100 Baby Challenge – Episode 5: The Clock Starts Ticking

← Episode 4

I’m going to skip the Olympae family ahead here a bit as I’ve been playing this A LOT and I haven’t been writing fast enough to keep up. When we last saw the Olympae family they had moved into their new, 2 bathroom home and had a lot more space. Since then Hades and Artemis have also been born and another baby is on the way, the lovely Poseidon (one of my favourite children) had moved out to make some room for potential twins and I was waiting for Hecate to come of age too. I was toying with the idea of letting her stay on as she’s magical and that makes repairing and cleaning stuff very, very easy. Here she is repairing the fridge and oven that she set fire to trying to cook lunch.

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We got an answer to ‘Who is the most beautiful Greek Goddess?’ from the old myth Judgement of Paris. Aphrodite and Athena became teens and look at how gorgeous Aphrodite is. Hera was the prettiest but she’s been de-throned. Not only is Aphrodite gorgeous but she’s super chill and helpful too. Athena is a bit alternative and also has the evil trait so she was often happy just because she enjoyed being around sims that had negative moods. Aphrodite was the clear winner in both looks and personality, in this universe anyway.

Aphrodite in her Winter finery, she looks like she’s about to hit the slopes and slay the snowboard competition.

I did move Hecate out in the end as having twins would be amazing and I guess the more space in the house the higher the chance? Spoiler alert: twins have not been a thing since Demeter and Persephone and annoyingly they continue to not be a thing for the rest of Gaia’s matriarchy.

Speaking of our next Matriarch I suddenly became acutely aware that Gaia was approaching retirement. The rules state that the youngest daughter has to continue the challenge as the new Matriarch once their mother has become an elder. If only it had been Aphrodite… At that moment Artemis was the youngest daughter but Gaia had another baby on the way and enough time to have another one. Ideally the next Matriarch would be Gaia’s final baby then you have a nice gap where everyone else gradually gets out of the house, there’s a break where there’s no babies and you can just focus on the Matriarch’s development.

The next Matriarch?

The baby was born and unfortunately it was a boy, named Apollo. Gaia was straight on it finding a new victim ASAP and I crossed my fingers… I was working on Artemis already just in case, getting her good grades and getting her skills up nice and high. Also letting her have some fun though, she potentially has quite a life ahead of her, let’s give her a fun childhood.

Next baby was born and it was… Another boy! Crap. This was Hephaestus. So… Artemis, the maiden Goddess who in mythology is chaste and virtuous, is going to be the next Matriarch. Ironic. On top of that she has 2 younger siblings that won’t be moving out before she’s started the challenge. Not the best outcome but never mind. Time was up and Gaia aged up into an elder.

Silver Fox!

Good news for Gaia though, she just needs to enjoy her retirement now. I think she did pretty well in her Matriarchy career with 13 kids. Or at least I thought I did until I watched an episode of Single Girl’s stream of this challenge (which inspired me to do it) where her first matriarch becomes an elder and she had 33 kids!!! WHAT?!?!?! HOW?! Maybe I let Gaia rest too much. I was too concerned with making her happy. Honestly that depressed me a bit. My girl doesn’t even have half that amount of children… I’m going to be really mature and say that Single Girl owns way more expansion packs than me, therefore she has more stuff so maybe it’s easier, and she got incredibly lucky with twins. That’s totally it, right? Also my PS4 is really struggling with this game sometimes and it bugs out quite a lot… I do wish I had a gaming PC for it instead but nevermind.

My future Matriarch needed a new look…

Much better

To sour my mood even more and make me want to curl up into a ball on the floor and reevaluate my choices in life I decided to calculate, based on Gaia’s 13 kids, how long it would take me to get to 100 babies… 7.5 GENERATIONS! … I can’t do that… I have to step it up… Is teen pregnancy a thing in the Sims?  Oh no…

Gaia is finally having a great time now that she is unburdened with upcoming children and men

Baby count: 13/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate
• Aphrodite
• Athena
• Boreas
• Hades
• Artemis
• Apollo
• Hephaestus

Episode 6 →

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 4: The Seduction of Father Winter and The New House

← Episode 3

We’ll start off this episode with the arrival of baby number 7, Aphrodite. She’s a very good and quiet baby. So good that we were able to very rapidly seduce Victim 7: J Hunnington III who just appeared on our doorstep and rang the bell with no prior introduction, maybe word is going around town?

As time was going by I was very aware that the house itself was really not helping the situation. Everyone is constantly smelly, in need of fun and tense. I decided to make a new house that they could move into, just an empty shell that they could populate with furniture and decor gradually as time goes by. As you can see I’m really not the best Sims builder and what was meant to look like a large cosy cabin looks a bit… Prison-like?

Nevermind. The inside will be nice when they have stuff in it. Unfortunately, the house I made ended up costing $18,000 which the Olympae family really can’t afford. The teens all got jobs, we got the magic bin that converts your food and crockery into $$$, Gaia also took on a couple of big freelance programming jobs and we started doing some serious saving.

Christmas time came around and Father Winter (a character suspiciously similar to a certain Father Christmas) came to give presents to the family, an interesting variety of gifts; there was a globe, a tea set, and a spice rack. He also gifted one of the twins with a $7,500 painting!!! WHAT?! All of that was sold instantly and the savings for the house went right up. I also noticed you could flirt with Father Winter… Hmmm… 

Baby on the way included this would take us to the max household number so we were going to have to get rid of Zeus, who had just become a young adult. I was actually quite emotional saying goodbye, he’d been a good first baby. We still had Hera and the twins to help out with bills and chores though so not all was lost.

As soon as Gaia had baby number 8: Athena, she invited Victim 8: Father Winter on a date to the park. As you do. They got along splendidly and had a wonderful date.

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So successful in fact, they were very into the try for baby thing very quickly but where do they go to make the baby? Should they go back to the crowded house? But the date is coming to an end, can’t they find a nice bush or something? No, I had to go into build mode and put a little room in the park with a bed in it.

