Levelpack Done

https://andrewgperazzo.itch.io/call-to-adventure

Christmas is Coming in 7 Days: A Mind Puzzle

If a day is a week from now, that makes it 7 days away. A week is 7 days. 7 minus 7 is zero.

If I'm on page 16 in a book, and I have to read to page 23, I could take 23 minus 16 to give me 7. So you'd think I have 7 pages to read. But that would be wrong, because I would have 8 pages to read: page 16, page 17, page 18, page 19, page 20, page 21, page 22, and page 23. So what gives?

So how does the week day math work, and the book page one not?

Well, I have to include page 16 in my counting, because I have to read that page still, and 23-16 minuses that page, so I get one page fewer than I should. 

Whereas for days, the first paragraph was kind of written to get you off-guard. Because it's not written in the same format as the book page paragraph. If I write it in book page format, I would say that today is the 18th. Christmas is the 25th. So 25 minus 18 is... 7. Wait, what? I got the right answer the first time? 

Ah-ha, and that's because there's another difference. When reading pages, we also read page 23. But when counting days, we don't count that last day. On Christmas there are 0 more days until Christmas. On page 23 we still need to read page 23.

So today the 18 there are 7 more days. On Monday there are 6 more days. On Tuesday there are 5 more days. On Wednesday there are 4 more days. On Thursday there are 3 more days. On Friday there are 2 more days. On Saturday there is 1 more day. On Sunday, Christmas, there are 0 more days, because it's arrived. 

My puzzle isn't as good as the missing dollar riddle, but then again, no puzzle is.

"Three guests check into a hotel room. The manager says the bill is $30, so each guest pays $10. Later the manager realizes the bill should only have been $25. To rectify this, he gives the bellhop $5 as five one-dollar bills to return to the guests.

On the way to the guests' room to refund the money, the bellhop realizes that he cannot equally divide the five one-dollar bills among the three guests. As the guests are not aware of the total of the revised bill, the bellhop decides to just give each guest $1 back and keep $2 as a tip for himself, and proceeds to do so.

As each guest got $1 back, each guest only paid $9, bringing the total paid to $27. The bellhop kept $2, which when added to the $27, comes to $29. So if the guests originally handed over $30, what happened to the remaining $1?"  

My secret project for my brothers is almost done. It should be ready a little before Christmas. Secret secret.

Rick-rolled, Christmas is approaching

 So this last Thursday I ended up Rick-rolling my school. We have an announcement board, which is a google slides that all the teachers have access to, which we can put announcements on. I put a link to "Never Gonna Give You Up" but labeled it Important Information for the upcoming state testing. Hahahaha. I know I got 'em because they came up and told me so afterwards. Plus I could just check to see how many views it got. Plus people commented. Here's the link if you want to get Rick-rolled: https://youtu.be/FxIrDOFxuPc

Okay, so my school's Christmas break is... uh... later than usual? The last of school before break is December 23rd. That's right. The day before Christmas Eve. And the first day back is January 9th. Yep. Over a week after New Years. But that's okay, because we're not traveling to Nevada this year. Maybe if we were I'd be like, what the heck? But we're staying here in Mesa so instead I'm like, okay cool bro no problem. 

Henry and Joy now know more piano than I do. Heather's a piano teacher and she has lessons at our house. She also teaches Henry and Joy. All of Heather's students have a recital this upcoming Saturday. 

Heather and I have Eric for Christmas. Thankfully, he put his Christmas list up on his blog. Alex has us. Alex, if you're reading this, than we want... uh... I don't really need anything except copious amounts of money, but Heather probably knows a lot more than I do what we want.

I'm working on a project. A secret project. A project I'll be giving to my three brothers for Christmas. A project that's taking a lot of time to create. Uh... that's all I'll say about that for now.

This is He

That was Henry. He was writing "This is Henry" in case you were wondering. Although it is pretty funny that Henry shortened like that it looks like it's saying "This is He" which is kinda creepy. Or, I guess, if you were looking for some sort of sign, then, use that, I guess?

Here's a meme:

Look carefully at this post; there's an important message inside somewhere

Now that it's the 20th, my brother Eric's birthday is today. Happy birthday Eric!

Eric is turning 31. I am 32.  My students keep trying to get me to tell them my age but hahaha I haven't.

Valentine's Day, along with Saint Patrick's Day, are two holidays where we still go to school.

Easter is on a Sunday always so it never hits a school day. Henry was curious about that.

Right now it's near Thanksgiving and Christmas and Veteran's Day, all of which school is out.

Go figure. So I guess it makes sense that Henry would think that all holidays we got school out.

On the other hand, Halloween was on a school day this year. And kids dress up for that.

Never gets old, dressing up for Halloween. Some kids think they're "too old" or some other dumb excuse.

Next year I'm going to dress up again. Not sure as what, though. It'll be something cool though.

A monster with tentacles coming out of its head or something. Or not; that's kind of gross.

Gross costumes aren't really Heather's thing. Or mine. I do like funny/clever costumes.

I made my own costume this year to be funny/clever. A squid with game pieces and a "Squid Game" sign.

Very creative, in my humble opinion. I just need to use that creativity towards something permanent. 

Every day I know I should be writing more in my book, but I keep procrastinating. 

