Writingbolt's Creation

****

I recently invited people to join me in playing an online/offline game made by the G5 company. Since then, I’ve sampled two of their very artistic…and very vexing *free* hidden item games. If you are familiar with the games, then you will likely find what I have to say fairly amusing. If you have no idea what I am talking about, feel free to find out for yourself or just carry on with your mindless scrolling.

Dear G5 Games,

I am so pleased with your work. I’d like to offer you $1,000. I know you normally ask for less to buy various starter kits, chests and whatnot. I’m saving time and being generous for all your wonderful artwork and…ehem…time-killing entertainmennnn-tah. But, there’s a catch.

To collect this $1,000, you must find it in a picture, a picture that is very dark and blurry like a bad painting of a barn in one color, a picture set at *Magister* level. And, the money will be disguised as a thin silver thread, like a slender antenna, which blends in with about a million other brush strokes in the blurry painting. It’s a very dark picture; so you’ll likely need a flashlight (which is quite useless and only lasts five seconds) or a torch (which is slightly less useless and just as temporary). Just to make you feel better…or worse…I’m going to surround the item you are seeking with dozens of other things you’d like, including other dollar amounts, money bags, etc. Oh, wouldn’t that be sweet. But, no; they are just there to distract you…like so many pictures we players must search over and over and over and over and over and over again, looking at all the objects we normally cannot find so easily, laid out in front of us, mocking us.

Even if you find the silver thread, which is no bigger than an eyelash and partially hidden behind another section of the picture, you’ll find it difficult to click on. If you get weak, you can just wait a day to recharge and try again; or spend a few talismans to rev yourself back up in a fraction of that time.

But, wait, there’s more.

Before you can even reach this picture, you must make a journey of a two hundred and eighty-five levels, gathering three billion coins and unfathomable “experience.” Are you up to the task? Cuz you sure put us players to it!

[You go from needing 20,000 coins to open one portal in Twin Moons to 84,000?! And, to rack up that kind of coin, you need to get combiners that are only available in portals miles upon miles ahead of what’s accessible, spend countless hours making what is available even more difficult and expensive than it already is…or buy our way there? You folks are cruel and nuts. You might as well just make all the portals accessible at no cost or need to collect a billion bitty things and just sell the game for $20 in a form that can be installed, uninstalled and reinstalled with ease, and call it a year. Because you are proving there is no “fun” in “game.” Like some video games of the past, you have lots of nice graphics but are lacking elsewhere. I’ve been tempted to try some of your other games, but I reaaaaally don’t want to go through more of the same grief. Wait; I am having a psychic moment…the big solution at the end of the game, the answer to the mystery…oh, there our missing elder man is, in the final picture, like reaching the end of Candy Land. Big whoop. By the time I get there, I’ll look back on all the time I invested in the games and cry.]

And, should you succeed, you may come away with any number of other useless items for combining one of your many random collections of images which the characters in the games fake caring about for flimsy reasons…or no reward at all. You might solve the picture and get nothing. That happens. Right? But, do try and try again and again, searching a thousand times if you must to find that lucky thread of payment. Then you can spend it on more useless stuff in your own games…or pay a small portion of a medical bill…maybe something for your eyes.

So, aren’t you glad I sent this payment? Aren’t you glad you made these ridiculously challenging and frustrating games that can crash, show pictures that don’t belong in the games and lose progress gained in a blink? Thank you for making them *free.* Now, I’d like my eyesight, time and heaps of patience back. [But, lovely artwork…the not-the-least-bit-creepy parts (not just about every male character that looks like some secretive killer), anyway.]

Sincerely, your pal,
Writingbolt

PS  The recent Halloween festival in Secret Society has been remotely refreshing, considering it didn’t involve a glitch…though that last glitch was somehow tied to downloading another of your games which does not seem to recharge energy and follow the clock/calendar of the other…as if you just cast that old child aside.