The epitome of class and convenience.

The next few Sim days were pretty torturous, everyone was tired, no one was ever happy, it was filthy. I couldn’t wait for my teens to age up as there was constantly something not right with them. I got Hera out the house ASAP, I wasn’t very emotional about her leaving as I had been with Zeus. I don’t remember the last time she has the green aura of satisfaction. A bit later the twins also aged up and were swiftly kicked out, especially after one randomly got the ‘hates children’ trait, their moodlet was already permanently bad let alone with that to drag it down even further.

Poseidon was now the only teen and bread winner though so we still had some money coming in. Gaia also had baby number 9: Boreas (god of the North Wind and Winter), son of Father Winter. The palest baby Gaia has had so far.

Money saved, the Olmpae family moved to the new house and it took a bit to settle in but they finally found their groove. The difference two bathrooms makes is just incredible. Seriously. The game has been so much easier ever since. They say money doesn’t make you happy but… I haven’t had all my sims happy at once for a very long time.

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Well… Almost all.

Despite the new home comforts Boreas proved to be a ridiculously annoying demon toddler.

Stare into the face of the devil

He has the trait of being Father Winter’s child which means he may have magical powers… So far all I have seen that could possibly resemble magical powers is that he has a stomach like an endless void. Like the Ever-Peckish one from Overcooked he is CONSTANTLY hungry. Being constantly hungry means he was also constantly angry and… I hate him. This is hard enough without your black hole stomach and anger issues, Boreas! This made it so hard to get his skills all up to 3 and I don’t believe I actually managed it which, while it’s not a deal-breaker for the challenge, I am annoyed at myself. If it hadn’t meant failing the challenge I would have been very tempted to let Child Services take him away.

Let’s take the end of the episode to a happier note where A NAKED MAN randomly arrived on Gaia’s doorstep. You know what? It’s bold move and maybe it’s because Gaia’s minimum requirement for a partner is ‘able to provide children’ but yeah, she went for it and Victim 9: Naked Man’s baby was on the way.

Baby count: 9/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate
• Aphrodite
• Athena
• Boreas

Episode 5 →

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 3: Fire and Death

← Episode 2

Today is a baby-free post. There’s 7 in the house which means no room for twins/triplets so the focus was on making everyone happy, building relationships with future victims and getting some desperately needed money coming in (current household total $57 with bills of nearly $400).

Making everyone happy is my biggest struggle in this challenge, I know they don’t have to be but it makes everything so much easier when they are. Unfortunately, I seem to be cursed with bad luck where whenever the household is feeling particularly good something will go wrong and unleash a chain of unfortunate events. This was a particularly bad one.

It all started when Zeus put the entire challenge in peril by setting fire to himself. If a teen dies then I lose the challenge and I have put WAY too much time into this challenge at this point to be taken out by a house fire. He managed to extinguish himself but was understandably rather tense and upset about the situation… As was everyone else.

When you’re on fire but you really want those scrambled eggs…

It took a while for everyone to get over it. We ran out of money replacing the oven he’d destroyed and got the power shut off which really didn’t help anyone’s fun levels and meant Gaia couldn’t make any money programming. I really should have gone down the artist route there. She might not have made as much money but she’d have been able to do it whatever the state of the electricity and it would have increased her fun levels too.

My gorgeous girl, Hera in her Winter best

Luckily, it was Harvestfest (see also Thanksgiving) which we don’t do in the UK, but apparently it’s when gnomes invade your home and break all your stuff if they don’t like you but give you seeds if you appease them. We appeased the hell out of those gnomes and they gave us lots of seed packets that we sold, and then we sold the gnomes, which gave us enough to get the power back on.

I thought everything was sorted, we had some spare cash, Hera was now a GORGEOUS teenager with a good job (seriously look at her. I don’t think I could have made a prettier Sim if I tried), and everyone was actually pretty happy!

Gaia decided to make a big meal for everyone to celebrate and invited over a group of potential victims to chat up. Not to seduce just yet, we’re still biding our time there, just to see who she has the best relationship with. She invited over Don Lothario, Simeon (he’s incredibly unattractive but is also a sage at the magic school so I assume his offspring would have that similar Ancient Bloodline trait that Hecate has), and blond guy. I didn’t realise that Simeon is an elder now at this point! What?? Maybe we won’t resort to that, there are other sages after all. He seemed to be enjoying himself anyway so no worries you can stay for some food. Suddenly, with no warning, he falls to the floor and DIES. WHAT?!?!?!?!

Everyone is just stood around eating eggs and bacon and this guy is lying there dead in the middle of them. The Grim Reaper shows up and everyone (understandably) suddenly freaks out and starts crying. There goes the happy moods everyone was in.

Thanks Simeon, this is going to take them ages to get over. We can’t even sell his urn which is now just on the kitchen side being useless. What do I do with it? It’s just there and it’s not like anyone in the house was particularly close to him. Awkward.

Gaia was having a pretty good chat with the Grim Reaper though and I had the sudden realisation that the name Hades was still available and how awesome would it be if he could literally be the son of death… You can flirt with the Grim Reaper after all, maybe you can have a baby with it/him/her?

Power through the sadness, Gaia

She spent a bit of time chatting but I decided to Google if it was actually possible as I can’t really waste any time on this challenge, I’m already on a child break as it is. Turns out you can’t have the Grim Reaper’s children. Damn, that would have been a good.

It really did take a while for everyone to get over Simeon dying but eventually they did and we had some birthday parties! Poseidon, Persephone, and Demeter all aged up! Poseidon into a child and Persephone and Demeter into teens. We now have 4 teen incomes! Thanks to the randomised traits Persephone and Demeter were given some interesting personalities. Demeter is a lone wolf who has the Popularity aspiration of being a comedy queen and Persephone is an insane music lover intent on finding her soulmate. That will be fun.

