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Episode 7: Hippo HQ and Roundabout Routes We’re back once again! After the challenge that was SOUR, I can confidently say that the next 10 levels ease off the pressure a little.  Ooh! Treacherous times are close!Level 31. PRETTY ”Pat’s red eggs tasted too yucky.”  We’ve got a gator in the water again! With the high concentration of grass in this level, the challenge isn’t actually the ‘gator as much as it is realizing that the T’s have to be approached from specific directions (to do otherwise risks being broiled).  Collect the letters of the word P-R-E-T-T-Y, in the proper order. Remember the two Ts in the word ”pretty”! We start heading for the P. Note the fireball here - as I alluded to above, we’ll have to come at the lower T from the right to reach it safely.   We grab the P, the first bridge, and the R.    Once the alligator’s far away from us, we wait until the hippo has surfaced and cross on its back. From there, we can grab the E and the second bridge.  On the way back to the hippo, we have our opportunity to get the first T. We lay the bridge, blocking the alligator’s path, and get onto the grass before it thinks to come up on dry land. Note that, if we’d tried to lay the bridge anywhere else on the upper half of the island, the Fire Demon would fireball us when we got directly above it.  Once the gator’s turned around, we go down to the island and grab the T.   We cross back, then deploy the second bridge, letting us grab the other T. The alligator is now stuck in the left half of the river.    In one smooth movement, we grab the second T, then head up to shake the alligator off our tail. Then we go back down and grab the Y. Back to the raft! This is the third time we’ve met an alligator, but it wasn’t as much of a threat this time as it was before. This is going to continue to be a pattern for a while - not only do we know how to deal with alligators, but upcoming levels with them will have features that make them less of a pain.  As always, a pop quiz awaits us upriver before we move on. Level 32. WHOSE ”Whose hog ordered six eggs?”  Collect the letters of the word W-H-O-S-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget! The S can sound like a Z!This level looks fairly straightforward, as long as we’re quick piloting our hippos.   After grabbing the bridge and two apples, we head over past the E and down to the lower right half of the river.    We walk across the hippos to grab one more apple, then ride a hippo down to the bottom right corner and grab the W.  On the way back, we park the hippo near the O’s. My intent was to make a bridge of hippos back to the main land segment after grabbing the ‘O’ to save apples, but I didn’t realize we’d just have to ride the hippos again to get to the next letter (S).   Crossing the bridge, we grab the H.   Then after crossing back, we ride the hippo and get the O in one move— and then continue on to the S. This was a very risky maneuver - I narrowly avoided being stuck in the middle of the lake.   However, it paid off. With only one letter left, we ride the hippo back to solid ground, cross the bridge again, and grab the E. Back to the raft! I suspect that, if we’d tried to get the O guarded by the lion (the left one) instead of riding the hippo, we’d have ended up in a situation like in FRIEND where we wouldn’t have been able to shake the lion off. Getting this O was much safer overall.  This pop quiz has longer words than the last one, but we get through it without much trouble. Level 33. INSTEAD ”Instead, Nancy started to eat a dish!”  Collect the letters of the word I-N-S-T-E-A-D, in the proper order. Remember, in the word ”instead”, the A is silent!This is a pretty straightforward level, but a certain part of it serves as a soft tutorial for something we’ll see again later on.   After grabbing three apples, we push the elephant out of the way and grab the I - but run back before the apple wears off. Remember this bit. We have enough apples right now to get through the level without any trouble, but later on, we’ll need this on one specific puzzle.    Next, we feed the elephant again, pushing it to pass by. This time, we use the boulder to cross the river, then grab the S. Note that we don’t have to grab the apple just to the right of the boulder. This is our reward for our quick thinking with the elephant. Otherwise, we’d be forced to grab it and get across before the boulder sank - a risky, but just doable move (I think). (To be fair, I could have just gone across, grabbed the bridge, and gone back for the apple. But I only realized that well after I’d pushed the boulder and written this commentary.)  We get the T, the E, and the bridge.    At this point, we can lead the zebra out with an apple so we can get the A. With it collected, we set the bridge and prepare to head for home.   We make our way back across the river, feed the elephant, and get our hands on the D. Back to the raft! The ‘abbreviation mnemonic’ to ‘part-of-word mnemonic’ rate has been awfully on the side of ‘abbreviation mnemonic’ for this current block of levels… sadly. I like the ones where they pull out part of the word - much easier to remember.  Another pop quiz awaits us, with plenty of long words. Level 34. NAME ”Name a monkey ‘Elroy’.”  Wait, why ‘Elroy’? Collect the letters of the word N-A-M-E, in the proper order. Remember, the E is silent!Anyway, it can be hard to see, but this is another alligator level. However, with good management, we can leave Old Bitey in the dust.   We start by grabbing the bridge we can reach, then waiting far enough away from the river until the alligator is in the upper half of it.  Deploying the bridge, we get the ’N’. The alligator is now blocked off from any way it can get onto the land, except the one square just up and left of the bridge.   We get the second bridge while the gator investigates the one we just placed, then we set the new bridge so we can get to the A. The alligator can't come ashore on grass, so it's now trapped in the topmost part of the river!    We get the A, then ride the hippo across the lake to reach the M.   A quick hippo ride back across, and the E is ours. Back to the raft! Once again, we’ve just had another alligator level where it’s very easy to trap or avoid the alligator. It’s certainly better than the alternative...  A pop quiz sees us on our way. Level 35. OFF ”Otis feeds frogs.”  Collect the letters of the word O-F-F, in the proper order. Remember the two Fs!Well, this is unexpected. There’s no difficulty in spelling this word, but there’s going to be quite some danger in getting to where the letter tiles are in the first place!  We grab the potion. This potion, which we haven’t seen before, provides protection from Dart Demons’ darts. We’ve got a ways to go before it runs out!  Like the Walk on Water potion, the Anti-Dart potion lasts 11 seconds. This is enough time to run through and past the Dart Demon’s range. Fortunately, the rhinoceros is out of the way when we enter its domain.    Carefully, we dodge around the rhinoceros, then grab and use the bridge.   Actually grabbing the letters of O-F-F is child’s play. Back to the raft!  We push a boulder and return to the raft without much trouble.  There’s one last pop quiz in this level batch, with plenty of hard words to make up for the easy level.  That concludes our trek for the time being! This batch of levels was definitely easier than the last set, but that’s fine - we could use a breather after things like SOUR and FRIEND. Hopefully, it’ll continue to be easy for a while… Next Time on Spelling Jungle: It continues to be easy for a while.
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Dec 4, 2020 12:07
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Another person chiming in to say this LP has hit me right in the nostalgia gland. I can hear the game from the screenshots alone.
