Is anybody else ridiculously obsessed with Zoo World to the point where it’s become a burden on your life and relationships? That damned game lures you in for weeks by telling you, hey, take this poor sad loris! Your friend found a wallaby! Don’t you want a sheep? And then all of a sudden, boom. You can’t go any further in the game unless you have two of every last motherfucking animal. Two.
So instead of rolling my eyes and finding another game to waste my time on (okay, so Treasure Madness has a siren song) I go out and try to do it! I’ve just acquired something like a hundred obnoxious new Facebook friends hoping they’ll stumble on the damned turtle for me, but nooo. I’ve tried the message boards - good luck there. You can’t give away your one turtle. You can’t accidentally drop it on a philosopher or whoops, leave the gate open or give it a pair of cement overshoes, either. You’re stuck with this one lonely stupid turtle.
What on earth is it about these silly little casual games that has the power to make me obsess so much more than an involved, immersive video game? I don’t put my job in jeopardy by constantly checking my Facebook feed for Little Sisters or bobbleheads or health packs, you know. Just the little dumb stuff. I actually have an app to look for animals in my other app. (Nobody ever finds a turtle.)
What casual game is your morning and your evening? Can’t get away from Mafia Wars? Obsessed with your farm? Chained to the cafe? Tell me, so I don’t feel so incredibly stupid. Because this is really stupid.
Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS. I send letters with gifts to my fellow villagers, go digging for fossils, look for hidden cash in the rocks and trees, and am trying to collect every last item of furniture sets, furnish my house for the best feng shui, and am paying off a mortgage so I can expand it into a big mansion. And I need someone to visit and shop in the store so that the owner will think there’s reason to expand it into a department store! They’ll put in a hair salon then, so I can get rid of the pink pigtails on my character! Argh.
I just checked in and found THREE TURTLES. And then I found out that there’s a limit of how many animals you can adopt a day, and I’ve been adopting because I wanted a lot of animals to trade for turtles. My boyfriend is laughing like a hyena.
I was briefly addicted to a trivia website, the name of which I don’t remember. It kept all kinds of stats, which people who formed teams would use to recruit you. Remember emode.com? And how you could take a million different “What Brand of Toaster Oven are You? And Quiz Your Friends!!” Well, picture that with trivia. And stat rankings. God, I was obsessed with that sight for two months straight.
Then a buddy bought me Final Fantasy X for my birthday and I’ve been on the wagon ever since.
Used to be Cafe World, but not so much anymore. I have enough stoves to cook food that takes a day or two to finish, so I end up with thousands of servings of something and not have to worry about cooking new food every day.
In a related vein, I’m getting no end of grief from my wife’s aunt because I’m NOT watching my Farmville all that closely.
Just wait until you try Treasure Madness. Harder to play at work, though, because you could have to play a minigame at any time and then somebody comes in and interrupts you and you lose at Tetris and don’t find a damned artifact.