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Demeter and Persephone (and Simeon in the background)

Finally, with Zeus nearly a young adult, which means he can move out, I decided to try and time the next birth with his birthday. Gaia invited Victim 6: Don Lothario (famous Sim Romantic) round and child number 7 was on the way. The names Cupid or Aphrodite are being reserved for this baby, inspired by the father.

Things we learned

• Can’t have the Grim Reaper’s children
• Except for Hera all children have been automatically given a dreadlock-based hairstyle at some point… There are so many different ones and they keep giving them the same ones??
• Gaia had red hair so almost everyone had red hair, now she’s blonde which means her new kids are too. Seems the dads’ genetics don’t have a huge amount of say (Hera again being the one exception)

Child count: 6/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate

Episode 4 →

 

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 2: Birthdays, Broomsticks and Public Nudity

← Episode 1

When we last saw our exhausted matriarch Gaia she was asleep, as was the rest of her household, finally. We had a fair few birthdays with Hera becoming a child. Look at her and Zeus with their awkward half blinking look.

The twins aged up to toddlers (which I was very happy about). Things eventually got a little smoother after letting Gaia have a day off. I had learned that you can’t seduce a man when you are grumpy, the flirting just doesn’t go down well.

I decided to let her out the house on the prowl and she met… DARREL CHARM. He seems to be a bit of a knob, with my previous sims he’s never got along with them. He also has … a look… BUT if Gaia can have his baby that baby will by default be magical and how AWESOME would that be?

Soon, Gaia was invited to Darrel’s birthday, which she turned up to dressed as a witch. I forgot I had chosen that as her party outfit and turning up like that to a wizards house for his birthday seems like she’s taking the piss a bit, but whatever we’re going with it. Turns out not only is Gaia the only guest at this party, the birthday boy isn’t even there. This is going really well.

Suddenly a caterer walks in and starts making the birthday cake… A male caterer… Well, hello sir…

Victim 4: caterer (it may be a little shallow of me but I don’t remember his name)

Gaia and Caterer man took full advantage of the huge empty house and ran up to Darrels’ bedroom to make the baby! Scandalous. As she left the party, I think it’s safe to say she had a pretty good time but she got a message from Darrel telling her how crap his birthday party had been… Show up to it next time! Damn. I guarantee you would have had a very good birthday if you had. 

Everything went pretty well for a while after that, it was a nice period of happy children, a semi-exhausted Gaia until she had Poseidon, son of Caterer, a very easy baby compared to the twins. Zeus also aged up into a teen which meant he could finally get a job. Time to start earning your keep!

Persephone is unimpressed with Poseidon

Vicitim 5: Darrel soon paid a visit to Gaia while the kids were at school and, upon learning she was preggers, left very swiftly and hasn’t been seen since. Some of the dads (like victims 1 and 2 Travis and Talon) actually come to visit their kids but I don’t think we’ll be hearing from Darrel.

To make everyone feel a little better we went on a day trip to the park. I forgot that when I had been playing around with the park’s settings I had made it nudist-friendly and that apparently means it’s not suitable for children and toddlers but they didn’t care, they were still skating around in the ice rink. Teen Zeus and toddler Poseidon just slept on benches for a while then went home, very angry and uncomfortable. The children were skating but apparently didn’t enjoy it and were tired and hungry after a bit so they all went home. Gaia, heavily pregnant and fully embracing the nudist theme, decided to chat up the guy manning the juice bar but for some reason he shut the bar, and after she walked away he opened it again. Rude. All in all, it was a pretty terrible day and it took ages to get everyone’s moods back up again. I was just trying to treat you all to a nice day ice skating and experiencing somewhere other than your tiny house! I’m sorry! 

Gaia is not shy

We will end this chapter with the birth of Hecate, magical daughter of Darrel. Another incredibly annoying and loud baby. I don’t know if some babies are genuinely needier than others or if my looking after them just isn’t great. We actually need to put the brakes on the babies at the moment as we now have a household of 7 and you can only have 8 max in a house and while I haven’t reached the max amount it does mean Gaia won’t be able to have twins or triplets which would be a huge boost if she could. Also we only have $57 so we can’t really afford it.

My expensive attempts at keeping the children out of trouble got struck by lightning which really hasn’t helped

Things I’ve learned:

• Despite being in a household of 7 everyone can still be lonely and require social interaction. You’d have thought that they’d all just talk to each other but that would be way too easy.
• You can woohoo in the leaf piles in the autumn (eyebrow wiggle), look out future autumnal victim
• The monster under the bed is really not helping anyone get any sleep… I thought it was funny at first but it’s just annoying now. It shows up and all the kids panic and go wake everyone else up to get rid of it

Baby count: 6/100

• Zeus (teen) 
• Hera (child)
• Demeter (child)
• Persephone (child)
• Poseidon (toddler)
• Hecate (baby)

100 Baby Challenge – Sims 4 – Episode 1

In full sound of mind I decided to try the 100 baby challenge on the Sims 4 during this lockdown period. Why would I do that to myself? Well, I got back into the Sims a bit by getting the Magic pack. Not quite as fun as I hoped. I had this whole idea to make an insane pyromancer and just put him on full autonomy and have him go nuts but apparently the Sims level of ‘insane’ just amounts to talking to yourself so he turned out pretty boring, all he does is set fire to shrubbery. I had this new pack though and I felt like I had to keep playing to get my money’s worth. I Googled Sims challenges and this was the top one. I watched Single Girl playing it and it’s actually a great playthrough I had a lot of fun watching so, inspired by her, I thought I’d give it a go.

Objective

Give birth to 100 children by 100 different dads, in as few generations as possible. The challenge ends as soon as the 100th child is born or if you fail the challenge for breaking the rules.

Rules

There’s a load of variations on rules but I decided to keep it simple. If I actually manage it and ever get the urge to do it again I’ll put some of the harder options in. I based my rules on The Witch’s Lair’s rules (now a retired blog but credit where it’s due).