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Dec 4, 2020 16:55
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Note: I’m not going to also make videos of the sections any more - it was a drag on my attention and I wasn’t enjoying it. Screenshot format will continue till the end. Episode 8: Yobi’s Day Off  We’re still on an easy swath of levels - or rather, the levels’ difficulty comes, not from the puzzles, but from the spelling. Level 36. COUGH ”I thought I bought enough drops to soothe my cough.”  Collect the letters of the word C-O-U-G-H, in the proper order. Remember, the G-H sounds like an F in the word ”cough”!OK, so remember how level 35 was OFF? Well, that was the setup. This is the punchline. OFF is spelled phonetically while COUGH is (infamously) not, because English spelling is a gong show.  Fortunately, as long as we’re careful around the pit, this level isn’t very dangerous or anything.    Skirting around the pit’s outside edge, we get the C and the O.   Grabbing the bridge, we deploy it and work our way around to the U.    After that, the G and H just require being careful where we step. Back to the raft!  Unlike most levels, we do have to pay attention on our way out, with the pit’s continued presence.  We make it back, though. From here, it’ll be similarly smooth sailing.  We have another pop quiz, including a visit by our old friend NORTH. It’s not so hard once Yobi’s called you on it one time. Then, on we go, to… Level 37. BLUE ”Blue lizards understand English.”  Collect the letters of the word B-L-U-E, in the proper order. Remember, the E is silent in the word ”blue”!A little more complicated than the last one, but not very much. The alligator in the bottom left is something of a baffling inclusion.  We show why as we walk around its pond! As long as we keep on the grass - which we can always do - the ‘gator can only stare at us.   We move the elephant out of the way with the apple, and cross the river. To get the B requires us to walk all the way around the level!    We do, with a pause to let the rhino get out of our way.   After walking back, we start making an attempt at the L. This is the only tricky part of the level - once we get to the entrance to the grassy area, we immediately have to go downwards. Otherwise, we’ll get hit by the Fire Demon’s fireballs.   We get the L, and soon after, the U.  We have a spare apple and could really do without dodging the rhino at this point, so we feed it...   ...then push it out of the way so we can get the E. Back to the raft!   There’s another long walk back before we can head onwards.  This time, the pop quiz includes our old friend, DOLLAR. (That level with the mud and the elephants.) Level 38. PRIVATE ”The pirate was private about the things he ate.”  Collect the letters of the word P-R-I-V-A-T-E, in the proper order. Remember, the E is silent!OK, this level is actually somewhat complicated. The mnemonic is nice, though.  We start by pushing the Jeep leftwards, blocking in the tiger. We don’t want it chasing us on top of everything else here.   From there, we can safely get the P and cross the river.   We grab the R, an apple, and (after a bit of a walk) the I.  Instead of walking back, we take the opportunity to move the hippo into position. I almost walk off it at the wrong spot, before realizing - we move the hippo next to the E so that we can use it as a bridge later without having to use another apple.   We repeat what we did with the R and I, but with the V and A - and this time we have to walk back.   We do, and get the T - then we can walk across the pre-placed hippo to get to the E. Back to the raft! Fun fact: If we had pushed the Jeep the other way and avoided the tiger somehow, now we’d be stuck! The Jeep doesn’t disappear after the level ends, and getting the E makes the hippo disappear. With no way to get past the blocking Jeep or recross the river, we’d have to restart.   Up the river, a fairly easy pop quiz is waiting for us. Level 39. TRULY ”The truth is there’s no ‘e’ in truly.”  Collect the letters of the word T-R-U-L-Y, in the proper order. Remember, in the word “truly”, there’s no E!Our string of easy levels continues. The only thing you could call a ‘hazard’ in this level is the gazelle, and all it can do is be annoying.   We go and get the T… and then walk past the gazelle. By sheer luck, it gets stuck in the raft docking spot as we pass. It won’t bother us for the rest of the level!   Next, we get the R, then quickly get back on the main path before the gazelle can pass us.   It’s a long and uneventful walk to the U. We cross the river with the boulder, then walk to the L.  Getting back across to the river and to the Y is ‘truly’ an easy task. Back to the raft! It is nice to see that the game focuses on spelling, and not just gameplay. The more gameplay-intense a level is, the less challenging the spelling is, and vice versa.  Of course, the pop quizzes get harder as we delve towards the end of the game, but there’s a certain degree of averaging - the difficulty of any word you might be asked to spell can vary, so the real difficulty factor is how long the quiz is. Level 40. FORTY ”Forty orange rats turned yellow.”  Collect the letters of the word F-O-R-T-Y, in the proper order. Remember, in the word “forty”, there’s no E!OK, so, I really think Yobi’s tip could have been better if he’d said there’s no ‘U’. I’m still generally :P that you don’t spell it ‘fourty’… anyway. It’s our fourth Trinket level! And this trinket is easy to get, as long as you remember what we had to do during INSTEAD.   We start by grabbing the apple, then pushing the elephant out of the way so that we can get the F.  However, instead of ducking back out on the space of one apple (the trick demonstrated in INSTEAD), I go down to grab the two more apples by the R.   Pushing the elephant out of the way, we get the O. Then, I see our current apple total and make a mistake.  Boldly riding the hippopotamus, I detour around the elephant and down to the boulder by the trinket.   It’s only after I grab the trinket I realize the mistake: I haven’t grabbed the R yet… and now I’m stuck between getting skewered and grabbing letter tiles out of order. I could ride the hippo to the bottom from where I parked it, but then I’d only have one apple left, and I’d have to use it on the elephant. By the time I would be able to reach the R, the apple would have worn off and I’d be trapped. I concede D-E-F-E-A-T. Let’s try that one again! This time, we’re going to put our apples to better uses.  We start by feeding the elephant, ducking in to grab the F and an apple, and heading back to the crossroads and north. This way, we can keep an extra apple for use with the hippopotamus.    After collecting the O, we feed the elephant again, going down to the R. No fancy footwork here - by the time we’ve grabbed the two more apples, the elephant will be back in position.   So we feed it again. Now we can safely ride the hippopotamus down to where the T is, and not have to worry about our remaining apple count.  Trinket get!   If we wanted to style on the level, we could use our one remaining apple to ride the hippo down to the bottom, push the boulder in, and get the trinket that way instead. However, this normally isn’t possible unless you do the trick with the elephant. Instead, we cross back on the hippo, and get the T and the Y to finish the level. Back to the raft! It would have been interesting if the game had put the trinket one square to the right of where the boulder is right now. Then you’d have to use the elephant trick to conserve an apple, ride the hippo to push the boulder down, then ride it again to get to the bottom so you could actually collect the trinket. I wonder - is it possible the trinket was placed there during initial testing? The fact that you can approach that area from the right side certainly hints at it. If it was removed, it was probably because any kids recruited as testers couldn’t figure out the trick. I guess we’ll never know, though.  There’s one wrinkle awaiting us downriver…  Since we just passed a trinket level, our pop quizzes have been extended to seven words! We spell our new word and continue on.  And that’s the end of a particularly chill stretch of river - but it’s not going to stay this way. The next section of the river should return to the usual level of complexity. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: Wow, we’re so pushy!
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Feb 16, 2021 10:47
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Episode 9: Pushing Through the Jungle Welcome back! We’re going to be a bit B-U-S-I-E-R this section than we were last time. Your experience will see you through!Level 41. BUSY ”Bob’s uncle sells yo-yos.”  Whoa! That’s a lot of zebras. It looks like we have a block puzzle on our hands - albeit one where the blocks can follow you. Collect the letters of the word B-U-S-Y, in the proper order. Remember, the S can sound like a Z!  Our first priority is to get to the B (and fill up on apples), so we go for the two apples that are on this side of the river.  We get the zebra on the far left to move away from the herd, then push it onto a patch of grass so it’s out of the way.   The next step is to move the zebra blocking the bridge so that it’s out of the way. The grass patch around the ‘U’ prevents it from completely blocking the way forward, thankfully.    Bridge get! We cross the river, grab the B, and (as promised) fill up on apples - though we do have to be careful of the pit.  With the left side of the river cleaned out, we return by the bridge, detouring around the upper zebra to grab the U. Now the real challenge of the level begins: getting the S and Y without becoming stuck.  After a bit of thought, we push the centermost zebra up a space, forming a corridor to the zebra that blocks the S.   From there, it’s just a matter of letting that zebra come to us.  With the way clear, we can grab the S!  The Y follows soon after. Back to the raft! The zebras clear themselves out, and our walk back is simple.  This isn’t the only time we’ll have to push animals around in this part, though.   A pop quiz awaits us before our next destination. Level 42. THOUGH ”I thought I’d race a zebra though I knew he was fast!”  Collect the letters of the word T-H-O-U-G-H, in the proper order. Remember the silent letters U-G-H in the word ”though”!Another level that has block-puzzle DNA - if only a bit. The mnemonic is also very nice, too.   After grabbing the apple, we head to the upper part of the level, fake the lion out, and get the bridge. (I realized much later: animals won't pass over squares with items or letter tiles, so the lion had no choice but to turn back when we went up and to the right.)   The apple lets us get the zebra out of the way and collect the T. We also deploy the bridge here, before we forget - we won’t need it until we’ve grabbed an H, but this way we don’t put it somewhere else by accident.  We’re going for the H on the left side of the tree line, but we have a bit of setup to do first. Pushing this boulder down…   …we grab the H, then move the boulder to the bottom of the level. This ensures we won’t get skewered by the dart demon when we go to collect the U.  Now, we can go grab the O and the other bridge.   Getting the U is safe since we moved the boulder. If we had forgotten, we might have had a chance of outrunning the darts on the way to the U, but we’d have gotten hit on the way back!   We grab the G, then turn around and cross back safely.  We’ll need a plan to get the other H - the dart demon will make it difficult if we’re not protected. The boulder we haven’t pushed yet is the plan.   Shielded by the boulder, we can get the second H safely. Back to the raft! In the past two levels, we’ve pushed 5 zebras and 2 boulders. Let’s see how far we can go!   …after a pop quiz, of course. Level 43. EARLY ”Early ancestors rode large yaks.”  Collect the letters of the word E-A-R-L-Y, in the proper order. Remember, in the word “early”, the A is silent!Huh boy. It’s another alligator level. And there’s a lot less safe ground this time. On the other hand, we do have two bridges to place, so hopefully we can trap the ‘gator somewhere out of the way.   We start by getting the safe E, and a bridge.   We lay the bridge when the alligator is on the right side, so it’s now cut off from the upper left shore. Arguably it would have been better if we’d trapped the ‘gator up there, but - oh well. Our next step is to grab the A and the apples. We’ll need both to be able to get the R.   After crossing back, we feed the elephant, push it to block the dart demon, and grab the R and the bridge in one smooth motion. Because of the grass, the elephant won’t return beyond the entrance of the walled-in area with the demon, but it’s still possible to get stuck in there.   Our next step is to get the L. We take the long way around even though we have a second bridge.   I grab the L… and wait. I’m not sure if I was trying to trap the alligator or waiting until it was out of the way that’d lead to the Y - but either way, I waited way too long (especially with a quick way to finish the level in hand).  At this point, the alligator is locked on to my position and will not go away. It’s time to start over. Let’s try that one again!  At first, things play out mostly like before.    However, after getting the R, we return to where the L was - and place the second bridge far enough up from it that the alligator won’t be able to see us while we get the L.  This time, though, disaster strikes. I’m too slow ducking onto the grass, and the lion gets close enough that it won’t go away.  We are left with only one option. Let’s try that one again! We stick with the same gameplan for the first half of the level, and it goes off without a hitch. We have E-A-R, two apples, and a bridge.  This time, though, we put the bridge well above the right side. With that, we prepare to make a run on the L.  Yoink!   Now, we can safely cross the bridge, and finally get the Y. Back to the raft! Sheesh, that was tough - and it required fairly precise movement with the lion. We’ve now pushed five zebras, two boulders and an elephant so far.   We have little trouble with this pop quiz, though we have to have Yobi repeat EARTH a few times. Level 44. FUEL ”Fuel underlies every land.”  Collect the letters of the word F-U-E-L, in the proper order. Don’t forget the E in the word ”fuel”!Hey, we haven’t seen a Jeep in a while! Let’s push it.  Our first push attempt ends with the rhino on the wrong side of the Jeep - we need the Jeep to trap it so we can grab the bridge. Let’s try that one again!  This time, we get the push right.   We go around the left side of the fire demon’s grove. Thankfully, the trees are thick enough to block wayward fireballs. Once the rhino is past, we set up the bridge and get the F.    I walk all the way back to where the elephant’s blocking the way before I realize I’ll need to get the apple that’s on the left side of the river.  Once we have the apple, there’s just enough time for us to duck in, grab the U and second apple, and run back out. Another apple saved!   At this point, we go back over and get the E…   …and then the L. (We have to come back in from the top, because going the other way will lead to us getting roasted.) Back to the raft! That was straightforward, after the first bit. We’re now up to five zebras, two boulders, two elephants, and a Jeep. What will we have to push in the fifth and final level of this part?   (After this pop quiz, of course.) Fun fact: NEITHER was Level 8 - the second level with zebras. Level 45. GRADE ”Grades really are demon efforts.”  Well, it turns out that the number of things we’ll be pushing in this final level is zero. It’s another mud level! In this level, though, a lot of backtracking will be required. Collect the letters of the word G-R-A-D-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget - the E is silent!  After going left from the raft, we head up and around to get the G.   To get the R, though, we have to go back the way we came - up, left, down, and right when we’re near the bottom of the level.   And to get the A, we first have to head back to where the G was! I did warn there’d be a lot of backtracking.   Now, we can just head left and down to get the A.  Getting the bridge requires another ridiculously complex route.   Once we have it, we can make our way to the river, and the one patch of non-muddy ground.  We place the bridge, then head across, turning downwards to snag the D.  Getting the final E is no sweat. Back to the raft! So the final tally stands at five zebras, two boulders, one jeep, two elephants…   …and five pop quizzes.  Of course, we haven’t gotten the next trinket by a long shot - so we’re going to be doing a lot more leading animals around by the nose as we continue. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: 10 out of 10 zebras say their levels are fantastic.