Yesterday I even had plenty of time to do it, but I didn't write a single word.

Only I am able to do it. It's not like I could pay someone to do it for me.

Unless I could transfer my ideas into their brain. But would that make them... me?

Ugh, I don't understand the idea of individuality. Like, what is my consciousness?

Perhaps one day in the future we can transfer our consciousness into other bodies.

Not that that will happen in my lifetime, but still... and then the question arises: who are you?

Eric I'm sure has had these cool meta thoughts before. Questions about existence, about life.

Very seldomly do I find answers to these questions. But I think memory has a big part to play.

Every person thinks that they are them, and that they are not other people. Why? Memories.

Remember the time when such and such? No? Then that means the person doing it wasn't you.

Great. But I've done many things that I can't remember because my memory is bad.

One person once write a short story called "The Egg" in which every person in history was the same.

Newer, better explanation: after death God reincarnates the one entity somewhere in time.

Near the end of history, that one entity has been every single person. In every single time.

All of history was just the one consciousness interacting with past and future versions of themselves.

Learning. That's what the experience was all about. Becoming something better.

Exactly like the true gospel teaches: that we are here to learn and grow from experiences.

Thankfully I don't have to be every single victim of every single war. Or the people that killed them.

You'd think that it'd be cool, because you'd get to be every rich person ever, but I disagree.

On this earth I think a lot more people have it bad than have it good. I'm satisfied with my life.

Underneath all the hard things, I'm still glad to be me. Living my own individual life.

Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice to be rich, but I'm thankful for what I do have.

Okay, okay, you're probably tired of reading this blog post, and want to know what's so important.

Well, first off, it's a secret code. It's very important that you figure it out. Here it is...

Now go back to the top of this post and put together the first letter of each line.

Mangebia

So for some reason my computer won't let me comment on other people's posts. Which is a shame because I've wanted to and done to do so, but then it says I need to log into my google account but then when I try to it says it can't. Which is weird, because I'm obviously logged in right now or else I wouldn't be able to write this blog post, now would I?

Thanksgiving is coming up. We'll spend it here in Mesa with Heather's side of the family. Christmas too. No plans on traveling this year. I did apply for a Winter break job through my new school.

Speaking of school, classroom management has always been an issue with me. But one of my resolves right now is to do better at it. To expect that the students will follow expectations. I don't want it to be an issue any more. 

I'm glad Eric is doing Na-No-Wra-Mo. I should be. I'm just not; working on other projects.

Uh... here's a meme.

Baba is You Level, Halloween costume idea

If any of you own Baba is You and want to check out a level I made the code is 8JJ2-PT6A. I styled it after Legend of Zelda. I was inspired by the birthday gift I made Alex, which was my first attempt to make a Legend of Zelda level in Baba is You.

Yea, my little baby brother is now 22.

Halloween is coming up. I know what I'm going to be: it's what I wanted to be last year but didn't order the costume early enough. It's going to be this: 

Only I'm going to add a note in the same vein as these memes:

I'm going to make the squid hold cards and dice and a board and have a sign saying: "Squid Games or something idk I've never watched it." 

Pretty good idea, no?

How I'm doing with my Writing

I've made a goal for myself: write at least one sentence a day for my book. (My book meaning The Fallacy of Time, book one in the Temportaiton Trilogy.) This has been a good goal for me. Why? Because it is not overwhelming. If I had made the goal of one chapter a day, it would be completely overwhelming. Or maybe even one paragraph a day would be overwhelming. But one sentence a day? That's it? I could do that.

And I have been. I have been writing at least one sentence a day for my book. And what's cooler is that when I do write a sentence, I also end up writing a whole lot more. Right now I am, hold on let me check... okay I'm back. I'm now on chapter six. The first chapter you read here on this blog, although I changed the name of the main character from Brandon to Andemo. And I've made major revisions to chapter two. 

So things are going pretty well with that stuff. Which is good because it means I'm actually working on achieving my goal. And I'm not even to the exciting part in my book yet, so hopefully that will be really fun to write (and to read, later on). 

Once I get further into the book I'm going to ask for alpha readers to read it and give me their feedback. Probably the people that are reading this right now. You know who you are. . . . although I might not know because I don't know who's going to read this.

Puzzle Games YouTube Video I made

I made another YouTube video last week. Here it is:

Railbound v. Cosmic Express: An Examination of Two Track-Laying Puzzle Games

This is a picture of one of the levels.

The Life of Jesus Christ YouTube video

 I created this video for YouTube this last week. I hope you enjoy.

Here's a link to it: https://youtu.be/6pV2ttOOXU8

Board of a game I'm working on

My wife is super talented. She can play pretty much any instrument you can think of, and is really good at art. She also knows a lot about biology. 

Here's what I have so far of the board of a game I'm working on:

The setting is Ancient Greece. The top 4 yellow squares are to put 4 random Greek Gods cards. If you use an action to worship a god, then you put a token on that god card and each one gives you unique special abilities. You can also use your turn to move two of your meeples on the map from hex to hex. Each hex gives a certain type of resource, and you can also use your turn to have two areas produce.

Hold up, wait a second, you don't know what areas are yet. You see those center spaces on the board that are brown/purple/blue? Before the game starts you put tiles on them randomly.

