Friday, May 23, 2014

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Candy Crush... still?

Yes.  Still.  No new levels to conquer!  I'm all caught up.  260 in Dreamland, 560 or so in regular Candy crush... you know, if I was REALLY good, if I was really serious about blogging, I'd move on to other games.

8/2/14 - Okay, let's put the most recent ones up top instead.  Sigh.  It's come down to this.  While I'm waiting for new levels to be churned out, now I'm taunting my closest rival who just passed level 200 in Dreamland... ooh!  Just got another life!  Gotta run!

5/28/14 - Damn it.  Odus the Owl tells me there's new levels.  Gotta go!!!

5/31/14 - Damn.  The clogged artery in my chest is acting up again.  Anyway... oh, this level is so going to be changed at some point.  Maybe the 300 blue candies won't, but the taffy... or whatever those barriers are called.  Are they meringue?  The point being, this level just may be impossible!  Unless, of course, you're a billionaire and can afford thousands of lollipop hammers 'n sh... stuff.  I can't.  But I love a good challenge, so suffer on I must.

6/13/'14 - Made it!  They finally made 276 easier.  Still gotta get 300 blues, but you get 45 moves instead of 40, and the owl does its thing twice.  Kinky!  Now, is it just me, or is Dreamworld level 281 an awful lot like Dreamworld level 276?

6/17/'14 - ... geez,  I wonder if I'm addicted to this or something?  Just finished Dreamland level 289.  Now what am I supposed to do with all this pent-up frustration?  Gotta let the abscess of lives fill up anew.

7/5/14 - The new levels are here!  I hope they're sufficiently patriotic.  Time to petition my imaginary friends...

8/17/'14 - Ah, yes... Dreamland level 376 is going to take a while............................................

8/18/'14 - ...quicker than I thought!  But Dreamland level 380 will definitely take a while.  Just lost my last fish.  Apparently there's a jelly underneath the... you know, the thing that makes chocolate bars.  That boiling bucket thingie.  Well, there's a jelly under it that I can't get to yet.  Someone call tech support for me!  I don't think this blog post is gonna do it

8/24/'14 - ...it worked!  The nerds over at King read this... just kidding.  I'll bet they actually got flooded with complaints, but Dreamland level 380 is now passable, you insatiable Candy Crush fiends!  I just wanted to give a Shout Out to level 660.  I never thought I'd be able to pass that one!  The NSA must've taken pity upon me that one time I finally did.  Thumbs up, level creators.  May your creativity never dry up.

8/27/'14 - Oh boy!  New Dreamland levels!  Well, kudos to the creators of level 381.  Here's a new wrinkle that hasn't been used yet: no randomness!  I had to use all my extras to get past it, but the color bomb kept landing in the same place, as well as the lemon fish.  Diabolical!!!!!!!

8/30/'14 - Ah yes.  Now this level I'll be playing for a while, at least until the NSA takes pity on me and sets up the board so I easily win.  It's Dreamland level 383, and here's the magic formula that will keep me from winning without shelling out with the ol' credit card: you need the horizontal candies to smash the liquorice thingies to make the ingredients fall.  However, the owl gets knocked over quite easily now!  Maybe they'll make it more tolerant in the future.  Yeah, that's it.  Meantime, I can't win to save me life.  Oh, and maybe they'll lower the ingredient requirements later on too.  Right now you need ten to win.  I can't do it in 50 moves.  Also, you only get one owl-free move.  True, the owl leaves three times at moves 38, 25 and 12 (75%, 50% and 25% of the moves), but after one owl-free move, back it flies.  Always so happy to see it.  So unless I get at least 90 Lollipop Hammers, I'm going to be stuck here for quite some time.

10/11/'14 - Well, at least it worked, but Daniel Goleman will still be ashamed of me.  I used up practically all my daily charms, or whatever the hell they're called.  All my Lollipop Hammers and almost all my hands to defeat Level 383 of Dreamland.  On to level 384... geez!  It's just like the unpassable 677 in regular Candy Crush land!  I'll never catch up to my sole competitor now!