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Feb 23, 2021 00:46
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These continue to rock. I'm looking forward to seeing how much harder they can get!
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Feb 23, 2021 02:24
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My jaw dropped at the mud level. How old were the kids they made this game for supposed to be?
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Feb 23, 2021 06:00
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Edward Mass posted:My jaw dropped at the mud level. How old were the kids they made this game for supposed to be? 7-10, according to Wikipedia.
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Feb 23, 2021 06:21
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The mud level's super straightforward compared to several of the others in that set- it's basic ice physics puzzle rules.
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Feb 23, 2021 23:28
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Episode 10: A Decade of Zebras There’s a theme in this section. See if you can spot it. Level 46. THIRSTY ”Thirsty hippos insist rootbeer seltzer tastes yummy.”  Hey, the mnemonic misspelled ‘root beer’! And there’s no way to get that potion, amusingly enough. It’s just there for decorative purposes. Collect the letters of the word T-H-I-R-S-T-Y, in the proper order. Remember, in the word “thirsty”, the I-R sounds like an R!  We start by grabbing an apple and the nearest ’T’. However, to get the H and I will require some advanced maneuvering.  Here’s why: if we try and come back from getting the I, it’s likely the lion will follow us and we won’t be able to step off the lower grass safely. So we need to block the lion in somehow.  And that ‘somehow’ is to precisely move the zebra so it blocks the lion - but not so far that it blocks passage on the grass. Here, I’m just a half-square off. I’m not sure if I can stand safely on half a square of grass if the other half-square is a pit, and I don’t think so - so it’s time to start over. Let’s try that one again! This time, we skip getting the T, and just grab the apple. We want to make sure this works before we commit time to the rest of the level.  I go the wrong way, the zebra follows, and it all ends up with the apple wearing off before the zebra can get into place. And we don’t have more apples! Let’s try that one again!  OK, we’ll do it right this time - I swear.  We got it!   We can now get the T and the H, without worrying about anything more complex than not falling into the pit.   Getting the I requires carefully following the grass along the edge of the pit, but we don’t have to worry about the lion any more, at least.   Our next step is to get the R and S, which will mean crossing the river. We push the two boulders to get across, being careful not to fall into the pit ourselves. There are some interesting things to note in the above images. First - the lion was still tracking us as we went back past the zebra, so moving the zebra was probably required to return safely. (There’s a small chance we could have gone to the right of the stone pillar, on the corner of grass by the pit, but I’m not sure if that would have been enough to make the lion turn back.) The second interesting thing is that we only pushed the boulder halfway into the pit, and it fell in. Don’t mess around with pits!    We get the R, bridge, and S, then use the bridge to get back across the river.  There’s a fairly safe route to the second T by hugging the top wall.   Finally, we have to route around the zebra and pit again to get to the Y. Back to the raft! After detouring around the pit one last time, away we go.   There is, as always, a pop quiz. Level 47. TRAIN ”Ride a train in the rain.”  Collect the letters of the word T-R-A-I-N, in the proper order. Remember, the I is silent in the word ”train”!Whoa, the devs were having fun when they designed this level! The gazelles are all milling around like train cars - and the zebras are like passengers waiting by their station.   We set out and grab the bridge.  The gazelles catch up with us as we round the corner and head to the T. The resulting collisions send them off in the other direction - not as tightly spaced, either.    We reverse direction to try and not bump into the gazelles again as we go towards the R. We don’t quite make it, sadly - but we do at least get ready to cross the river.  By the time we collect the R, a gazelle crash is imminent.    Our presence introduces a lot of stochastic chaos as we go to grab the A.  Everyone is at least going in the same direction by the time we get the I.  And chance run-ins mean the gazelles are all back in sequence (mostly) once we get the N. Back to the raft! Sadly, the zebras are gone by the time our ‘train’ arrives at their ‘station’.   The pop quiz is mostly uneventful… until I typo.  “Famous” is spelled… F-A-M-O-U-S. “Famous”.  After that, it all goes smoothly. On to the next zebras! Er, level. Level 48. THOUGHT ”I thought I bought enough drops to soothe my cough.”  Collect the letters of the word T-H-O-U-G-H-T, in the proper order. Don’t forget the silent letters G-H in the word ”thought”!Whoa, this level has everything! A good mnemonic, a complex level design, a tough word to spell - and a zebra.   We have to pick our moment to get past the dart demon and rhino unscathed. A patch of grass by the O provides a safe zone.   We grab an apple, then move the elephant out of the way and grab the T. Note that we have to collect everything on one apple this time - we’ll need the second apple for the zebra, and we don’t get more. The difficulty’s ramping up!  We wait until the rhino is out of the way to grab the H…   …and take the long way around to get the O.   We lure the zebra out of the way so we can get the U, but we’ll have to take the long way around to reach it.    This involves following closely behind the rhino, then ducking into the gap in the stone wall so it can stomp past. (We get the U and bridge when it’s gone.)   After dodging the dart demon’s darts, we’re back down by the river. We lay down the bridge and get the G.  The H and T finish the word. Back to the raft! Honestly, that level was really fun! Props to the designers.   The pop quiz goes by quickly, too. Level 49. POISON ”Poison oak itches so often now.”  Whoa! That’s an intimidating-looking level. But it’s less dangerous than it appears. Collect the letters of the word P-O-I-S-O-N, in the proper order. Remember the O-I in the word ”poison”. The tiger won’t walk on hot coals, so we can walk past it safely. Also: did you notice the alligator in the river? This level is pulling out all the stops!   Rather than take our chances with the rhino, we cut across the hot coals to get to the P.  We have to do another slightly precise maneuver to get the first O, going in to the eye of the skull and then turning back without crossing into the rhino’s path.   To get to the I will require a bridge. We go along the top, pushing the boulder over (but not into the river just yet). We grab the bridge when the alligator is away.   For some unfathomable reason, I take the long way back around instead of heading down through the upper left ‘crossbone’.   When we get to the river, the alligator starts tracking us (note that it can come out of the water where we’d want to lay the bridge). We have to wait for it to go before we can get the I.  We finally figure out there’s a shortcut on our way to the S.  Getting the letter requires us to do a boulder push, run across, and then immediately run back. Fortunately, the alligator can’t bite us while we’re on the boulder.   We run through the ‘eyes of the skull’ to get the O, and then keep on going.  And once the rhino passes by, we can collect the N. Back to the raft!  A straight shot through the hot coals and we’re on our way. (Fun fact: I had to play this level twice. The first time, I hesitated on the hot coals while getting the second O, and whoops! But the second playthrough was pretty much exactly the same to that point, so I decided not to show it.)   We have one more pop quiz once we’re past the level. There’s even a word from a level we’ve seen before - EARLY, from Level 42. Level 50. HALFWAY ”Half is only halfway there.”  Collect the letters of the word H-A-L-F-W-A-Y, in the proper order. Remember, the L is silent!Kind of an appropriate choice of words for level 50 of a 100-level game, huh? It’s a trinket level, too, and to get today’s trinket, we will have to lure away a ridiculous number of zebras.   We start by getting the H, and the only A that’s accessible to us. We’re going to lure the zebra to the right of it away first, once we have some apples.   However, there’s only one apple on this side of the river, and it’s reserved for the elephant blocking the way to the rest the other side. We cross by boulder, and I almost waste an apple by pushing the elephant somewhere it would block the path.  We snag the L, F, W, and as many apples as we can carry. Now the real fun begins.  Back on the right side of the river, we wait for our moment. We want to deal with the rhino sooner, rather than later, and the zebra to our right gives us the perfect way to do it.  It takes some fancy footwork, but we manage to trap the rhino with the zebra, and get it out of the way to boot!   We grab the A, and end up pushing the uppermost zebra as far as it’ll go. We’ll need room to maneuver to move the other 5 zebras blocking the way to the trinket.  After some indecision, we move the third zebra to the lower right corner of the fenced-in area. Four more to go.   The fourth zebra goes next to the third.    We place the fifth zebra next to the other two we dragged away - but not too far over to the left. If it was all the way left, it’d block the way to the Y.  Since there’s now space just before the upper gap in the right stone wall, we lure the sixth zebra there. We now have two apples and one zebra left to move, with the requirements that it lets us get the trinket, without blocking our way to the Y afterwards. The only question is, how shall we do it?  Up to the gap in the stone wall…  Hugging it on the other side, leaving a completed path behind…  And the way to the trinket is clear.    Finally, we can get the Y and finish the level. Back to the raft! So now we get to the reason I called this part what I did. We’ve had to deal with not fewer than 10 zebras in this section! (It was actually 12, but ‘Decade’ sounded cooler than ‘Dozen’.)   We have a pop quiz, but…  It’s been extended again. Our last word is FAMOUS, which I flubbed earlier - and I almost make that same mistake again! But we clear it, and move on. From hereon, we’ll have to spell eight words each time we’re here.  And there we have it; we’re halfway up the river. But the going is only going to get tougher from here… Next Time on Spelling Jungle: We cheat.