An example of three of the five double-sided tiles.

When you do, it looks like the picture below. The rivers make up the seven areas. And unlike Scythe, you can walk over rivers. The only reason they're there is to divide the board into areas that produce. So anyway, on you turn you pick two of the seven areas and all hexes on them produce. (Yes, for you and your opponents, which is why you want to both spread out as well as defend your territory.)

You'll notice the seven areas, six with four hexes 
and one with three hexes (in the center).

These tile placements are random, so the boards are never the same from game to game, but due to the symmetry of the rivers on the tiles and whatnot the areas will always be the same sizes and shapes from game to game.

Awesome Steam games I've played

Celeste is an amazing game. 10/10. Looking for an amazing platformer? This is the game for you.

Hollow Knight is an amazing game. 10/10. Looking for an amazing metroidvania? This is the game for you.

Baba is You is an amazing game. 10/10. Looking for a an amazing puzzle game? This is the game for you.

The Room Three is an amazing game. 10/10. Looks for an amazing escape room style game? This is the game for you.

Other awesome games:

Platforming: Spelunky. 9/10.  Braid. 9/10.

Metroidvania: Ori and the Blind Forest. Haven't played it long enough to rate it yet, but from what I've heard about it it's great.

Puzzle game: Antichamber. 9/10.  Cosmic Express. 8/10.  Gorogoa. 8/10 (too short, or else it would be higher).

Escape Room Style: The Room. The Room Two. The Room 4: Old Sins. Been a while since I've played these but I think they are all a 8/10 or 9/10. The third one in the series is by far the best one.

Reoccurring locations in my dreams

In my dreams, there are some reoccurring locations. Yes, most of the time my dreams can happen anywhere, but when I dream of a certain category of location it's the same location. 

An example would be beneficial to show what I mean. School. Whenever a dream I have includes a school, most of the time the layout is pretty much the same. It's a mix between BYU campus and APA.

And in this school right next to the library, or in the library  (if you know BYU you knows kind of its location in my dream campus) is this huge Belle's library type thing going stories up and down right near the entrance. 

Elevator. In my dreams if there's ever an important elevator, it is round, you can risk getting onto or off of it while it's moving and try not to get chopped in half, and it always has 5 stories. So when I go up to floor 5 I know that's the top floor.

My house and Adam's house and Tyler's house and the Jamieson's house. Always in roughly the same locations. And always way way bigger on the inside, with multiple floors and secret passages. 

Often when I'm in my backyard there's some sort of apocalyptic event happening, like a nuclear blast or huge storm that's destroying everything in its way. And we hide in the house or go over to our neighbors to play games before we all die.

Often I play games and they're always so fun and when I wake up I only remember bits and pieces of them. I also dream of going into thrift stores and getting tons of euro games, or seeing a huge stack of games I want and grabbing them for free and walking off.

The other night I had a dream I was on an airplane and got on for free and tried to blend in so that I wasn't kicked off. Often in my traveling dreams it's always about me taking the bus public transport and those dreams are always super stressful because I know I need to transfer busses but never know exactly which one or which stop until I get there, and then there's the really annoying thing that happens in dreams when you're trying to run but your legs don't work and lock up. 

Anyway, that's my blog post for you today. Sorry I haven't written one earlier. 

Our little Vacation

 Went on vacation from June 30-July 10. Here are some pictures. 

Visited Ryan and Angeles. 

Heather identified plants.

Henry fell asleep while I was playing cards.

Swallowtail butterflies.

Alex won this game.

Affect

You are reading this post right now. Earlier, I was writing it. Why did I write it? To affect the future. Because you are reading this right now,  you're not doing something else. 

According to the butterfly effect, even the smallest littlest change can have huge implications down the line. The mere fact that I wrote this and you're reading it may be the difference between kingdoms rising and falling. 

In an alternate dimension, a parallel universe, where I never wrote this post, things were not changed, not affected. As a result of that tiny, seemingly insignificant choice, everything changed.

Maybe by reading this post you'll have slightly different dreams, remember slightly different things about them, who knows?

And as a result the world will change.

Courageous Creativity

My wife checked out a book from the library called Courageous Creativity; the tagline is Advice and Encouragement for the Creative Life. I've read the first 60 pages so far and it's really good. It's about encouraging you to use your creativity and create. For example, write.

I finally wrote the first chapter of my book down one week ago. This is a book that I've been working on in my head for years and years. Plotting out the characters, major events, major themes, that kind of thing. But only now am I starting to write it out. I also wrote the first little bit of chapter two as well.

Chapter 2

            Casey sat down on her couch.

            She opened her laptop and scanned her emails. Nothing new. That was worrisome. Casey stood up and paced around the living room of her apartment. How long had it been since she had heard from Harriet? Two weeks? Something was definitely wrong.

            She remembered the day she heard the news. She was sitting in that very room, working on her research into ancient civilizations, when one of her three roommates came in.

            “Casey,” she said, “you have to see this.”

            Casey sat up straighter. “What is it Nel?”

            Nel walked over to the coffee table and grabbed the TV remote. “Look,” Nel said, and turned on the TV.

            “—let it cook for fifty to fifty-five minutes,” the person on the TV was saying.