11/3/'14 - ...STILL?  Good lord.  I want to apply for a job with King.  I could start as software tester and move my way up, maybe.  Here's my letter of interest: I couldn't help but notice that, when I'm playing in Dreamland, and I get to the part where it asks me whether I think the maze was boring or wo-hoo, I can't help but notice that I have to refresh the page to get back to the game.  Alas, I don't know why that would be.  Maybe someone slipped in an errant line or two into the Ruby on Rails code.  Maybe it's the refreshed jQuery library, or maybe I've just got an old non-Windows 8 computer and I'm just chopped liver.  Yeah, that must be it.  If I were using a tablet or something like that, then sure, there wouldn't be a problem.  Employment achieved!

11/4/'14 - Awright!  The problem seems to be fixed.  I'm close to catching up on all the Dreamland levels.  Once you get up around 435 or so, due to popular demand, the owl goes away for longer and longer.  I missed that!

12/26/'14 - Well, I'm still beta testing this thing, and I seem to have found a flaw.  I haven't completely figured out when it occurs, but this time it was after I combined... you know, a wrapped candy and a striped candy, and it clears three horizontal rows, then 3 vertical rows.  The game seems to freeze after that, especially if there are three in a row afterwards.  Maybe it just does that on Chrome, I don't know.

1/19/'15 - All caught up again in both regular and dreamland!... maybe I'll check it again just in case there's any new levels...................... ....................... ................... .................. ............. ............. .............. .............. ................. ...................... .................. ................... ............ ................... .............. .............. .............. ................................. ............................

2/13/'15 - Boy!  Never thought I'd pass that tough one.  I already forgot which one... 829!  That's it.  It only took me 18 days.  Yessir, I'm finally once again all caught up on regular Candy Crush and Candy Crush Dreamland... better check it again just in case.  How sad is that?

2/14/'15, 1:42 am - This just in... a non-FDR related New Deal!  If you crush 1,000 of the red candies, you get a little bonus!  Ten gold bars and a lillehammer... I mean, a lollipop hammer.  Hmm!  Why do I feel the sudden urge to eat some Red Hots?... curious.  Anyway, sucks to be you right now, because I just got it!  A little bit easier than I thought.  While I didn't exactly cheat, here's what I did.  I hastily picked Dreamland Level 563, because a) it seemed like it'd have a lot of red, and b) when the Moon Struck thing happens, not only does the stupid owl disappear, but there's a chance there's red candies to be crushed.  The first time I tried, there weren't.  Lol.  But after that, BOOM!  Let the orgy of crushing red candies begin!  Geez, it took about twenty minutes... getting all the candies, not an orgy.  So hurry!  You've got 24 hours.  You know, like in the movies!

2/20/'15 - damn.  All caught up again.  Welp, as much as I hate to say it, and as fun as those spaceships are, maybe it's time to move on to a different game.  I know, I know...

3/15/'15 - Hah!  Lawrence Wilmore gave Candy Crush a not terribly derogatory shout-out.  A little nicer than Colbert did.  Anyway, just solved Dreamland level 597.  Sucks 2BU!  ...okay, I'll give you my hint that I took way too long to figure out.  The key is to cross a striped and a wrapped on the LEFT side.  That's for starters.  A second one would help too, but you might have enough fish on the board to get the rest of the jelly.  Ball's in your court!

 3/19/'15 - ...76 million likes and they're still insecure.  But maybe it's for the best if Candy Crush goes away.  As for me, I just finished level 890, and... well, I dunno.  Those last 15 were kinda easy!  Is that all you got, King?  ... I hope so, because I got a final I should really study for... TWO of them!  Good Lourdes.

6/28/'15 - Well, if my man Larry Wilmore can keep making Candy Crush references, then damn it, so can I, damn it!  Besides, there's a new wrinkle to it.  Because people aren't opening their wallets as much as the King Corporation would like them to, they have to give the powerups away for free... but not TOTALLY free!  No, you gotta work for your powerups.  And on specific levels, if you go back over the map, some of the levels rise and fall like cylinders in some sort of engine-type thing.  You go to those levels, and certain random candies appear with a special "C" on them.  And all you have to do is collect about 600 of those, and BOOM!  More powerups!  At first I thought to myself, "Well, that's the silliest thing I've ever seen".................. flash forward to today, and here I am, going back to level 830-diggity-something, collecting them powerups.  DAMN YOU CANDY CRUSH!  You win this round... but the square's far from triangle... ?

Oh, and in case the game makers see this... you might as well not have level 976 be one of the special levels.  I mean... only five moves?  Not enough time to have one of the special 'C' candies show up!  Wotta gyp.