Core rules (if I break these game over)

1. The matriarch may not get pregnant by the same sim twice
2. When your matriarch becomes an elder and can no longer bear children, her youngest daughter takes over as the next matriarch. You may move out your elderly matriarch only if her youngest daughter has become a young adult.
3. No cheats!
4. Young adults can be moved out of the house to make room for more children but they cannot be moved back in after.
5. You cannot make more room in the house faster by killing off underage Sims or letting babies, toddlers or children be taken by social services.
6. Your matriarch may register as self-employed or have a work from home career, but cannot have any job that requires her to leave the house.
7. Use the in-game randomiser to select all the children’s traits as they age.  You cannot cherry pick their traits.
8. You may hire maids, gardeners, and repair technicians, but you may not hire a nanny. Take care of your own children. You may hire caterers and mixologists but only for parties.

Other rules (if I break these I will keep playing but it will be a mark of shame against my challenge)

1. You must play with aging on and set to a normal lifespan. Auto-Aging for NPCs is encouraged to ensure the game keeps generating donors for your matriarch.
2. Babies cannot be aged up until you get a notification saying that it is their birthday.
3. Toddlers can be aged up when they reach level 3 in all toddler skills.
4. Children and teenagers can be aged up when they get an A in school.
5. Teenagers may hold part-time jobs to help support the family and bring in extra income.
6. Your matriarch may not get married while she is of child-bearing age. She may get married as an elder but she must move out of the home with her spouse. They can’t move into the active household.

Phew, so a fair few rules and we’ll stick to them as best we can.

Day 1

Here is my Matriarch, Gaia. She’s so pretty. Honestly, this will save me so much time just naming the babies after greek gods/heroes/etc, I take ages to decide otherwise.

Like I said I’m making this kind of easy so I gave her the ‘Family-orientated’, ‘Romantic’, and ‘Cheerful’ personality traits with the life aspiration of ‘Large Family’. It’s going to be hard enough keeping her happy anyway, lets at least let her enjoy what she’s doing.

I’m setting her up in a new game that I guess she is basically going to populate. She’s going to Willow Creek where the grass is green and my one girl is pretty. She can’t really afford anywhere good… All the small houses suck but I chose the one with 2 bedrooms so she at least gets some privacy.

I think we can work with this…

 

Victim 1

Meet Travis. He came over with the welcome wagon to say hi (along with Talon, potential victim number 2). I thought he was a particularly attractive option until I zoomed in, he’s actually kind of goofy looking but I guess if we want 100 babies we can’t just pick the ridiculously attractive men. As this game goes on the children are going to get uglier and uglier as I run out of options.

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After flirting for about 2 hours straight they went to Try for a Baby, as you do. AND SHE GOT PREGNANT!!! Yes, Gaia, Mother Earth, great start. Thank you Travis, you may leave now.

She may be expecting but we’ve got to get ourselves a reserve of men going so that we can jump straight back on it (so to speak) once baby 1 is born. She called Talon, the other guy from the welcome wagon who had come over with his wife at the time so we couldn’t flirt. Boom; Their friendship was up, and ready and waiting (that sounds a bit creepy).

Sorry Mrs Fleming, your husband is Gaia’s now… Mwahaha

We also have her getting her programming skills up so she can do some freelance Programming work for money. (If I had it my way she would have been an artist but my boyfriend, who is a programmer, was very invested in the programming route)

First baby is born!!!

It’s a boy!!! That is PERFECT for my Greek myth thing going on here. Hi Zeus!

This poor kid is going to have to help out so much around the house when he gets older. I hope he’s not a twat.

Almost straight away, Gaia is pregnant again courtesy of Victim 2: Talon. That welcome wagon is a great help to starting this challenge.

It’s Zeus’s birthday!!! He is now a toddler and he is ADORABLE.

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I randomised his traits and he is ‘Independent’, which is a pretty good one to start with.

Oh no, I need toddler stuff. A toy, a bed, a potty, a high chair. Damn, toddlers are so needy, all these things costing money… I’m being very careful because I feel like it will get a bit tricky when she’s got babies everywhere but we managed to get all the essentials.

Baby number 2 was born and it’s a girl! Welcome, Hera.

Things started getting a little trickier here. Toddlers aren’t allowed to age up until they get to level 3 in all skills. Movement skill is easy but all the stuff they need a but of help with requires a lot of time that poor Gaia just doesn’t have. Well she does if she sacrifices showers, sleep and eating… Poor Gaia. We have to get man number 3 as well.

Victim 3: Marcus. They met outside the house and Gaia just loved his mutton chops. We struggled a bit here because she was grumpy and tired and not having any fun but we managed to get around that and baby number 3 was on the way.

Hera aged up into a very cute toddler and Gaia gave birth… to TWINS!!! YES!!! Annoyingly it hadn’t actually said that they were twins first so I called the first girl Demeter and the second one Persephone. Otherwise I’d have gone with something more twinny.

Everyone just sleep… Please…

This is where everyone hated each other and everyone was hungry, smelly, tired and bored. Great. On top of that the twins were the neediest babies I think I’ve ever had on the sims. Constantly crying even when nothing seemed wrong. I actually had to end my session because I was getting grumpy from hearing them cry all the time.

And there ends my first day.

Things we’ve learned:

• People are surprisingly open to trying for babies very quickly
• Babies suck
• People have to pee and sleep A LOT when they’re pregnant
• Gaia has a terrible bed that just isn’t helping her
• Zeus is an angel baby and my favourite so far
• Muting the sound of babies crying is a big stress reliever

Have you ever tried the 100 baby challenge? How far did you get? Would you ever consider it?

