Author Archives: TheUser

Day One

Today I left for Vegas to celebrate my grandparents’ 59th wedding anniversary. I woke up at 4 AM and got to my mom’s by 6. Then my brother, my mom, and I left for Vegas! We had fun chatting in the car, and I also managed to watch an episode or two of The Office. We stopped at McDonald’s in Henderson before getting to my grandparents’ house.

 
My grandmother showed me around the house, pointing out all the changes she’s made recently. It looked good! After I ate, I looked through my photo album, we headed to Mandalay Bay. It took forever to get 13 people checked into 4 rooms. The hotel had some problems I guess. Dealing with the family was a bit difficult. Everyone’s always yelling. It’s not that they’re fighting; they’re all just really loud and don’t listen to each other.
We ate way too much at a buffet for dinner. I posted some pictures earlier. It was good but not really worth $27 per person. After dinner we around on the strip for a while. I had fun, but it was really tiring. Now I’m in bed and am goig to go to sleep soon.
Tomorrow I meet my grandpa at 10:45 before going on a walk through of my uncle’s new house. Then some of us are going out for sushi! We’re all going to have dinner together again. I think they want to go to that same buffet again. At some point tomorrow I want to see the shark exhibit and the pinball museum because we’re coming home Friday morning. That’s it for now!

When Pigs Fly

When Pigs Fly is an awesome new auntie pixelante by dessgeega posted on newgrounds. I suppose you could call the game a platformer. The player controls a pig with wings, navigating the pig through tight corridors and past deadly spikes. Pressing the space bar flaps the wings and causes the pig to fly up a bit. The pig will fall due to gravity, so to keep the pig flying, the space bar must be pressed repeatedly. Because of this, the pig’s vertical position will fluctuate, causing much of the difficulty in the game. The pig will die if it comes into contact with spikes or if the wings touch anything at all. The pig does have a large hitbox, although the the hitbox is actually slightly smaller the sprite itself, allowing the edges of the wings to just barely pass over obstacles sometimes. To complete the game, the player must have precise control over the pig.

 
I took 26 minutes to complete the game, but I did chat online a bit while playing, not realizing that the game tracked completion time. I died 219 times. The game is challenging, but the deaths were fair. The game is broken into multiple rooms, and I could see an entire room at a time. The biggest design flaw in my opinion in platformers is the inability for the player to see dangers ahead of time, and When Pigs Fly definitely does not suffer that at all. In addition, after dying the pig is respawned at the beginning of the current room. You never have to repeat a room.
The sprite art is nice and simple with mellow, muted colors. The music is nice, and the sound effects are cute although repeat often. I can understand the sound becoming annoying to some people, and they can be turned off, but I enjoyed them. The sounds were created by Daphny, and a soundtest is available.