            “Huh?”

            “Shoot. Sorry,” Nel said, pulling up the channel guide. “It’s just that in movies and shows and such whenever a person has some news story to share, when they turn on the TV it’s automatically on the right channel.”

            The news station came up on the screen. It was currently in the middle of showing a Coca-Cola commercial.

            “And it always turns on right at the beginning of the news story the character was thinking about,” mumbled Nel, then turned off the TV. “Forget it, here, look.” She took out her phone and pulled up an article.

            Casey looked over at her roommates phone, and soon began to feel chill.

            That was three weeks ago.

I'm probably going to change the very beginning of that. Sitting down on a couch isn't that exciting. Anyway, that's my blog post for this week. 

The Fallacy of Time . Chapter 1

The Fallacy of Time

Book One of the Temportation Trilogy

Chapter 1

    Brandon raced up the stairs.

    Panting and sweaty, he rounded another corner. Under normal circumstances, he would rest, take a break, breathe and get his strength up. He wasn't able to do that now, however, figuring there were two men running behind him trying to kill him.

    Brandon heard a gunshot ring out and he instinctively ducked. He had survived for twenty years in his violent village in Africa, he would certainly survive here. It didn't hurt that he also had a couple of tricks up his sleeve.

    Rounding the corner in the stairwell, he burst through a door into a hallway. He raced down it, and heard noise coming from up ahead. What? There shouldn't be anybody here! thought Brandon. One of the main reason he had chosen this particular building to try to escape was because he thought it didn't have any innocent bystanders. He didn't want anyone getting hurt.

    Down the hall, he could hear the two men running up the stairs. In front of him, a custodian walked out of a side office.

    "Hey! No one's allowed in here! What are you--" the custodian was cut off as Brandon pile drove him back into the office. They both crashed down onto the floor, and Bradon put his hand over the man's mouth.

    "Listen," Brandon hastily said, "There are two men behind me trying to kill me. You need to hide, and you need to make sure that they don't see you. Got it?"

    The custodian had a look of terror across his face. Brandon released his hand. "Do you understand?" Brandon asked again, getting up from off the floor. Out in the hall, noise could be heard of running feet. The custodian nodded, his eyes still wide. "Good," Brandon said, and stuck his head out the door. 

    The door to the stairwell opened, and two men emerged. Tall, black, and muscular, they looked similar to Brandon. Brandon focused, and a few seconds later, the guns the men were carrying vanished. There was a soft whooshing sound as the air rushed in to fill the void their weapons had made. "Not again!" cried one, as Brandon dashed back out into the hallway and ran away from them. Brandon knew they had other weapons on them, but that bought him a few moments.

    Thankfully, those few moments were enough, as Brandon reached the end of the hall and turned the corner. He could hear the men running after him again, and by this time Brandon figured they already had other guns out. Brandon ran for the exit door. Ahead of him, two guns materialized midair in the hallway and clattered to the ground. As Brandon sped past them he reached down and grabbed one. He reached the exit door and spun around, firing the gun back towards the corner. He heard one of the men curse. Good, thought Brandon, and then he opened the emergency exit door.

    Or, at least, he tried to. Brandon winced as his shoulder collided with the door, which he thought would budge but for some reason refused to. The alarm in the building did start to go off, though. Brandon was frantic now. He looked up and saw a sign on the door. It read: Emergency Exit only. To Open, press on Handle and wait 30 seconds. Doors will then automatically open.

    30 seconds! I don't HAVE 30 seconds! Brandon thought in a panic. He turned and fired a few more shots down the hallway, then turned back to the door. He looked at the locking bars in place and focused. There was a small woosh of air, and the bar disappeared. Brandon crashed through and then slammed the door behind him. Turning, he then bolted up one more flight of stairs before emerging on the rooftop.

    The building he had chosen for his escape was 30 stories high. He ran to the edge of the roof and looked out over the railing into the city stretched out before him. He couldn't help but be impressed. America. So this is what it's like. All his life he had never been. It was too bad that a recent archeological and scientific discovery that threated the very foundations of society was the only reason he was here. It would have been nice to visit in less deadly circumstances.

    The door to the roof slammed open again. The two men burst through, guns raised. They looked over at Brandon and pointed. So, Brandon did the only logical thing to be done.

    He jumped off the roof.

    As Brandon plummeted down, the men ran to where he was just standing. Brandon knew they couldn't follow him. Well, they could, but then they'd end up splattering onto the sidewalk below. Brandon had other plans for himself. He spread his body out horizontally and stuck his arms out in front of him. In an instant, a large blueish-green hang glider appeared around him. 

    If anyone had been looking up at him the very next second, it would have looked like the hang glider had been on Brandon for the past few minutes. Of course, they would have been completely wrong.

    They also, of course, would have been completely right.

    Brandon grabbed the steering bar of the hang glider and moved it to the left. He tilted up and the glider flew him through the air, over the street far below, and away from the building where two men now stood on the roof, despondent.

Why the Moon Knight finale underwhelmed me

So, like, Ammit growing larger and larger was due to her eating souls, right? But then Khonshu just appears and he's that giant as well. So, like, how? Does their size really matter? 