As a bonus feature check out Gaia’s sexy voice:

Baby count 4/100

1. Zeus
2. Hera
3. Demeter
4. Persephone

Episode 2 →

Video Game Vacation Spots

Dragons Tea Party Travel Agency here! It’s summer holiday time and I have selected a wonderful selection of game-based vacation spots that will appeal to everyone! Take a look, see what takes your fancy. Are you here for a lazy, sunny holiday or an activity packed fitness getaway? We’ve got it all…

The Rook Islands – Far Cry 3

You wanted some sky diving, scuba diving, beach time and a lavish hotel? We’ll do you one better. A truly back to nature experience: hike across the island, see lots of rare and exotic animals, hunt and kill them to make a range of bags and clothing. Become a local hero showing the natives how it’s done as you liberate their homes from scary pirates (no previous fighting experience necessary). Fancy a souvenir? How about a tattoo documenting your adventures and achievements throughout your time on the island? Perfect for the adventurous adult seeking escape and excitement.

Alola – Pokémon Sun and Moon

Whether you want to chill out and relax in a beautiful resort or ‘find yourself’ while backpacking and island hopping, Alola is the place for you. Boasting four beautiful islands, each with varying environments and terrain, you can easily find somewhere that ticks all your boxes. Beautiful weather and islands aside, nowhere has souvenirs quite like Alola: catch a local Pokémon, take some pictures with it, enjoy the local delicacy (Malasada) with it, and of course, teach it to fight mercilessly. Thanks to the miracle of Stockholm Syndrome (though the locals call it “friendship”) it will grow to like you eventually.

Banoi – Dead Island

The perfect escape for a fitness fanatic, this resort has it all: cardio, weapon training, rationed food… Enjoy some therapeutic mediation as you take in the gorgeous scenery while unleashing any pent up anger you may have on the island’s endless supply of zombies. Perhaps you fancy a break from all that running and hitting, take some time to get creative with an eco-friendly arts and crafts workshop creating exotic weaponry from litter found around the island. This intense but fun routine guarantees that you will leave a dress size smaller than when you arrived.

Fun fact: you burn more calories running from zombies than running around the park at home!

Winterhold – Skyrim

Perhaps you are tired of the sun and would like a winter break. We can help you with that too. Winterhold offers one of the finest un-pisted ski resorts in video game history, the numerous chalets you can break into and kill the owners of really add to the skiing vibe. Watch as the local blacksmiths craft fine, handmade skis out of dragon bone especially for you, no messing about with ski lifts, just remember to bring your trusty  gravity defying horse and journey to the highest peaks. From there enjoy the slopes all the way back to the village, or go off piste and discover some ancient ruins. Once you’ve had enough return to your stolen chalet, steal a sweet roll, and put your feet up in front of the fire. Ahhh…

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

You want to go back to nature but don’t want anything scary, it needs to be active but zombies and pirates aren’t quite your thing… How about Animal Crossing Island? Here we take glamping very seriously and the name of this game is friendship… True friendship… Promise!

As everybody knows, the mutated animals of Animal Crossing Island were part of the nuclear disaster of 2001. Developing humanoid bodies and speech but retaining some animal features they were ridiculed and bullied by most of society, to allow them a fresh start they were moved to a beautiful island so that they could develop their own, peaceful community but some people still travel there to try and fit in with the idyllic lifestyle these mutants have created. While the mutants are peaceful creatures they are also incredibly unforgiving of the human race and slyly appoint the visitors ‘Camp Manager’ upon arrival but really they’re just blissfully ignorant slaves used to create entertainment, fetch them food, and use their own resources to build luxurious campsites that the mutants can lounge around in, napping, chatting, and playing all day while the humans run around catering to their every need, sometimes they just make up errands for the hell of it.

All this so that you can feel like you have friends. You are free to leave whenever you want to of course, but do you really want to make that dog-person cry? You just got matching outfits and now you’re leaving? You monster.

So you got me to catch you fish KNOWING that you couldn’t do anything with them…

Maybe some of them do become your real friends, I for one really don’t mind when friends refuse to come to my house because I haven’t built that merry-go-round they asked me to make yet. Better get cracking and gather up those materials!

Cocoon – Final Fantasy XIII

You’ll never find somewhere quite like Cocoon, this futuristic paradise is a continent hanging over the land of Gran Pulse. The whole continent is hollowed out with its residents living inside its shell in harmony, protected from the dangerous land below. Marvel at the incredible technological advancements that the land has to offer and explore the huge variety of cities; Beach town Bodhum has a spectacular annual fireworks display, the ‘capital of entertainment’ Nautilus is a giant fairground famous for its’ tame Chocobos, and of course there’s Palumpolum where you can shop to your hearts content… There is no end to the fun here, almost anything is possible.

Please note: They’re not too friendly with outsiders, take care no one finds out you’re not local and you’ll be able to avoid being purged. Should your presence be discovered Dragon’s Tea Party Travel Agency will deny all knowledge of you and we take no responsibility should you be intercepted to or from your destination. We also recommend that all trips to Cocoon are taken sooner rather than later as this reduces the risk of your soul being farmed for sacrificial purposes. Travel insurance is not provided.

 

There you go, the finest video game destinations we have to offer! Which vacation spot would you visit? Are there any games you’d like to visit on holiday?

Wizards Unite Has Confounded Me

I’m a Hufflepuff, I’ve seen all the movies, read all the books, won a pub quiz (granted that was a team effort), been to Harry Potter studios (UK version), I really don’t want to know how much money I’ve spent on merch… Basically, I’m a pretty big Harry Potter fan (Not the biggest by any means, but still). I was also a big fan of Pokémon Go when it came out so when Niantic’s latest venture, Wizards Unite, was announced I was pretty excited (obviously I’ll be comparing the two throughout this post). The big day finally arrived and I downloaded the app, very keen to start playing. I’d planned to walk into town (about a 20 minute walk) with the app to start me off and meet some friends for a drink, I set up the game and the chirpy Constance Pickering introduced herself and the game. Then she kept introducing stuff… I need to start walking now, let’s go Constance! This introduction is a bit long for a game where you essentially walk and collect stuff and I missed a bit of plot by getting frustrated and skipping text until I could walk around. Constance basically goes on about Confoundables that have appeared and you need uncounfound them, that’s basically the overall jist of the game.