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Mar 7, 2021 05:09
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Edward Mass posted:My jaw dropped at the mud level. How old were the kids they made this game for supposed to be? Welcome to early computer games, especially educational ones. Like Developers did NOT have a strong grasp on what would be appropriately difficult at the time.
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Mar 7, 2021 05:13
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Don't forget - the sequel, Spelling Blizzard, is harder!
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Mar 7, 2021 05:22
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AtomikKrab posted:Welcome to early computer games, especially educational ones. Like Developers did NOT have a strong grasp on what would be appropriately difficult at the time. I'd argue they still don't, really, except that it's gone the other way now. My nephew's just at the age where he's starting 'educational' games and they're pretty pathetic. Some of these puzzles have been bullshit, sure, but generally speaking if you don't tell kids that something's too hard for them they often don't notice and do it anyway.
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Mar 7, 2021 08:46
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I hope this LP ain't dusted, it's my only shot at vicariously completing these games!
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Jun 22, 2021 07:05
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I assure you, it's not dead. It is somewhat on hiatus, however; I'm doing my best to focus on Paper Mario: Master Quest development. Still, there might be some new updates some day. I think I have at least 15-20 more levels of footage prerecorded.
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Jun 22, 2021 07:15
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Episode 11: A Glitch in Time We’ve seen unique parts of the river before, but this particular part is special. And it’s for a reason that Yobi and Sierra couldn’t have predicted. Ooh! You have passed a turning point.Level 51. SCHOOL ”Some cows have one orange leg.”  Collect the letters of the word S-C-H-O-O-L, in the proper order. Don’t forget! The C-H sounds like a K in the word “school”!Whoa! We’ve seen hot coals before, but this level is going to introduce us to a new maneuver that’s difficult to pull off, but necessary going forward.   We start by pushing the lower right to block the fire demon, then using the apple to move the elephant so we can get the bridge.  With the bridge placed, we have a problem. We can’t get the O with out getting S-C-H first, and if we were to place the bridge in the upper corner and take the long way around, the wind demon would block us from walking up to the S directly. We’ve got only one option: We’ve got to learn how to turn on hot coals.  This took three tries to pull off. The secret is… OK, so explaining this is going to require a refresher on how Spelling Jungle’s controls work. When an arrow key is pressed, our character will move half a square in that direction. He can’t be interrupted while this is going on. When the half-square movement has ended, the game checks the arrow keys again. If the same key is pressed, our hero keeps walking. If a different key is pressed, our character will immediately turn and start moving in that direction. If no key is pressed (or we run into something solid when we try to move in a direction), we stop. Now, how hot coals work: if the main character is accounted as ‘stopped moving’ on them, even for one frame, we count as ‘KOd’ and have to start the level over. So, putting it all together: to turn on hot coals, you have to press the key for the direction you want to go next while the half-square for the previous walking animation is still running. If you lift the first movement key and only press the second after you’ve stopped moving, you’ll be KOd. Each walking animation takes 8 frames, at a game speed of 30 FPS. That’s how much time you have to switch directions - about a window equal to .26 of a second. Also, the fact that you have to press early [but not too early - note how I was too early and ended up half a square off the S] makes it easy to get thrown off. It’s pret-ty darn hard for a kids’ game! And we’ll be seeing this maneuver again later. In some levels, multiple times. Anyway, back to S-C-H-O-O-L.   After the wind demon blows us to the lower corner, we walk back to the bridge across the bed of hot coals (no turns this time, thankfully).   The rest of the level is going to be comparatively simple. We walk over and collect the C and the H.   It’s our choice which order to tackle the O’s in. Thankfully, there was an apple stashed next to the bridge, so we can pass the elephant and grab the upper O… though I narrowly avoid fouling it up by pushing the elephant too far.   For the lower O, we just cross the bridge, get blown around by the wind demon, and walk back across the hot coals again.   Finally, we avoid the leftmost fire demon, instead taking the long way around to get the L. Back to the raft! I’m just going to repeat: this is not going to be the only time we’ll have to do advanced maneuvers on hot coals. BURN (Level 25) gave us stopping points to turn that had normal ground on them, but the game isn’t going to be so lenient from hereon… If you go back and look at some of the GIFs for BURN, you’ll notice I do proper hot coals turns by accident - but then get flambéd by fire demon fireballs immediately afterwards. Oh well.  After that excitement, the pop quiz is, thankfully, uneventful. Level 52. UNTIL ”Uncle Ned took idiot lessons.”  Collect the letters of the word U-N-T-I-L, in the proper order. Remember, there is only one L in the word ”until”!OK, when I said ‘this is not the only time’ I maaaaaaaaaaaaay have failed to mention that the next time we’d have to turn on hot coals was the following level! But this is the last hot coals puzzle for a while, I promise.  The area I’ve marked in red is the ‘danger zone’ where we’ll be hit by fire demon fireballs. Once we cross the river, we have even less space to maneuver than it looks!  Our first turn of the level, to collect the bridge. Most of this level’s hot coal turns will be against a wall, which means we can’t overshoot - if we stop against the wall, we’re done.   After crossing the river, we make our way to a safe spot between the throw range of the rightmost fire demon and the start of the hot coals. Half a step up or down is dangerous ground, but this way we don’t have to do a turn maneuver to get the U.  Unfortunately, I decide to try going back the way I came, instead of doing a turn to get back - and overshoot. Let’s try that one again!  On top of that, on the second try, I decided to do the same maneuver again.  We get it this time, though.   For the N, we walk across the coals, turn around on the other side, and walk right back.   There’s a potion down at the bottom of the hot coal field! We grab it - it’s an Anti-Fireball potion, which protects us from fire demon fireballs. With our potion in hand, we get the T…  …and turn upwards as soon as we can, walking back harmlessly past the fire demon. It’s worth noting that the potion does not protect us from the hot coals, so we still have to take care not to stop moving on them. Like other potions, the Anti-Fireball potion lasts for 11 seconds.   To get the I, we have to do another turn against a wall, like what we did with the bridge earlier. This brings the total number of hot coal turns we’ve done so far up to three.   From here, we just have to get the L - we can get the one that’s not in a field of fire, so the only issue is remembering to dodge the fire demon’s fireballs (which it can throw into the square just above the tile). Back to the raft! What a mess! That level required precise movement and attention to detail with the fireball ranges.  The pop quiz is refreshingly cool, at least, even if a good number of the words do seem to involve food. Hopefully the next level will be easier…  And then the game crashed. Sadly, the game only saves when you quit, so we just lost all our progress since Level 40! But it’s time to fix that…  …with the magic of HEX EDITING. This is our Spelling Jungle save file. The file is in a fairly simple format: our in-game name is at the start of the file, followed by two 00 bytes, and then a byte (in hexadecimal) that says our current level. After that, there are blocks of 0001s, one for each level we’ve completed. So, to put us past level 52, ready to take on level 53…  …we need to change the 28 (40 in base ten) to a 34 (52 in base 10), and add 11 more 0001s, for levels 41-52.  Upon copying in the file and restarting the game, it brings us to the start of our next level. Hopefully, this should be the last time we have to do this. Level 53. GUESS ”Gazelles use effective spelling solutions.”  Collect the letters of the word G-U-E-S-S, in the proper order. Don’t forget! The U is silent!I think the devs decided to get creative with the pixel art. It’s question marks! Visuals aside, this level has a lot of moving parts. Apart from the tiger, jeep, rhino, and dart demon, there is also an alligator in the river - and almost no grass to stand by. We’ll have to keep an eye on it.   First things first: that Jeep is going to have to go left, so that we can get at the bridge without getting sniped. We run up as soon as we push it, so that the alligator doesn’t attack once it gets to the lower part of the river.  By the time we get the bridge, the tiger has noticed us, but it’s all good. We have plenty of time.   We wait until the alligator is back in the upper part before we go to get the G. As a reminder, bridges block an alligator’s progress - we’ll need to place another bridge to the U, so if we’re careful, we can trap the alligator in midriver.   At first, I think I’ll trap the alligator upriver instead, mistime the approach, and almost get bitten. But we manage to get away safely and place the bridge in the best place with the best timing.  With the U collected and the alligator out of the way, the rest of the level is (mostly) straightforward.   We place the bridge as far to the right as we can. This ensures we have plenty of time to dodge the dart demon’s darts, as it can still take a shot at us.   With the apple from across the river, we lead the zebra out of the way.   From there, we can easily collect the E and the two Ses. Back to the raft!  We push the boulder to get back across. That was easy… I GUESS   And the pop quiz is easy too. Level 54. SIGN ”Signs indicate ‘go north’.”  Collect the letters of the word S-I-G-N, in the proper order. Remember, in the word “sign”, the G is silent!Wait a second… it’s a peace sign! Clever, devs… very clever. It’s also slightly ironic on a level with four lions and an alligator. However, if we stay on the grass, we should pull through.   