns can be up to a minute of sitting there wondering why.  I will probably visit again at some point, when the mood strikes.

I have finished every bonus paid pack in Microcosmus, and can now only play the endless level generator, what they call "the Pool."  It brings up some interesting points.  When I used to code games on my own -- not counting the big projects I did for Cetasoft and Interplay and Encore -- it was the good old days of shareware where if you put out 10 levels and a little level editor you were good.  One out of 10,000 downloaders might send you $5.  And of course my partner Bill would get the checks at his PO box and I never saw any of it, but it probably wasn't much.  Good times.  Now, whether it's a word game or match-three or deck-builder, the users probably expect infinite content.  Did the folks who created Candy Crush way back when even think they would need more than a few hundreds levels?  I'm on level 1600-something in Word Collect, we're both on level 950-or-so on Kitten Match, Anne has 200 different doggies on Dog Game and must have played their tetris mini-game 1000 times just for coins to spend on sparkly bits.

Then there are the idle games.  They clearly have limited content, but the costs go up so exponentially that they convince you to recycle your entire world for some buffs for the next time around.  Which is both clever and annoying in its own way.  Idle Planet Miner: I really don't want to level up those same 28 planets again, and do the same 40 researches, even if all the stats are 20-40% higher than last time.

Anne & I have fun with a few games of Yut with the little penguins and seals each night.  And board games and card games on the weekends.

Minecraft: still the biggest and most varied game world ever.  Each of my 10 worlds has been running for 4-10 years now, each with between 5 and 22 dimensions, each world with 10 or 15 or 20 bases or settlements of mine, each with its weird projects and stashes of goods to play with.  Sometimes I stumble across entire towns that I forgot I built ages ago, so it's almost like the world has its own history and archaeology to uncover.  And I can always run off into the distance and start a new project somewhere different.  Sure, I tend to build the same exact one-wide cobble roads everywhere, and my buildings are almost never more than 11x11, and the builds never come out quite the way I see them in my head, but I can also enjoy just kicking back and seeing those things in my head as a meditation unto itself.

Feb 20: Idle Planet Miner: yeah, I went ahead and sold my galaxy again: I spent the 100 dark matter to double the credits = 216 credits.  So I got the Astronomy room (-10% planet upgrade prices) for 35cr, Workshop (+20% crafting speed) for 56cr, Forge (+20% smelt speed) for 89cr, and spent the last coins on leveling up.  So here I am, just unlocking planet 9 again.  With all those buffs from selling the galaxy twice, it's faster than it was the first time around, but maddeningly slow compared to where I was yesterday.  Is that a normal progression?

Back in Life on Earth, another idle game that was dragging, I blew up that planet too (they call it Rebirth) and started fresh.  In an hour or two of a sunday morning grind, I'm back up to near the end of the Triassic.  Unfortunately, two of the three quest chests at the top are stuck in the far future with the allosaurus, which is probably a few days away from my current point of progress.  I did have some fun figuring out the weird Life Tree and how to strangthen the crystals to add up all those tiny buffs.