What are Confoundables then? Well, as far as I can tell (from my skim reading and impatient tapping) Confoundables are some sort of dark magic spells and beasts that have removed ‘Foundables’ (I know, eye roll) aka creatures, students, ministry workers, artifacts, quidditch supplies, etc. and scattered them across the world which, as their insanely creative name indicates, you need to find. As an SOS (Statute of Secrecy) worker you need to find the lost Foundables, unconfound them, and return them to their rightful place by tracing patterns/spells on your phone and overpowering the Confoundable protecting the Foundable. Where do the Confoundables come from? Why are they here? Who created them? We don’t know but as you return more Foundables to their rightful place Constance, Harry and other characters we know and love try to unravel the mystery and have chats about it. This sort of indicates that there’s an end-game and that we’ll eventually discover who’s causing all this…

Back to my walk… Maybe I’m just incredibly impatient or something, I know every game needs a little tutorial but trying to get out on the road was a never ending battle of Constance interrupting me telling me about all these things I was finding and what they did. I can figure it out Constance! Let me move! I didn’t remember Pokémon Go having such a wordy tutorial. In fact, my sister has come to visit for a few weeks and she downloaded Pokémon Go for the first time and was off to a flying start in about half the time I was in Unite. Maybe I should have cleared some time to sit down with it a bit first before trying to immediately set out on my walk but I didn’t think so much would be happening. After about 20 minutes of very slow walking I put my phone in my bag so that I’d actually get to town before the pub closed. To be fair, now that I’ve done most of the stuff there is to do I don’t get interrupted by Constance that much anymore, she still crops up occasionally though, and I guess you need to expect to walk slowly when playing so having a time limit on my first test might not have been the best way to do it. 

In all honesty I expected this app to be a Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them thing where you collect magical beasts in your Mary Poppins suitcase and maybe collect things they like to kit out the suitcase and make it more homely for them, or certain items that attracts certain beasts to you, maybe you’d have to walk to a certain location to then release it back into its’ habitat, perhaps you can only get certain beasts in certain locations according to the Fantastic Beasts book… Basically a major Pokémon Go rip off with magical extras, maybe that sounds a bit repetitive but I really wouldn’t have minded that. This is a bit more… Everything. Do I want to save a baby hippogriff from a Confoundable whirlwind? Yeah! Of course! Do I want to save a poster from being on fire? Well… Not really, no… Do I want to save Filch and Mrs Norris from being chained up? No, he’s a dick, leave him there. Hogwarts and Ministry people trapped in ice? … I really don’t care. It doesn’t quite give you that “Look at this awesome thing I caught!!!” effect does it?

“What did you catch today?”

“A Slytherin Student!” 

“Nice! Where did you get it?” Not quite the same…

I feel like Wizards Unite have tried to bring everything that could have been released later in updates or events out all at the same time and it’s just a little confusing. There’s just too much going on right now; greenhouses, potion brewing, fortresses, lore, ingredients, energy, a surprisingly RPG-esque skill tree when you level up, and so much more… I want to shout at the app and tell it to chill out for a sec. Even though I own a scarily large amount of Hufflepuff branded clothing and accessories in an attempt to make my life more magical the sad truth is that I’m just a muggle really and I’m struggling to take it all in. Unlike the utter simplicity of Pokémon Go, which made it inclusive for pretty much everyone, Unite is too much to take in for people that don’t know much (or anything) about Harry Potter, newcomers aren’t going to care about all this stuff. It makes me worry about what they’ll bring out when they do release an update with more features. More stuff clogging up my map? More lore?

Speaking of lore, I think we’ve squeezed almost everything we possibly can out of the Harry Potter franchise. What else is there to know other than stuff JK Rowling seemingly dreams up on the fly and announces as canon on Twitter? Much like the god awful Hogwarts Mystery app that came out a while ago, the narrative they’ve tried to make in Unite is weak and in my opinion doesn’t really have a place in a game where you’re meant to be walking around most of the time. The only think that hasn’t been done yet, which I think would be pretty cool, is a TV series or something about the Marauders (feel free to take that idea Netflix, Amazon, anyone…)

My last big beef with this game is that I’ve been playing for a couple of days now and I do my fair share of walking, or rather I used to. If you want to unlock those Portmanteaus (eggs) you better not actually look at the app because you spend so long tapping the large amount of encounters, catching stuff, being told what you got as a reward, placing the image in the designated room (like a sticker book), and then maybe you got a special item and Constance or Harry will pop up to tell you about it, getting more energy to cast spells, growing plants, collecting ingredients… My lunch time walks have actually got much shorter. I’ve had the same 5k Portmanteau unlocking since I got the app and I’m still only up to about 3k. There is just way too much on-the-go admin to be done. I find myself standing around for way longer than I want to. In Pokémon Go you’d catch your Pokémon and tap on the Poké-stops as you went past and that was it. Yeah, maybe you had to stop for a minute or two sometimes to catch more powerful Pokémon but it never took that long. Then you’d get home, or sit down somewhere or whatever, you’d do your candy and achievements admin and voilà. Perhaps I need to manage my time with it better, but even if I did I still feel like I’d be standing around a lot.