Our first task is to get the bridge on the left. The lower left lion and the alligator both start tracking us, but there’s enough of a safe distance for us to cross the area that’s not grassy - and the lion loses interest once we’re across.    We create a chain of bridges across the lower islands, making sure to trap the alligator in the lower section of the river for style points.   On the other side of the river, we can collect the last bridge safely by going the long way around on the grass. The lion doesn’t mind. We’ll need this bridge for the island with the N, though, so we’ll have to get to the S a different way.   Specifically, we push the boulder to the left, walk across, then push the boulder on the ’S’ island up to get back to the riverbank. The lions don’t mind.    To get the I, we go back across the bridges and repeat the maneuver we did with the first lion. Once we have it, the trip back to get the G is uneventful - but we do place our last bridge to the N island on the way.  We walk back to the N island bridge, go across, and collect the N. Back to the raft!  We push another boulder to get back to the bank, though it’s a long walk back to the raft. This level is more puzzly than anything, given that you have to place the bridges across the lower islands - anything else doesn’t work.  Short words in today’s pop quiz. What’s next? Level 55. DOCTOR ”Doctor Ozone canceled the operating rooms.”  Collect the letters of the word D-O-C-T-O-R, in the proper order. Don’t forget! There’s no E in the word “doctor”! On the face of it, this level looks like we’ll be doing shenanigans to move the hippo around the riverbank. But there’s a simpler way to solve the level, if we’re careful.   After dismounting the raft, we walk up to the get the D and the first apple.  Because there’s land on both sides of the hippo, we can cross on its back for free when it’s not submerged.   After grabbing another apple, we set out to carefully cross the land bridge over the pit.  Slow and steady wins the race, so we emerge on the other side, untumbled.   Now that we’re in no danger of falling, we can grab the O, C, and fourth apple. (We got the third apple before we went across the bridge.) But now the T is back down below - so we have to go back across the land bridge again.  So we do. But now we have to turn around and go again to get to the last two letters.   I’ll spare you the GIF this time, but we do make it across safely.   Now we can collect the O and the R, while we dodge around the E. Back to the raft! Upon collecting the last letter, the rhino, E, and hippo all disappear! If our strategy had involved riding the hippo, we’d have to find an alternate route now. And I’m sure you can guess what that route is…    We shlep our way across the land bridge for the fourth and final time, before catching the raft to head upriver. Talk about a painstaking puzzle!  Yobi appears to be dropping a few hints about this game’s sequel in this pop quiz. We’ll have to wrap up warm eventually… but for now, we have to finish our journey up this river - no matter what glitches may haunt us.  Next Time on Spelling Jungle: We take the long way around. Multiple times.
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Jan 15, 2023 20:17
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Hooray! Also, is there a historical problem with the game crashing?
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Jan 15, 2023 21:15
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Edward Mass posted:Hooray! Also, is there a historical problem with the game crashing? I have no idea. I do remember it crashed on me one time when I was trying to finish up before class, though.
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Jan 15, 2023 22:43
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Glad to see some more of this
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Jan 15, 2023 22:58
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Great to see this back- and really impressive to evade the issue with a manual file edit! I'm glad that I am correct in recalling that the game rapidly gets into bullshit difficulty territory.
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Jan 16, 2023 04:29
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Episode 12: The Long Way Round Welcome back! This section of the river leads up to the sixth trinket, so the puzzles are going to mix things up a good amount. Remember your purpose!Level 56. GUARD ”Guard uniforms are radical duds.”  Collect the letters of the word G-U-A-R-D, in the proper order. Remember, the U is silent!OK, who comes up with these mnemonics? I ask because this one is particularly a stinker. In terms of the actual level, there’s something going on that may not be obvious at first. The bottom bit of stone wall is placed in such a way that to get to the walled-in area, you have to annoy one or the other of the two lions. Of course, we have to go in there to get the bridge, first.   The solution to this problem is the boulder on the left side. We push it up through the left entrance (note how the left lion is now active), and walk up the center column to keep the other lion in his home space.   We grab the bridge; we also grab the apple, though we won’t need it until later.   After leaving the exact way we came, we use the bridge to cross the river at the lower crossing point, and grab the G.  Then we have to go back for the U. I’m given a quick reminder of why it’s important to stick to the left side.   We get the U. I make sure to leave by the left side, this time.    With the second bridge, we cross the river again and get the A. We then head up to get the R— the wind demon traps us in a corner with it, so we push the nearby boulder down to get out.   I don’t remember if wind demons can blow thrown apples out of their trajectory, but we’re not going to take the chance. We cross the demon’s path and approach the elephant from above, using the apple we picked up to get it to move so we can get the last letter. Back to the raft! The big thing about “whichever side you go in will annoy that lion” wasn’t completely obvious to me when I was playing the level, but that was the only main challenge of this one— plus the long walk. Onward!  …after a pop quiz. Featuring NORTH once again (remember it?), no less. Level 57. DECORATE ”That’s the corner to decorate.”  Collect the letters of the word D-E-C-O-R-A-T-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O-R in the word “decorate”!Oh boy. On the left side, that alligator and the tiger together are going to make things complicated. And on the right side, we’re going to have to shuttle back and forth across the watercourse on hippos. But at least the mnemonic is good!   We start by walking towards the upper left, and somehow manage to avoid being eaten by the alligator despite it coming up onto the land right next to us.   When we grab the two apples at the top, it boxes the tiger into the cul-de-sac of trees. This lets us collect the bridge, D, and extra apple without getting munched on.  The tiger keeps tracking us, but thankfully, we won’t need to come back here again.    Placing the bridge and grabbing the lower E is the next step, but this gets complicated by the movements of the alligator. In retrospect, if I’d placed the bridge pointing left-right, I could have stayed on the grass and darted out to grab the E. Oh well.   The next step is to get the C, but it’s on an island in the middle of the river. My first thought was to feed a hippo to get it to come over. However, hippos don’t come to you. They let you ride them, but that’s all. I got them mixed up with killer whales in Spelling Blizzard (who serve a similar function, but are a little more proactive in coming up to you).   We ride one of the upper hippos down to the C instead.   My next plan was to take the lower right hippo, and ride it so it was below the lower left hippo. This would form a permanent bridge between the mainland and the island. But by the time everything was lined up, the plan was foiled by the alligator blocking the way. (Alligators can’t eat you when they’re in the water, thankfully.)   We end up having to ride the first hippo we rode back to the bank. We do wait for the alligator to be well out of the way before we go get the O.  One long walk later, we find ourselves back near the R. Now we have to get to the island again.  Fortunately, there’s another hippo here. We ride it down to the island - and create a ‘hippo bridge’ of the kind we were trying to make below the island. Just as well, too— I had wasted two apples, so we were fresh out!    After grabbing the A, we walk back across the hippo bridge and up and around to the T and E. Back to the raft! That level was, as promised, a bit harder than the last one! The alligator combined with the hippos made a surprisingly fiddly setup. And there was the long walk, of course.  Even the pop quiz is long. We’ve now gotten NORTH two quizzes in a row! Can we make it three? We’ll see. Level 58. SCHOLAR ”Some children have orange lollipops after recess.”  Collect the letters of the word S-C-H-O-L-A-R, in the proper order. Remember, the C-H can sound like a K!Can we talk about the mnemonics for a second? Acronym ones, like this one, are kind of bad if there’s nothing to connect the word to the sentence. ‘SCHOLAR’ to a sentence about orange lollipops is tenuous at best. ‘DOCTOR’ was better. But the best mnemonics focus on a part of the word and stick to that.   There’s technically two ways to approach this puzzle, but they’re very similar for the first 75%. We start by grabbing the apple and the bridge on the small island - though we have to use the bridge immediately to get back to the bank.   The apple gets used immediately to push the elephant to block the dart demon. (Thankfully, even half-blocking is enough to stop the demon from firing.) This way, we can get the S.   The C, bridge, and upper apple are next. In our version of events, we place the bridge at the top of the map, so we can cross and get the H.   Getting the H requires some fast footwork to dodge the darts of the dart demon. The next step is to go down so we can get the O; the lion lets us pass as long as we stay on the right side of the bare ground.  We can’t safely get the bridge; it’s too close to the dart demon on the right, and we’d be hit. Instead, we run through the tree-lined corridor and grab the O - before immediately turning around, as the dart demon on the left can fire at us, too.   We dodge the right dart demon again, then head up, and back across the river.  