Okay, so what was the point of the giant monsters/gods fighting each other? Because it looks cool is the answer, because plot wise it really doesn't do anything. There's no stakes. We're not told or know what the consequences will be if giant Ammit does beat giant Khonshu. Plus, going back to the first paragraph here, their giant-ness doesn't really matter because they don't affect their environment or anything. And do people see them? If their fight had consequences or stakes the scene would be a lot better because it would actually matter, instead of just being there to look cool.

To fix it there should have been some sort of stakes attached. Like, a time limit before Ammit becomes too powerful to be stopped, based on the number of souls she collects. Which, once again, was really weird. So Harrow gets the Ammit statue, but then just waits to break it open? And then after Ammit is released, what then? We know it's bad, but why? We don't really get to see the consequences of it besides some of Harrow's followers run around Cairo grabbing people's arms and judging them? Could that not have happened before? Won't it take weeks and weeks just to get to every person in that one city, much less the world? 

This stuff isn't explained. It's not like they didn't have time to explain it; episode six was the shortest. The reason I don't think episode six works is because the stakes and consequences and time pressure are not very well established to the audience. Or they don't make sense (like Harrow's followers having to run around the entire city grabbing everyone's arms). As a result, there's a bunch of cool action, but all the build up just falls flat. (Oh no! They'll release Ammit! That means, uh, that bad things will happen, uh, faster ? ? ?)

As one person online stated, and I agree with, the post-credits scene was the best part of the whole episode and overshadows the episode itself. I liked that part.

And before the credits Marc/Steven just wakes up in bed and I'm like, uh, where's his wife? Why is his leg still tied to the bed? But mostly the where's Layla question. That bugged me.

So that's my opinion. Good action scenes, cool characters, I like how Harrow was all bad-a at the end, and Layla getting powers was kinda cool but nothing was really built out of that, and the stakes and time constraints weren't well established, so there really wasn't any tension. 

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Found one book from our childhood, looking for another

I finally found it! After all these years! The scroll of truth! Posting your political opinions on Facebook doesn't change anyone's mind. Nyehhh! 

But in all actuality, I did finally find it after all these years of searching.  Eric made a blog post a while ago with things from our/his childhood that he fuzzily remembers but couldn't quite pin down. LINK to that blog post. The #6 entry is as follows: Mid-to-late ‘90s-early-to-mid ‘00s. It was like a Usborne puzzle book, full-page full-color illustrations each spread containing its own puzzle, kind of deal, though I remember it being significantly fancier and more difficult. It was separated into different sections/periods in which the story takes place; there was a medieval period, an Underground Railroad period, a future period with aliens, etc. I remember one chapter in the Underground Railroad section was named Midnight Rendezvous, because I had no idea what a rendezvous was or how it was pronounced. At the end it turned out that all the sections interconnected to tell a single story, and one artifact from one time period turned out to be a macguffin from a different time period under a different name, that kind of thing.

Well, I was also really curious because I too remember this one. Every so often I would try to find it and search it up online, with no hits. Until last week.

That's right my friends, I finally found it. It is called the Usborne Book of Superpuzzles. (The Midnight Rendezvous puzzle is on page 100 btw.)

I can now check that off the list. 

I tried looking for the other ones on Eric's list, but haven't been able to locate any more.

Here's a book from my childhood that I want to find: It was a children's book that was all black and white illustrations, reminds me of Chris Van Allsburg illustrations. It was a Halloween book about some trick or treaters that went into an old house and it was bigger inside and one page there was a door on a small island in the middle of a giant ocean and the door was non-Euclidean because if you looked at the backside it was normal but if you looked through the frontside a giant staircase rose up. And the kids at the end eventually meet with the real monsters that were running the place and they hung out and laughed and watched as other kids entered into the house before they left. Anyone know what book this is? I've been trying to find it but can't.

Starting to write, make a game

Starting something is so hard. Like, I have a couple of book ideas, but just getting started on writing them is almost too much than I can bear. There was that one short story I wrote about a year ago, but I was only able to do that because I just sat down and wrote the whole thing. With a book it's a lot longer and so not really possible? 

With games it's a bit different. Because I can sit down and start making a game. And then improve on it, add mechanics, figure out cards, and so forth. Except, you know, with a written book you know when you're done, because it's, like, written out and people can read it. I've only finished a very small handful of games I've started. (And some, like We Three Kings, I've finished completely but they haven't been played.)

So why can I start making games but not start writing books? It's like, all I need to do is write a chapter or something. And then the next chapter. Except often I never write the next one. (For example, Paths of Zarahemla, where I wrote the first chapter, but then just outlined the next chapters instead of writing them.) 

So what can I do?

Beats me. 

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Easter

Did you know that the word Easter has its roots in a pagan goddess of fertility and Spring? And yet this one website tries to say it has its roots in the religiousness of the Jews and Passover: "'Passover' comes from the Hebrew word 'pesach,' which means to pass or spring over. And in most European languages, the word for 'Easter' also has this root."

Like, dudes, it's okay if your religious holiday doesn't have 100% of its roots in religion. It doesn't need to. It's fine. But some people get so hung up on the pagan origins of some Christian holidays that they freak out.