7/5'15, 12:42 am - And so, I bequeath to you the fruits of my hard work.  If you're like me (scary thought, I know) and you've been reduced to collecting those 600 special candies, here's the levels to do it at: 55, 223, 268, 281, 300, 325, 344, 381, 452, 511, 562, 591, 621, 632, 654, 665, 666, 712, 725, 751, 756, 794, 859, 866, 906, 918, 932, 945, 966, 1003, 1073, 1087, 1137, 1157, 1168... 1886, 1955.  That oughta get you started.  You're welcome!

9/4/15, 10:36 pm  - Welp, it happened again.  Level 1180's just way, way too tough for me.  As someone in the Candy Crush chat room said about a similar level, I'll need about a hundred Lollipop Hammers and about 200 of those Red Glove thingies to get through this one.  That's why I think I need to officially retire from Candy Crush Saga, and move on to the other things I wanted to do with my life.

But before I go, I would like to point out a flaw that I found in the game... or maybe two.  That purple checked candy doesn't seem to belong there, hanging in space.  But I will give kudos to the gamemakers, because even though the board froze like that, I could still hit the red escape button to terminate the game.  Face it, folks!  It's an attrition-based affair!  There's people in the chat rooms asking how to beat this level or that level... you must break against these levels like water!  Breach the dam with your awesome dissolving power and sheer upstream force!

9/23/'15 - Yup.  Still.  Well, still trying, anyway.  The Internet apparently does not want me to play Candy Crush today.  Something about Google Chrome.  Can't load Facebook, can't load Candy Crush... oh well.

12/10/'15 - Damn.  Passed 1389 already.  I thought it was going to take a year's worth of powerups to do it.

1/14/'16 - Oh boy!  Found a new flaw on level 1475.  It has to do with those spaceships and licorice swirls.  See, as any C.C. player of experience can tell you, the spaceships fire off three wrapped candies into the air, and where they land they know not where.  But what happens if they land on top of a liquorice swirl?  Yup, you guessed it... the licorice gets lost in the shuffle!  It doesn't go towards your count.  It just disappears.  That happens on another level too, but it's not as big of a problem.  But with the various bottlenecks on 1475, it IS a problem.  It'll take me about a months' worth of powerups to fix this.  But who knows?  Maybe I can get by with less than 28 lollipop hammers to do it.

3/27/'16 - The regular Candy Crush programmers are tinkering again.  See, it used to be that when you crossed a wrapped candy with a color bomb, the color bomb would act like a wrapped candy, disappearing one color, pulsating a little while the computer did some processing, then disappear an unprecedented second color.  It's all different now!  Now when a color bomb and a wrapped candy get crossed, all the candies of the color turn into wrapped candies!  Will this have some unforeseen consequences?  Well, for one, on level 1476, one of your three goals is to get 100 wrapped candies.  If you do a match as I previously described, this is a less difficult task!... IMHO, mind you.  I don't have the hard data to back this up... not yet, anyhow.  Work on that, Internet.

4/3/'16 - Level 1634... oh, Candy Crush Saga.  Why do you have to be mean to me like that?  Okay, I'll get my credit card out..................................................................

4/5/'16 - Also, the cake bombs' power is significantly diminished.  How did that happen exactly?  Oh well.

4/24/'16 - Stuck on Level 1658.  I took some time off away from the Candy Crush... but I made sure to check in every day and collect my powerups!  Just like I used to do with Treasure Madness.  I used all my powerups to get past level... 1650 or something, so I'm stranded again.  So, remember that, future game designers!  Make your users PAY for the extra $h!t... stuff.  Extra stuff.  Cash money, PayPal, MasterCard, Money Order, what have you

(7:04 pm ) ... never mind!  Just beat it.  I rule.

2/19/17, 1:29 pm - Stuck on level 2032.  And, I'm too much of a chesapeake... cheapskate to use my visa card to get more powerups.  Therefore, I gotta just waste time instead, getting more.  I figure about ten of the hands will do it... actually, maybe not.  Better make it twenty.  Better wait til May 1st or so to get enough powerups

3/3/'17 - Level 2053: I got, like, fifty of those candies you're supposed to collect!  Oh, that's SO not going to be a regular feature.  Gotta wait 8 hours to find out now.