From here, grabbing the L, A, and R is just a matter of back-and-forth walking. Back to the raft!So that was the easier way to do the puzzle… probably. What about the other way?   The alternate solution of the puzzle (though I haven’t tested it) is to reverse course after collecting the C, feed the elephant again, and cross the river at the bottom crossing point. Don’t get the apple in the bottom right corner - you’ll get sniped - but push the boulder up to block the dart demon on the right. Then, go up and around to get the bridge, and up past the lion to get the H.   Next, head back to get the O (you still have to move quickly to dodge the left dart demon), and then up to the top again. Then you can place the bridge up at the top to easily get the L, A, and R, since you can’t backtrack up the left side. I suspect this was the intended solution, but hey, if what we did is easier, why not? It’s a long walk either way.  Sadly, the pop quiz is devoid of NORTH this time around, but DOCTOR makes a surprise appearance from downriver. Level 59. WHEN ”When will the hen lay another egg?”  Collect the letters of the word W-H-E-N, in the proper order. Don’t forget the H!Well, this level won’t have as many long walks as the last three - but it makes up for that by having long mud surfs, instead!   We start by dodging the first rhino, and grabbing the bridge. Picking a crossing point will be tricky, as the bank is patrolled on the other side by a rhino as well.  We cross at the topmost point of the river. Despite those stone walls showing a small pit around them, only the large pits can be fallen into, and of those, we can only reach the pit with the N.   We surf right and down to get the W, then head up to grab the bridge, tucked in a stone niche.  Next, we slide down, left, and up to get the H and an apple.    To get the E, we have to surf down to the bottom, as there’s no other way we can go. We head left, back across the river, and dodge the rhino again like we did at the start of the level.   We can only get to one of the two Ns. If we went to the one on the right, we’d fall in the pit, and Yobi would have to bail us out. Instead, we cross the river and head down to the lower part of the rhino’s path, waiting for our moment.  With a precisely timed throw, we bribe the rhino and dodge around it to get the N. Back to the raft!  That was a nice breather after the last two levels. And it’s got a good mnemonic.  The pop quiz repeats a recent one with the second FLOOD in this stretch of river. Let’s see if we can shoot for three— again! Level 60. BOUGHT ”I thought I bought enough drops to soothe my cough.”  Collect the letters of the word B-O-U-G-H-T, in the proper order. Don’t forget the silent letters G-H!We’ve previously seen ENOUGH, COUGH, and THOUGHT as we traveled up the river - and COUGH and THOUGHT had the same mnemonic as here. Now it’s time for the final exam - and there’s a trinket in this level to boot! We start off with the potion - an Anti-Wind potion - temptingly out of reach. When we drink it, we will be immune to wind demons’ wind - but we’ll need that to get the trinket, so for now, we just need to concentrate on getting the letters.    We get blown to the left as we disembark the raft; to get to the B, we have to get blown upwards by the wind demon on the far left.   We can cross on the hippo’s back to get the O. Sadly, we only get the one apple here, and we have to save it for the elephant - so riding the hippo down the river to the trinket is a no-go.   We’re able to walk over and get the U without any trouble, and the G by feeding the elephant and ducking around behind it, then heading out before it goes back to its starting space. We could get the H now, but first - it’s time to try and get the trinket.  The plan is: we get blown over to the left, grab the potion, come back to the right, go down and walk on the hippo to cross the river, go right, and up against the wind. Like the other potions, Anti-Wind potions last 11 seconds, so we have to do the entire maneuver without wasting time.  We do have a trick up our sleeve: we can’t make progress walking into a wind demon’s wind, but we can stop ourselves temporarily by trying to walk in the opposite direction anyway. We do this until the hippo submerges - it should be back out of the water once we get there. On three. One, two…  I do mistime it and we get stuck on the hippo - but we make it all the way up to the trinket with 5/6 of a second to spare. Trinket get!    We get blown back down, recross the river, and finish up by grabbing the H and the T. Back to the raft! This entire set of levels really seems to have leaned into the concept of long walks. We’ve been shuttling back and forth from one side of the river - and level - to the other. And to cap it off…  Very good! Spell ”crush”. Well spelled! …the pop quiz is extended again! We’re up to 9 words a sitting, now.  That concludes this stretch of the river - but things will only ramp up even farther. What challenges does Yobi have in store for us next? I’m sure we’ll hear his voice saying… Let’s try that one A-G-A-I-N!Until next time. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: We get stuck in the river, stuck in the mud, and nearly stuck on the end of a rhino’s horn.
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Jan 26, 2023 02:41
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mmm edu game difficulty curves.
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Jan 26, 2023 05:18
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AtomikKrab posted:mmm edu game difficulty curves. I just finished recording the last segment of footage for Jungle a few days ago. I know some people in the thread have been skeptical about some of the levels before now, but I can confirm that there are a few levels at the end that I regard as absolute nonsense.
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Jan 26, 2023 05:23
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Episode 13: Not-So-Bad Lip Reading, Jungle Edition Welcome back to Spelling Jungle! Today’s episode is going to be interesting - a technical fault meant that the sound for this set of five levels is missing. So I am transcribing everything Yobi says just from lip reading. Seriously, the lip flaps in this game are good. When you know most of what Yobi is going to say, you can infer the rest surprisingly easily. I swear I have not looked up any video for this section of the river, other than my own. Oooh! More surprises await you!Level 61. AGAIN ”You will gain rewards if you try again.”  Collect the letters of the word A-G-A-I-N, in the proper order. Don’t forget the I!We have one hippo, eight (!) apples, five letter tiles to grab, and one annoying alligator to complicate things. At least our initial route is all mapped out for us.   We start by running across the non-grassy gap before the alligator can get at us, and cross the river using the boulder. The alligator starts tracking us, but we’ll be able to shake it off by reaching the hippo.   However, I misjudge the route, and get stuck in mid-river. Let’s try that one again!  This time, we take the opportunity to grab the other three apples before we ride the hippo.  It’s a smooth trip over to the left island this time.   After hiding from the alligator behind the screen of trees, we take the hippo over to the right island and get the G.  As we get ready to ride back to the left island, the alligator homes in on us. This turns into an unexpected stroke of luck - once it loses our trail, it’s now stuck swimming around the right island, instead of both sides of the river.   With the ‘gator out of our way, we can safely and easily get the I and the N. Back to the raft! Once you remember you can draw alligators to different locations by careful movement, this level becomes less of a headache.   We finish off with a not-particularly-notable pop quiz, as a breather. Level 62. TOGETHER ”Help her to get her things together.”   Collect the letters of the word T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, in the proper order. Remember, there’s only one O in the word “together”!This level looks simple, at least.  We start by getting the bridge, deploying it, and—  —whoops! The dart demon is just a little too close to let us pass safely. Let’s try that one again! This time, after thinking about it for a while, we place the bridge facing up, rather than to the left.  We safely slide up to the grassy area - then have another decision to make. If we try to slide down, we’ll fall into the pit. It looks like we’ll have to push a boulder, instead, and the dart demon is within line-of-sight.  At the time, I do not realize this, and so fall into the pit.  Let’s try that one again!   After recombobulating ourselves, we decide to go for the T on the left first, instead. To that end, we push the left boulder down to block the dart demon, then launch ourselves after it.  From there, it’s easy to head left and up, getting the T.  We need to get an O next, but with the bridge in its proper place, we can only get the O on the right bank of the river. There’s a problem with that, though. We’ll need to block the dart demon from firing to the right before we can get it safely.   Unfortunately, I push the second boulder a half-square too far to the left, and it gets stuck - and the mud means I can’t get into a position to push it out. Let’s try that one again!  This time, before we grab any letters, we get the boulders precisely placed.   We can go around and grab the T and the O, now.  Getting the G requires us to go up and around. From this point on, we’ll have to do a bunch of shuttling back and forth to get the rest of the letters, but it should be fairly safe as long as we have a care with the rhino and how we navigate in the mud.    For the first E, we trail closely behind the rhino, then duck into the grassy nook with the E at the earliest opportunity. To get out, we wait until the rhino’s going one way, and run the other.   To get the second T, we need to go to where we grabbed the G and head left. Trying to go straight down from the grassy area will lead to a fall into the pit (as we’ve seen). From there, getting the H is simple.    Crossing back to the other bank, we trail the rhino again, then duck into the nook and let it pass by once more so that we can safely collect the last E and the R. Back to the raft! Like I said at the start, this level looked simple, but it had a number of pitfalls (literal and otherwise) we could fall into. Hopefully the next one should be more chill.   An uneventful pop quiz. Level 63. LETTER ”Let’s each take turns eating raisins.”  Collect the letters of the word L-E-T-T-E-R, in the proper order. Don’t forget the two Ts!This level definitely isn’t more chill than the last one, but it should be more relaxed. Except for the run to the left at the beginning, we don’t have to step onto the hot coals at all - only the L and incorrect letter tiles are there.   