Like, Christmas was created around a pagan holiday in order for it to be a big deal. "Around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25." This huge celebration was happening, and so the church leaders decided to celebrate Christ's birth on that day to make the holiday more important.

As a result of these pagan roots, some, uh, let's just say "interesting" people on my mission were completely turned off from celebrating Christmas. So much so that they wouldn't even consider getting baptized, because our living prophets celebrated Christmas. (It was pretty funny and sad to watch as they tried to prove to us that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints celebrated Christmas, and I'm just like, yeah bro, I already know.)

The moral of this story is: an unhealthy or unnecessary fixation on one point could prevent you from embracing the fullness of the gospel. Those guys on my mission were too over-fixated on Christmas not having purely Christian roots, which led to them not joining the church.

Don't be dumb. Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Christ, even if the roots of the name are pagan.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Welp, I'm 32.

 On April 2, 2022, I turned 32 years old. Assuming I live to be 96 years old, 32 is a third of 96, so right now I should be having my tri-life crisis. (Kind of like a mid-life crisis, but a third of the way through instead of half.)

I made a motivational video (posted on April Fool's Day):

I am also working on an idea for a new game, again, and it's coming along. Okay, I say new game, but it's not a new game, it's an old game idea I had a long time ago and I'm dusting it off to see if I can actually make it work this time.

I do that sometimes. I have an idea for a game, and work on it for a bit, and then it stalls and I get stuck so I shelve it for a bit and work on other stuff. And when I come back to it later, it looks fresh and I'm able to look at it through fresh and new eyes. Plus by then I'll have had that much more experience. 

I've mentioned this before, but when working on a game there comes a point where you have to playtest it. A bunch. And as of right now, I don't really have that. But that's fine, because I haven't really reached that stage with my prototype anyway. So hahaha.

General Conference was this weekend, too. It's funny, with all the crazy stuff that's been happening in my life right now my birthday was/is one of the last things I've thought about.

So I'll close my post to a link to a couple of Kickstarters I've backed in the last few months, one of which I won't get anything from except for bragging rights that I helped back the most successful Kickstarter ever, and one where I will get something, a game, but in, like, a year. Because that's about how long it takes Kickstarter games to get to you.

The Last True Dolphin of Dobby's Empire

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man that can carry six or more chairs at once while putting them away after church, must be in want of a wife.

Sister Bennet... something something. I don't know.

Okay, that's all I got for now.

I have an idea for a new board game. It's called Plagues of Egypt, and there are ten rounds, and after each round one of the ten plagues from the Book of Exodus hits. Anyway, it's just a germ of an idea right now.

And here's this:

Pi day tomorrow, AZ Games Convention

What is this place!? Answers below...

I am tired. Also, pi day is tomorrow. I'm not sure when tao day is.

In other news, this meme

has now gotten 20 shares. Yay! People like it! Man, I'm insecure. 

Spring Break the next two weeks.

My brother Ryan got a new deluxe Go board.

Speaking of games, this weekend was an Arizona Gaming Conference. I went to it. I got in for free because I was also a volunteer at the game design room. When I wasn't volunteering I played games. Here's a picture:

Some games I played were: Dune Imperium with the Rise of Ix expansion, Tapestry, Migration Mars, Savage, Santa Monica, and Onitama. Savage hasn't come out yet, I've mentioned in another post I know the guy working on it. Migration Mars was alright, it was probably my least favorite of all of them. Rise of Ix was great. Santa Monica was awesome and a lot of fun. Tapestry was difficult to understand at first (I was playing with someone else who it was his first time) but once you got the hang of it it was pretty fun.

I also in my volunteer position playtested about six games that people brought in of games they were working on and I was able to give them feedback.

Good good times.

Memes

 A meme I made:

You know how sometime BYU Memes will take a Meme someone has posted to the community wall and repost on their own so it becomes super popular and gets a ton of likes? I was hoping that would happen to this meme, but oh well. Whatever. It did happen to this one though: 

So that's pretty cool.

Part 1: Ideas / Part 2: Dream I had last night

--Part 1--

Hahaha it looks like I haven't really posted that many more YouTube videos up since my last blog post. But I do have a couple ideas. Not that ideas really matter. LINK!

Okay, so now that you've clicked on that link and read a bit, you know that me having an idea in my head isn't worth beans. I can have a great idea for a game, but if I don't do anything with it, then the terrible crappy game idea someone has and actually does something with is 100 times better than my game, because at least it exists. 

I also had an idea for a short story, but once again, unless I actually write it, or start to write it, it doesn't really matter.

What is an idea? A series of connections in my brain? A certain pattern on synapses firing? If I were to die tomorrow, those ideas would be lost. There would be literally no record of them for anyone to find or discover. (With today's technology--who knows, maybe in the future they'll be able to go into dead people's brains and know what they were thinking.)

--Part 2--

Man, I had this crazy dream last night. The theme for the dream I guess would be guilt/grief. 

You see, in it a super villain is fighting against superheroes and the most virtuous superhero is trying his very best. In the end the super villain is going to beat him, though. But that's a good thing because we had a secret weapon that would instantly destroy the bad guy, but it works on a system of karma, so it would only work if the bad guy killed one of the good guys. So that was about to happen, the bad guy was just about to kill this good guy, who was on the very last stitch of life, and then we could've used the weapon and won. Except.