Hanging around way too long trying to trap the Dementor, sorry Harry, bye

The one thing I prefer immensely to Pokémon Go however (so far), are the fortresses. Granted, I haven’t played a lot of them yet, and I’ve only played them alone so far (queue the tiny violin.) These are the equivalent of gyms. You can go in alone or with a team and take on the monsters inside the fortresses. Each person plays a role, My profession is a Magizoologist so I’m a tank/healer, the Aurors are basically DPS, and I’m not sure what the Professors do, DPS as well I guess? The goal in a fortress is to take down all the monsters in the room before the timer runs out. This is the first part of the game that I have properly enjoyed, which surprised me as I was never bothered about gyms in the Pokémon era. I was working my way through the levels by myself and having a pretty good time. To be honest, I would enjoy this as its own game. I don’t know if you can join a stranger’s raid if you happen to be near the same fortress at the same time or if you have to be friends, I would assume anyone can join so maybe I need to find a more popular fortress…

In conclusion… It’s not what I hoped, they’re just trying to do way too much all at once. I feel like they need to take some of the ideas of this game (I love the idea of an open wizarding world RPG, for example, there are so many possibilities for that) and put it on a console so that they can properly get their teeth into it and get a much more interesting plot together. When you ask people what they think of the app the response seems to be a pretty non-committal “yeah… I mean It’s OK but…” and most of my friends are Potter nerds so that says something. As bad as I feel saying it as well, it’s kind of made me want to start playing Pokémon Go again instead. I really want to like Unite, and I truly hope it gets an update to give it a big boost but until then I don’t think I’ll keep playing. I want to get my step count back up again.

 

Have you played Wizards Unite? What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with any of my points? Will you keep playing?

The Dragon’s Horde: June Edition

I swear since I’ve been writing these monthly round-ups the time has gone by twice as fast.

What I’ve Been Playing

Overcooked

Downloaded as part of the free PS+ games last month (just as I was about to unsubscribe and save a bit of cash as well, they know how to keep me hooked), I’ve been playing this with my boyfriend who warned me beforehand how angry everyone gets when they play so we’d see a new side of each other. We’re a pretty new couple so when I went from intense, silent concentration to screaming “GET OUT OF MY WAY YOU STUPID PEDESTRIAN! CAN’T YOU SEE I’M CARRYING FOOD?! YOU INCONSIDERATE PRICK!!!” back to intense silence in the space of about 5 seconds, with no warning, the look on his face was priceless. He, on the other hand, is not very shouty when playing games and just concentrates intensely (so far). Hopefully I’ve not put him off playing more games with me.

First time playing went well…

Knowledge is Power

I’ve spoken about this before somewhat but I’d only every played it with three people (myself included). A couple of weeks ago there was 5 of us playing and it was intense. People were actually forming alliances to take down the top player and then back-stabbed their partners when they became top. It was brutal. I won the second round with the final question being about Britney Spears which stomped everyone else but I had been training for that moment my whole life. Did I celebrate by yelling “SUCK IT!!!”, putting on some Britney and doing a victory dance? That would have been incredibly obnoxious… But I did.

Wizards Unite

I have a lot of feelings about this. I won’t reveal too much as I have a post queued up and ready to go (stay tuned!) but overall… It’s not quite what I’d hoped it would be…

Sorry Harry… Not really my level you’ll have to wait for someone else to stop by

Spiderman

Still on that Spiderman. Having a very good time, I’m trying to finish it reasonably quickly but all the little side things and collectibles are making that pretty tricky. I’m also terrible at the actual fighting part if there’s more than three bad guys. It’s always just about achievable eventually though which makes it a nice challenge.

Pokémon Sun

Sometimes I’ll go a week without playing this, then play it religiously for a week straight. I’m really enjoying it though, it’s been a long time since I played a ‘new’ Pokémon game so I’m having a great time discovering Pokémon I don’t know about. Also thinking about potential challenges coming up. How interesting do you think a dog-type only one would be? There seems to be enough of them to be able to make it…

I’m going on holiday in July so this will definitely be coming with me on the plane and will give me a good chance to get properly into it as usually I can’t play for more than about 45 minutes at a time.

I seem to have managed to get incredibly leggy, sassy Pokémon so far. Legs is a big thing now apparently?

What have you been playing in June? Have you been playing Wizards Unite? I’ve not seen much about it yet in the blogosphere. What are you playing in July?

 

 

 

Always Game in Good Company

If you have company watching you game that is.

I don’t usually like people watching me play a game, it makes me a little uncomfortable because I feel like I should always be offering them a turn while not really wanting to at the same time… Usually I play games alone but there’s been a few times in the past where I have had people watch me play and it’s not bothered me, mainly because they’ve made it clear they’re OK with it and they have usually been living with me so I’m not going to tell them to bugger off when they live there too.

Recently I started playing a game that I once considered pretty terrible, this time around though I’ve found my experience of it to be very different. The difference? I’d played it in the company of someone before who didn’t like it and until now I hadn’t realised quite how much that had effected my experience of the game. This got me thinking about how other people can impact our enjoyment of something, specifically people sat watching us play, so I’ve written a comparison with a game with a good reputation that was being negatively reinforced by a viewer, and a game with a bad reputation that was positively reinforced.

Back in 2017 I published a post about Batman: Arkham Asylum, basically absolutely slating it (though the post is one of my favourites if you fancy giving it a read) and I stopped playing halfway through due to boredom. I was disappointed at the time because people had been raving about it and I’d heard how amazing it was so I was always a little bemused about why I hadn’t enjoyed it so much.

I decided to pick it up again, mainly because I had just finished watching Gotham and I wasn’t quite done with Batman yet, but also I honestly had momentarily forgotten I’d played it before and had a moment of “oh… This is very familiar” when it started up.

In 2017 my main grievances were with repetitive boss battles, not getting to actually fight Harley Quinn (and Harley’s role in general in the games), basic logic failing to be a thing, convenient but absolutely useless for their original purpose ventilation systems, and the Batmobiles’ premature demise. That is still very much the case, I stand by what I said about those things 100%, but despite those things I am enjoying it this time around.

What’s changed then? Well, last time I played it I was accompanied by my then-boyfriend and as soon as I booted up the game one of the first things he said about it was “Eurgh, this was my ex-girlfriend’s favourite game”, not a wonderful start. As I progressed throughout the game his incessant complaining and pointing out every flaw got in my head and amplified them. Playing it through now, alone, all those flaws are still there but they really don’t bother me anywhere near as much as they did before, or at all even. I enjoy the fight scenes (repetitive as they may be), I love the Scarecrow levels (even though the way they happen should be incredibly avoidable), I like collecting character trivia and reading about all the wonderful,  sometimes just plain weird batman characters, and I am invested in the story. I’ll definitely see it through to the end this time.