We run left to get the L, then push a boulder across the river to get the first E.   We have to push the Jeep to the left to get at the first T. Thankfully, the gazelle doesn’t stop the Jeep in its tracks - once it reaches the river, it sinks.  From here, it’s a lot of pushing boulders across rivers; the last T, E, and R are all on opposite banks.    So we go get them…   and take one last trip back across the river to get the R. Back to the raft! After that last level, this one was a breather. The only risk was that the gazelle might block one of our pushed boulders.   The pop quiz is similarly easy. Level 64. HOUSE ”I use my house as a home for a mouse.”  Collect the letters of the word H-O-U-S-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O-U in the word ”house”!Oh, the level’s shaped vaguely like a house! That’s pretty cute.  To get through this level, we’ll have to do some building bridges. We start by grabbing the nearest one, by the E, and placing it where we can easily get across the river without a rhino interfering.    We dodge the rhinos, cross the river by pushing a boulder, and grab the bridge before crossing back again at the lowest part of the level.   Now we can finally get the H, two more bridges, and the O.  The rest of the level is just a matter of retracing our steps. We lay a bridge and head back across the river to get the U…  Another bridge, and we can backtrack and circle around to get the S…   And after one more bridge and re-dodging the rhinos, we finally grab the E. Back to the raft! It’s interesting how a lot of the recent levels, even if they aren’t difficult, make up for it by being long and having a lot of backtracking. When I was a kid, I only had short periods to play the game between classes in the school computer lab, so I was always on edge as to how many levels I could actually finish.   The quizzes were a special source of anxiety. I was always worried I’d get interrupted in the middle of one and lose my progress (if you quit out in the middle of a quiz, you start at the first word again on resuming). Regarding the game taking a long time in general, as someone who has now played to the very end, I’m pretty sure younger me would call some of the toughest levels (which we have not seen) an actual waste of time. Put a pin in this. We’ll come back to it much later. Level 65. ALONG ”We will always get along because we are best pals.”  Collect the letters of the word A-L-O-N-G, in the proper order. Remember, there’s only one L!This level is something of a stumper. We can only get to the A if we travel across the left bank, but the way will only be clear if we feed the zebra. And the one and only apple is… …oh dear.  We head up and right, ending up next to the land bridge across the pit. To get to the other side with the rhino on patrol will require timing and precision. Let’s go!  We dart in as the rhino heads up, and run down onto the grass before it can get too close to us.   After grabbing the apple, we push a boulder to cross the river, and lead the zebra away.   Getting the A is no trouble, and we can use the bridge to get back to the left bank of the river. But now we have a new problem. The only way back across the river now is to push another boulder - which will put us where we picked up the apple.  …and that means we have to outrun the rhino again!  Because we don’t want to risk falling into the pit, this time is even more hair-raising than before!   With that out of the way, though, we can get the L and the bridge, and place the bridge. Now we have free access to the upper and lower parts of the right bank of the river.    We get the O, N, and G to finish the level. Back to the raft!  A convenient boulder keeps us from being trapped in the upper section, and soon we’re zooming upriver. I genuinely wonder if we could have gotten closer to the edge on the lower half of the chasm and then had more leeway on the rhino… but I’m not going to ask.   Our final pop quiz of the day has a special guest appearance from BOUGHT, the word for the sixth trinket level.  That section of river had levels that were more long than difficult... but this definitely won’t last. We’ll have to do some fast footwork soon, I’m sure. See you then. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: Tiger, tiger, burning bright / you won’t catch my rear end without a fight.
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Feb 6, 2023 07:50
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Length can be it's own difficulty especially when dealing with children.
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Feb 6, 2023 13:38
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Episode 14: Way Too Many Dangerous Orange Things Welcome back. Today, the game is going to throw some nonsense at us, and I shall do my best to match it. Your experience will see you through!Level 66. ALWAYS ”We will always get along because we are best pals.”  Collect the letters of the word A-L-W-A-Y-S, in the proper order. Remember, there is only one L in the word “always”!This level is going to be… complicated. To begin with, it’s using the same mnemonic as last level— and that tiger is going to make things hairy for us. And that’s just the start…  We go and grab the bridge, and the tiger starts tracking us. We’ll have to run up and left, grab the A, then run up to the top and place the bridge. Once we get on the bridge, we’re safe.  I make a valiant attempt, but overshoot the bridge site, hesitate, and get bitten. Let’s try that one again!  The next two times, we don’t always do that well - and the time after that, we deploy the bridge in a panic, half a square too high. Effectively stuck in the river, we restart. Let’s try that one again! After one more failed attempt, we finally make it!  …then get diagonally flambéd by the fire demon as we try to head through the gap in the stone wall.  Let’s try that one again!  After two more terrible tangles with the tiger, we finally make it through the opening sequence in one piece. Now, we have to outwit the fire demon. To that end, the position we’re standing in is very important.  From here, we can feed the zebra at a distance. It comes over - fire demons only fire at you, not wild animals - and we can use it to block the demon’s line of sight.   Now we can safely pass through the gap and grab the two apples.   To get to the L, we need to lead the two zebras on the right side away. We bring the first one around the corners and up, so it’s out of the way but doesn’t block the path.  This leaves a space by the corner to tuck the second zebra.   The rest of the level is simple - we grab an L up at the top, then lay the bridge to grab the W.   Then we can get the A, Y, and S without any trouble. Back to the raft! Phew! For everyone following along at home, we had to start over eight times. Tigers are no joke - and the trick with the fire demon and the zebra was rude.   Even the pop quiz gets into the act a bit, focusing on longer words - at least, in the first half. Level 67. CHILDREN ”You can always find a child among children.”  Collect the letters of the word C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N, in the proper order. Don’t forget the L!For those who said one tiger wasn’t enough… now we have three! However, these ones are way, way more manageable to deal with.   The majority of the level is encircled by grass and stone walls. The upper right tiger tracks us as we get the C and H, but it can’t meaningfully do anything to us.   As we head to the I, the lower tiger tracks us. Tigers only move vertically when we do, though, so it walks right past the one gap that would let it into the center.   We circle around to get the L and the bridge. This attracts the lower right tiger to the bottom.   To make sure we stay safe, we spend a little time drawing the second tiger into the nook with the first one. Then, we push the boulder over to block the only grass-free entrance. We’d need to do this even if the second tiger hadn’t started chasing us. We’ll be moving up and down to get the D in short order, and without the boulder, the tiger would have followed our movements and come inside.  We have to go get some apples so we can ride the hippo to the D, but we’re safe as long as we stay on the grass.  We grab the D on a single apple’s worth of travel! Meanwhile, one of the tigers tries to follow us, but gets stuck behind the boulder. Gotcha.     We grab the R, E, and N to finish the level. Back to the raft! The moral of this story is that tigers are only dangerous if they’re not contained. This was much less trouble than the last level.   The quiz is easier, too. Level 68. BICYCLE ”Betty is covering your cold little ears.”  Collect the letters of the word B-I-C-Y-C-L-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget the Y!Wow, that’s waaay too many hot coals for my liking, and we’ll need to do at least two or three hot-coal turns. And the mnemonics are back to being terrible.  We start by trying to get the bridge, and pause a little too long during the turnaround. Let’s try that one again!  We get it the second time. Now, we can inch over and grab the B.   Getting the I will require us to make a hot coal turn. We pull it off with style, and push the Jeep into the river before we turn back to go get the lower C. We’ll need the Jeep out of the way in a minute.   The reason is the boulder. With the Jeep gone, we can push it to cross the river, then deploy the bridge to cross back at the nook with the Y. This’ll let us return with the second bridge.   We have to do a hot coal turn to get the second bridge, though.    We carefully get the C, then collect the L and E to finish up… Back to the raft! …and that’s when I overshoot the raft and stop on the hot coals, meaning we’ll have to start the entire level again.  In the interest of not boring you all, let’s just say: we do.  And this time, we get on the raft very carefully.   Fortunately, the pop quiz is merciful. Level 69. HAVING ”Harry ate vanilla ice-cream, not grapes.”  Collect the letters of the word H-A-V-I-N-G, in the proper order. Remember, there’s no E in the word “having”!This level is a lot less dangerous than some of the last ones, at least. Interestingly, the devs placed a potion here of a type we haven’t seen before - but it’s out of reach. The only way to get it would be to ride the hippo there, but grabbing the apple would mean falling into the pit. What teases!  To start the level, we head left and up. If we head right, we won’t be able to cross the river because of the wind demon.   As we continue to the right, the wind demon blows us diagonally down; we head back up, and grab the H. This’ll be important in just a second, though.   