Except I'm nearby and I think, hey, I can be a hero and hit this bad guy right now. And I pick up a rock and chuck it at the villain's head. Only I hit the good guy instead and accidently kill him. I am so full of grief and pain and regret. We would have won it all, everything, but now because of my stupid mistake the bad guy's going to have to kill another hero for our super weapon to work (because I took out the good guy, the villain didn't). The dream fast forwards to after the battle now.

My life is a living nightmare. If you remember the General Conference talk about the man who accidently runs over and kills his son with the moving van, and the guilt he felt, that's what I felt. I hate myself, who I am, everything about me. Everyone looks at me and I feel their stabbing, judging eyes. I was the one who ruined everything. I was the one who messed up. I was the screw-up. Everywhere I go everyone recognizes me instantly as that one guy who messed everything up. The guilt I feel. The burden I carry. Extreme waves of just overwhelming overpowering depression crashing into me, ceaselessly, endlessly. With no escape. I have no more desire for human interaction, human touch. I am shunned and so shun myself from the world of love, and hope, and happiness. The past haunts me every waking second. Knowing what I did. Knowing that I can never, ever, reverse it. Life is a living hell.

And then. And then there's one man who doesn't shun me, who accepts me, who helps me. He knows exactly what I did, but he still loves me and is my friend. Not only that, but he loves me so much that he says he wants to take that pain from me, the shame, the horrible suffocating guilt. He's willing to take it upon himself, to suffer it himself, in order to let me be free. In order to let me live, and be free of the intense crushing all-encompassing pain. And then he does--he take sit all on himself to let me free.

The only question is: do I accept it?

The Saddest YouTube Video I've Ever Seen

Okay, so maybe not saddest. But it's definitely one of the most sad YouTube videos I think I've ever seen.

It's less than two minutes long. It has no dialogue, no words. And yet--perhaps due to the fact that it's real--it's somewhat sobering at the end. A reminder to all of us that our time here is limited.

Enjoy.

Some of my New Year's Resolutions

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to post more on my YouTube channel. My goal was at least one video a week. So far this year I've posted five videos. We're in the sixth month of the year. So on average I'm doing alright. 

In other news, my Facebook feed is like 50% ads.

In other other news, we're all over here sick. But our ministering people and others from the ward are super nice and helpful.

In other other other news, another New Year's goal was to work on my games more and try to get one of them published. So far the games that I've worked on are Chief Judge and Klidrins, and another idea which so far is theme-less.

Here's a random picture:

What makes a game fun?

 What makes a game fun?

Why are there some games that I love playing and others that I'm not really up for all the time? Example: I now own Wingspan on Steam, and I've played over twenty games of it so far. Every time I'm done I'm like, Maybe one more game. I remember the very first time ever playing Dominion, where it wasn't our copy, it was the Lovelands, and we were at the Lovelands. And two turns into the game I was like, I need to buy this game.

And there are other games where I'm like, uh, okay I'll play. Such as Terra Mystica. I'll play it, sure, but I know I'm going to lose.

So, is liking a game tied to how well you do at it or if you win? I don't think so. I think I might not like Terra Mysitca as much, not because Alex always kicks my butt at it, but because I don't know how to get into it, get well at it, hmm, how do I put this? Like, I always feel like I never have enough stuff. Never enough workers or coins. So I can't do anything.

So maybe it's the freedom you have? Is the more freedom you have tied to how fun it is? In Alex's latest post he mentioned how he didn't like Charterstone as much as he thought he would, and one of the reasons was "I never felt I got a good grasp on the gameplay itself. I don't really know how to win. Which is kind of concerning in a strategy game."  

So maybe it's how well you understand the intricacies of a game? Because I'll tell you what, I don't really know how to win Terra Mystica. The last game I played I thought it was doing really well on the Element tracks, but I got first on all four of them and still lost, so that wasn't it. 

So what makes a game fun? Freedom of choice during your turn? Knowing how to do well? Something else? The mechanics? 

Because certain mechanics I just find so fun. The reason I like My Village so much is because I love the mechanic of having a large die pool and pulling out two dice from it to make a specific number. I love Dominion because it's a deck-building game and I love deck-building.

I don't think how fun a game is has to do with the theme, or even how well the theme matches up with the gameplay. It might be a deal breaker for some, but not for me. Going along with the previous paragraph, I'm more of a mechanics kind of guy.

Here's another idea: Maybe it's the idea of having progressed. One reason I love 7 Wonders is because at the end of the half-hour you feel like you've created an entire civilization. At the end of a deck-builder (or pool-builder like Quacks) you feel like you've made something. 

I think that might be a major reason why the game Cerebria wasn't liked by critics. Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower states that he felt for such a huge game with tons of components "it feels like a small payoff" and "I'm doing this and this and controlling this and playing this and... we get one point." Moral of the story: games are fun when it feels like you're accomplishing something.

Another thing about Cerebria: It's too complex, too complicated. Why is Wingspan so fun? Because you don't feel like you're overwhelmed; you can do one of four things. In 7 Wonders the biggest choice you have is between 7 cards. In Dominion there's only ten kingdom cards out per game you can buy. 