One of the creepy Scarecrow levels

Kind of wish the Mad Hatter in Gotham was more about illegally collecting hats and headgear.

It’s incredible how differently you can experience something when someone isn’t being incredibly negative and putting a damper on everything, I hope Batman accepts my humble apology.

Ivy is currently the hardest boss yet

The only thing that still makes me want to throw the controller through the screen is trying to capture the answers to some of the Riddler’s riddles. I took a video for your viewing pleasure. You can’t hear me but I think you can clearly imagine me screaming in frustration:

Let’s reverse the situation here and have a game with a bad reputation turned better because of someone else. Way back in 2012 my best friend (and flat mate at the time) and I somehow ended up with a copy of Final Fantasy XIII on PS3. She’s the sort of person that actually enjoys watching other people play games, that used to freak me out a little as I am usually either bored out of my mind or incredibly frustrated watching other people (“but I want to play”), once I realised she was genuinely happy though I settled into it. The only FF game I’d played before that was FF III on my Nintendo DS so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We knew there were flaws, so many flaws. We laughed at them and yelled SARAAAAAAH at each other randomnly throughout the day, when something dumb happened we would share a glance before bursting out laughing. Not to say the game was bad, but I was acutely aware that if I had been playing it alone there was no way I would still be playing. It’s just not my usual sort of game.

In a strange turn of events annoying Vanille eventually became my favourite

Eventually we ended up fully invested in the story and the characters (even wet blanket Hope), though I would never be able to tell you what the hell was going on. Luckily the pathways through the levels are pretty linear so while the plot may be lost your character is generally where they need to be.

I may easily be able to pick flaws in this game but they are flaws that I see as mostly endearing and funny, and this is all down to playing it through with my bestie. XIII has a bad rep but I’ve played a few more Final Fantasy games since then, all of which were meant to be better than XIII and I really don’t get it to be honest… They all have overly-complicated plots, similar characters, weird monsters dreamed up on an LSD trip… I don’t understand why XIII gets all the hate. I’m probably just looking at it with rose tinted glasses but I can honestly say that not one of them have come close to matching the fun I had with XIII.

What’s the moral of the story then? I guess if someone is being negative from the get-go about something you’re trying to play then chances are you’re probably not going to enjoy it. Take their negative attitude and drop kick it out the window. Play it when they’re not around, or make it clear that until you decide you don’t like it they can’t say anything bad, or even watch at all. At the end of the day we all have different tastes and skill-levels and you’re not going to like everything that I like and vice versa so don’t be a Negative Nancy and ruin it for the player.

How do you feel about people watching you play video games? Have you had your experience of a game altered through someone watching you play? Do you enjoy watching others play games? What do you call people that watch others play games? There should be a name for it.

 

The Dragon’s Horde: May edition

Yes it’s midway through June so is it a bit late for a May update? Maybe. It went by so fast though and I lost track of time… Well nevermind. It’s hard to know what month it is from my Dragon Cave rolling around in my horde of video games. May I offer you a cuppa and some scones as we have the monthly rundown and we pretend May just happened?

What I’ve been playing

Pokémon Ultra Sun

I had Pokémon fever after seeing Detective Pikachu (which I really enjoyed by the way and recommend, even if you’re not a big Pokémon fan) and I’d been wanting to buy Pokémon Sun for a while but had been holding off. I finally bought the Ultra version, mainly because there’s Mantine surfing available in that one and I wasn’t going to pass that up. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest but I think it’s actually a really refreshing take on the Pokémon series. It’s not the same story, the gym system is different, everything that has been a little problematic in previous games (the EXP share making you overpowered, clothes and hair styles, HMs…) has been very refined… The only thing I’d say is I haven’t really got a team that I’m particularly enamored with yet… I have some good Pokémon but… meh. I’m not that attached. I think a lot of this was the fact that this has been the first Pokémon game where I haven’t seen a starter I want from the get-go. This one was like: “do I want Emo Owl, Steroid Cat, or Ugly Mermaid?” I don’t really like any of them… I chose by closing my eyes and choosing at random in the end and I got Litten (Steroid Cat), he’s very cute now but it’s a shame he’ll turn into Dwayne ‘The Cat’ Johnson later.

Emo Owl, Ugly Mermaid, and Steroid Cat

That’s my only fault though, other than that I’m having a lot of fun!

 

Spiderman

I was almost converted to digital copies of games until my co-worker lent me Spiderman. You can’t lend people digital copies and now I get to play this for free.

I shoved Batman: Arkham Asylum temporarily to the side so that I could focus on Spiderman to return it faster only to find that it’s basically the same game. The fighting is the same, the gadgets basically achieve very similar results, the sneaking through grates and perching on stuff jutting out from walls, swinging through the city is very similar to flying around in Arkham Knight, that woman in your ear telling you the smart stuff and directing you around… I don’t mind though, it’s a good game and there’s something incredibly therapeutic about swinging around the city.

As it’s borrowed I won’t be as into all the side quests as I usually am so that I can return it faster but if I really like it maybe I’ll get my own copy. Again, much like the Batman games it seems to be blissfully achievable in a short space of time, as long as I don’t get too hung up on the collectibles. I’m about a quarter of the way through now so still a ways to go.

 

My Life as a Video Game

I published a post a while ago about what my life would be like as a video game and The Brink of Gaming has published their own wonderful version!

 I had a great time reading this and seeing someone else’s interpretation. A lot of creativity and imagination has been put into it. I particularly like the coffee boost ability and the Dark Doppelgänger as the antagonist, I think it’s a really cool and quite scary idea for a video game antogonist. Take a look!

 

There you go, there’s my monthly round up. What are you playing this month? Have you seen Detective Pikachu and what did you think of it? Most importantly, have a good rest of June!