12 March 2015

the adventure continues

today, twodots wanted to update.

twodots is a simple little game app i got turned on to from a starbucks free-app code. if you're not familiar, each week starbucks offers a free song or app from the itunes store. the method is a card with a code printed on the back that you can pick up in-store, or if you have the starbucks app, you can get the codes there. you go to itunes and redeem the code. one week, the free-app was twodots.


so i downloaded it and started playing, and it's cute enough. connect two or more dots in a line or square to score colours or sink anchors or put out fires or break ice. each level has a different layout, and the elements are added as you go along. when you pass major levels, you get access to postcards you can tweet out or whatever. like i said, it's cute enough.

after i'd played awhile, i ran out of levels. huh. that doesn't happen to me... i'm not generally what you'd call an early adopter. but this time i must have been because i played out of levels and had to wait for more.

they eventually updated and sent me more, and i played through them again, and then waited and played through. and, so on.

so this time i've been waiting a few days now, and today the update shows up. yay!

so i'm reading the "what's new" section in the app store updater, and it says that some levels have been "rebalanced". huh. what's that? so i tweet the app creators and i'm like, what's rebalanced, and the guy is like, we made certain levels less frustrating.


wait. what? you can DO that?

so these are levels that i've already completed, and now they've changed them, and not only changed them, made them less frustrating. well. maybe i would have liked to have been less frustrated. eh? ever think of that?

what happens now. i've already played those levels. so, i could play them again, maybe get a different score... but it's a different level now. it's changed. it's less frustrating. if i get a better score, do i get an asterisk to go with it?

how do i measure my performance if the ground rules are allowed to change?

well, it's just a game, so it's less about measuring performance and more about just having fun. presumably less frustrating is more fun. i get that.

lots of people haven't played through those levels, so this will be what they think those levels are. they will never know the levels that i played. who cares. it's not like we're competing against each other.

but still. my first reaction when learning they'd rebalanced some levels was a sort of confusion. or, maybe disorientation is a better word. i mean, those levels were already there. how can they change them now?


i mean, i get they aren't set in stone, but weren't they set at all? are you telling me, you can just go out there and change them??

it's not like when the monopoly board game changes, and you're all like - haha, this isn't the game we had when we were kids, haha. it's not the next generation of a board game. it's like, last week these levels were one thing and this week they are something different. that's not a generation - that's a coffee break!

now, three hours later, i've got it under my belt. i am more than fine with it, totally get it, and am psyched to replay the rebalanced levels. it's like having additional new levels. it's all good and understood.

but at first, it was an earth-shattering rug yanking. some people would say that makes me old, set in my ways, inflexible, unable to change. whatever. it's not about not being willing to change - it's simply about being aware of how things are and sensitive to the change.

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