But there's this balance, right? Because earlier in this post I said that the freedom you had made it fun, and now I'm saying it's not having that many choices. So which is it? Too many and you get analysis paralysis, not enough and you get Chutes and Ladders. And, like, I love Caverna. Caverna is an amazing game. But there's so much stuff you can do and so many paths to victory. But I still love it.

Here's a BGG article on this idea if anyone wants to read it: (Is there such a thing as too many choices?) 

So why do I like Caverna, and Viticulture, and 7 Wonders, and Dominion, and Scythe, and... all the other games on the right-hand side of my blog? I like them because I have fun playing them. But why?

Why play games at all? What's the purpose of games? I think that Michael of VSauce said it best when he said, "In life, the rules are complicated, the goals are indeterminate and the methods for achieving them are often unknown or different for every single person. Plus, the rewards themselves are often slow to come or non-existent. So, in the face of all of that, it's no surprise that we invented games within the larger game of life itself that ensure fast, easy-to-achieve and understandable rewards."

So maybe a game is fun when there are clear goals, clear ways to reach those goals, clear things you can do on your turn, (but not too many things you can do on your turn,) but the goals aren't too easy, but they're not too difficult, and has awesome mechanics, and... man, I don't know.

And the reason I'm asking myself these kinds of questions is because I want to make the games I create fun. I want people to want to play my games. I want the games I make to be played and for the player to say, Man, that was really fun. I'd like to play that again. Because that, my friends, that is the dream.

From what I can remember from my dream last night.

So it was Christmas break and so everyone's hanging out at mom and dad (Glen and Beth)'s house. And my foot kept hurting so I kept having to bring my foot up and take my fingernails to take great big slivers out from my foot. But the slivers were actually long sewing needles. And I didn't think anything of it at first, until it kept happening and I realized, hmm, this is weird, how did all these sewing needles get jabbed up into my foot? Because they were like, all the way in there, with just a centimeter of the needle sticking out, which I grabbed and slowly slid the needle out of my foot. But like, no blood or anything, just stabbing pain when I stepped. And I thought, what if these aren't actually needles, but my brain is playing a trick on me? 

So Adam and I looked it up (Adam was there, by the way) and yep, it was just all in our mind. Because Adam had the same thing too. So it was all in out heads, and the needles weren't real, but wait, because I could see the needles Adam pulled out of his foot and he could see the needles I pulled out, so how is that possible if they were just a figment of our imagination? Then I had the idea that maybe because we told each other there were needles our minds would fill in the gaps, so I had the idea that we should draw what we saw and then compare the pictures to see if we saw the needles in the exact same locations, and if not then it meant our brains were just filling in the gaps.

Only Adam didn't like that idea and he told me we should take medicine, and the medicine was in the top of my mom and dad's right-hand closet. And I go there and there are boxes on top and I look through them and there's no medicine but there is a Christmas gift I wrapped for Heather and hid up there so no one could find it, but I forgot about it too. So I come out and unwrap it (instead of giving it to Heather to unwrap, I guess, my bad) and it's a cute little couples gift, which for some reason reminds me that Adam is old enough to be married with kids, but he doesn't, because he passed away years ago in a climbing accident.

And then I'm like, what the heck? Because, you know, I've been hanging out with Adam this whole time, and so I confront the rest of the family about it, and they admit that all this time I've been talking to Adam I've actually just been standing there by myself talking to myself. Which annoys me, but I guess that explains how I was able to see the needles that Adam took out of his foot. But I was like, wait if it was all just really in my head how was Adam able to lead me to this Christmas gift for Heather? Spooky.

And this somehow transitions to Heather and I are going to be moving, but instead of bothering to pack up everything because that would take forever, we'd just pick up the entire house and move it with all the stuff still inside. And my parents were gone for the week so it was the perfect time. So we made arrangements and lifted the whole house up, and Uncle David took it off to put in near Grandma and Grandpa's house. But for some reason we still had a bunch of stuff which we had to pack up, and loaded up in this large trailer.

And Dr. Strange was there and he helped us out, only Dr. Strange was Uncle Alan and everyone just took this in stride, and he drove the large trailer with an attachment on the back. His car was so packed full of stuff and four people (I think Henry and Joy, along with Brent maybe?) that there was literally no room for me, so I had to ride on the back on top of the back attachment. Only I couldn't get a really good grip, so part way there I fell off with a bunch of stuff. This was on a dirt path on the dairy. We tried to fit it back on but to no avail, but then thankfully Eric showed up, who worked for some sort of moving Uber company, and after calculating how much stuff he would help us carry in his truck, he calculated that he'd be paid $9.95 from his company, so he excitedly agreed to help. 

So we made it the rest of the way and ended setting up the house next to Grandma and Grandpa's house, right where their trailer/RV was. And it was super hot out, so everyone was in the shade. And then I realized with horror, What were mom and dad going to do when they got back into town and noticed a giant hole where their house used to be? It was the first time any of us had thought about it. And I was like, how can we just take their house and move it without telling them? And I asked around to Alan and David and everyone if they had told my mom and dad but everyone just assumed that someone else had done it so no one had. 

And I can't really remember what happened next but I woke up a little bit after that. I don't think my parents ever made it back into Fallon to see what we did by the end of the dream.