rushed1. I went to Disney World for a week, with Vixy and Amy and Brooke and Patty. My mother and sister were there, too, but we sort of had parallel-but-rarely intersecting vacations. This was ideal, as my idea of "fun at Disney" involves pin trading and shows and ice cream and frogs, while theirs involves luaus and smoking and ludicrous plush and more smoking. Our only real point of overlap is roller coasters, and we already had a full car.
2. Also I went to Disneyland for a weekend, with Vixy, my mom, and my sister. See above for the basics.
3. I watched a lot of television, in an extremely non-critical manner. I don't believe that you should shut off your brain completely while consuming entertainment, but sometimes I really just want to be all "you know what? I like what I like," and not be all analytical and thoughtful about it. This stops when somebody blows up a blonde girl.
4. I went to New York for a week and a half, where I saw the Counting Crows (with my agent), Ludo (with a large group of friends, my former editor, and my agent; I have a very full-service agent), and The Devil's Carnival (with several friends, including Tu, who I didn't even realize was on the East Coast until I found her in line).
5. Also there is a permanent haunted house called Times Scare in New York, open 365-days a year. If I lived there, I would wind up asking about a Frequent Dier's card or something, because I would be in there at least once a week, being chased by a man with a chainsaw and giggling unnervingly.
6. I wrote some book club articles for SFX Magazine. The second, which is about The Midwich Cuckoos, is out now. I need to think more about the responses some of the readers have had to the book (not to my article), because they're fascinating to me. But basically? I got paid for my Wyndham and telepaths obsession. Life is good.
7. I went to Maine! I stayed with Cat and Dmitri! I want to move to Maine! I won't, because I'm moving to Washington, but seriously, in another timeline, I have already bought a house on Peaks Island, and I am not sorry. I sort of envy that version of me.
8. An old friend from high school literally showed up on my doorstep. Randomly.
9. I ate six pounds of cherries and I'm not sorry about that either.
10. I am currently behind on word count in several areas, which is why comments are going unanswered for what feels like, to me, an unreasonably long time. But I'm catching up. Slowly. I think.
And those are some of the things I've been too frazzled to blog about.
June 9 2012, 18:10:05 UTC 5 years ago
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jhya
June 11 2012, 14:25:28 UTC 5 years ago
June 12 2012, 05:56:00 UTC 5 years ago
You also have to manage your various citizens-- or inmates, one of their thoughtbubbles is "I bet I can get indentured servant of the month!"-- who have skills in various of the above categories, including Ideal Jobs. Three cits are necessary to fully use a shop, and each dwelling, like Pretty Princess Apts up there, holds five cits.
There's tons of other stuff-- the Princess gives Quests that can reward silver, credits, or collectibles; complete a collection for the first time and you get a super-room of some type, like the Double Rainbow Room (entertainment) from the Leprechaun collection, which gives the most money per sale, and then either silver or credits for subsequent rewards.
Credits are the for-pay part of it; mostly, you can replace them with time-- they shorten things-- except for getting Special Rooms, like sadly stereotypical Fairies who have souped-up Service Skills, adorable Ogres who have super Food skills, Dragons which instantly restock your rooms and Unicorns which instantly convert your stock to silver, and buying more Dragons & Unicorns.
However, unlike most games of this type, getting credits is REALLY easy. Each floor you buy (for ever-increasing Silver and time costs), you get 1 credit. You get 3 credits every time you put someone in their ideal job, and you keep them even if you move that person out later. You have the ability to tap on and read the thoughtbubbles of various walkers (with things from "Who's got two thumbs and loves their job? Right here!" to "Oh no! It will be the full moon soon! What will I do?" and the Unicorns have the craziest, starting with Last Unicorn quotes and getting weirder from there), and that usually gets you silver, but you can get credits some times. The Princess's quests sometimes award credits. Completely stocking a room usually gets you bonus silver, but sometimes also bonus credits. Taking visitors down to floors gets you bonus silver if they don't move into a dwelling-- but sometimes it's credits.
As well, there isn't a lot of "Oops, you spent credits!" Before, since we don't want to pay money for any of these games, my wife and I dropped Fantasy Town, because it was so easy to fatfinger and spend gems. Here, it's hard to do so since most opportunities are in specific windows, and it asks for confirmation before you spend any credits. It's much appreciated.
There are also credits for doing things like sitting through trailers and so forth, but sadly most of those would sign you up for mailing lists or something, so we haven't used them much.
June 12 2012, 15:31:47 UTC 5 years ago
It sounds a lot like Tiny Tower, concept-wise.