To get the A, we have to cross the river on hippo-back. While it looks at first like any attempt to mud-surf left will land in a pit, the wind demon has our back, and we get blown into the stone wall and slide downwards.   After grabbing the A, we use the boulder to cross back.  We take a similar route to get the V as we took to the H - we just don’t go up after the wind demon blows us downward.   Then, we reverse direction - and rely on the wind demon again - to get to the far left, where we can go down to get the I.  Getting the N requires us to go up and around again. If we didn’t, the wind demon would blow us to the lower bank, and we wouldn’t be able to get back.  But we can rely on it one last time to get us down and over to where we can grab the G. Back to the raft! And now we can get the— oh wait, it’s gone.   There is a pop quiz, though. Level 70. ONCE ”Owls never chase elephants.”  Collect the letters of the word O-N-C-E, in the proper order. Remember, the C can sound like an S!After a long, hard slog, it’s the seventh trinket level! We have to navigate a pesky river crossing, wrangle with a wind demon, and also stop a lion from eating us… oh, and there’s also an alligator lurking in those trees up there. Let’s get started!   The O is locked behind a zebra, so we need to lure it away with an apple. We stay on the inside of the belt of grass to avoid the alligator. It’s at this point I push the Jeep into the river, thinking we won’t need it for anything in particular.   After grabbing the apple, we walk the zebra out and push it up so it’s out of the way. Then we get the O. The next step is to cross the river to where the N lurks.   The only obvious means of a river crossing is the paired boulders. We push the one we moved during the zebra taming back up, then quickly run across, using them as stepping stones.   On the other side, we push the Jeep down to block in the lion. To ensure that the vehicle will block it in, we have to outrun the Jeep and draw the lion’s attention. This also draws the alligator over, but we’re on the grass with a Jeep between us, so we’re safe.   After shaking the alligator, we run over and grab the N. Now, it’s time to take a run at the trinket.  Then, the truth dawns: while being blown by a wind demon, we can’t make hard turns. We’ll have to block off the demon if we want to be able to get the trinket. It takes a bit to realize just what this level has available to do that. And then, well… Let’s try that one again!…we restart.  So here’s the plan: we need to get the Jeep on the far left all the way over to the right to block the wind demon’s wind. To do that, we’ll have to go over, block the lion with the Jeep on the right, get the N, and grab the two bridges. Then, we can put the bridges in a line and push the left Jeep all the way over.   We have to get the O first before we do anything else, as we’ll need to collect the N to set up the trinket plan, and letter tiles must always be collected in order. To that end, we grab the apple and move the boulder over (not down, this time) so we can draw out the zebra.  The alligator butts in, but the grass keeps us safe and we’re able to push the zebra much more cleanly.   With the O collected and the river crossed, step 1 of the plan is complete. Now to get the N and the bridges.    We block the lion in again, and grab the N.   With a step to the right, the wind demon blows us up and we grab the first bridge. We also get the C while we’re here.  Then, we place the bridge, and get back on the grass before the alligator heads our way.  We can safely get the second bridge, since the lion is penned in. But then, I get impatient.  RIP our hero, chomped on by an alligator. Or, as Yobi would say— Let’s try that one again!  We retrace our steps. Everything mostly goes smoothly, though we have to push the right-bank Jeep twice (the first time, it gets blocked by the alligator).  This time, we wait until the alligator is out of the way before deploying the second bridge.  And just like that, the way to the trinket is clear.  Trinket get!  Now we can collect the E and finish the level. Back to the raft! This was a fun trinket level, honestly. A not-quite-obvious solution to the puzzle, but not too hard or dependent on timing, either.    And the pop quizzes have expanded for the last time. They are now 10 words long.  We have the better part of a full village cheering us on as we go!  And it’s upriver we’ll keep on going - especially as we are 70% of the way there. The game is now free to throw some of its toughest challenges at us. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: We consult GameFAQs.
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Feb 15, 2023 08:55
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Consulting Gamefaqs? They still exist?
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Feb 16, 2023 12:25
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AtomikKrab posted:Consulting Gamefaqs? They still exist? They absolutely do. There is exactly one (1) walkthrough for each of Spelling Jungle and Spelling Blizzard.
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Feb 16, 2023 17:31
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Episode 15: Where’s That Walkthrough? Welcome back! As the maneuvers Yobi expects us to do grow more and more difficult, the temptation to ask for help gets stronger and stronger. Today: I cave. Hohoho! Your persistence is your strength!Level 71. HOSPITAL ”Hundreds of scared people ignored the alien landing.”  Collect the letters of the word H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L, in the proper order. Remember the I in the word “hospital”!This looks to be one of those levels that’s straightforward… except for that one little bit with the lion. The + shape is definitely a Red Cross reference, though.  We start by grabbing the H and the bridge.   From there, we can grab the O, and cross the hot coals to get the S. The dart demon is far enough away that it won’t bother us.  We push the Jeep, then get out of the line of fire quickly - the Jeep will disappear once it stops moving on the hot coals, like us.   This frees up space for us to push the boulder up to block the dart demon - though we have to exactly stop pushing in the safe space at the crossroads.  Now we can head to the right and get the P - but collecting the I will be trouble, guarded by the lion as it is.  I don’t make it. Let’s try that one again!  The second attempt goes about as smoothly - as I’m about to get the I, I hesitate and keel over for hot coal-related reasons.  And the third run ends like the first.  At this point, I get frustrated. (Note the clicked ‘PAUSE’ button.) There seems to be no obvious way to safely grab the I without getting chomped on— or is there?   To GameFaqs! The one extant Spelling Jungle walkthrough, by Lord Seth, has this to say about getting the letter I in HOSPITAL: Lord Seth posted:With the Dart Trickster blocked, the rest of the letters are self-explanatory, except for maybe the I; to get it, run left over the Hot Coals, and the instant you're just beneath the I go up and get it, then go one space down and run back to the right before the Lion can get you.  What an oof! What consternation! Sadly, it seems the only way to avoid getting bitten is running in, grabbing the I and turning around with precise timing - if we waste even half a step, it’s very likely the lion will eat us. This is not the last time the game will call for perfect movement. Keep your eyes peeled - I will complain loudly whenever it’s required.  Back we go.  After one hot coals-related mishap, our fourth proper attempt is halted by the lion.  As is our fifth, and sixth.  Seventh time lucky?  Made it! As I suspected before, there was no room for error in this maneuver. The lion was right behind us! Now we just need to not screw up on the hot coals while grabbing the last few letters.   We manage the hot coals safely first try, and are able to grab the letters T and A.  Back across the bridge the L awaits. Back to the raft! I wonder what this stage would have been like as a kid? I like to think my reflexes were sharper as a kid, but I only got good at games in my early teens. The preteen I was when I played this would have been flummoxed.  The pop quiz feels rather reassuring, this time. Let’s see what’s next! Level 72. MANY ”If you start with ‘any’, you can end with ‘many’.”  Collect the letters of the word M-A-N-Y, in the proper order. Some words are not spelled the way they sound!For whatever reason, there’s no particular voiced spelling tip for this stage. It’s both a short word, and a straightforward concept - four letters. Grab them. Don’t get hit by the dart demons. Sadly, the devs are teasing us again, and the mysterious potion can’t be gotten safely.  We disembark the raft and head downwards to loop around to the M, and immediately get shot at.   This continues to happen as we head up and grab the M.   Before we head down and get the A and N, we push the boulder to block the line of fire of the upper dart demon.   Dart-based interference from the lower demon notwithstanding, we can head down and grab the A and the N.  We have juuuuuust enough leeway to run left on the middle land bridge, dodging darts by a hair as we grab the Y. Back to the raft! It’s nice to have a simple puzzle stage scattered in between the more complicated ones.  Even the pop quiz is simple, though we do get a surprise visit from TONIGHT, the word for the second trinket level. On to the next word. Level 73. USED ”Uncle Steve eats dirt.”  Collect the letters of the word U-S-E-D, in the proper order. Remember, an S can sound like a Z!For some reason, the devs decided to put two levels in close succession that involve tricky maneuvers with a lion. This one isn’t as bad as HOSPITAL, at least.   We start by walking onto the south bank, and grabbing the U and four apples. The hippo is conveniently placed so that we can cross the river without feeding it.  The S presents a problem, though. We have to use an apple to move the zebra, but unless we are precise in our movements, we risk being chewed on by the lion as we go to get the letter. We have to save the other three apples for the elephants, so we can’t spend an extra apple to line things up perfectly, either.  In our first attempt, I fumble and get boxed in by the zebra and the lion. Let’s try that one again! The second run starts much like the first.   This time, while moving the zebra, I get too far up, and the lion closes in. Let’s try that one again! Our third attempt ends much the same way; I was trying to get the zebra to walk up and block the lion in.  So, for the fourth try, it’s time to get clever. Animals need a full ‘alleyway’ of space to move, which means...  ...we can push the zebra into a position where it completely blocks the upper area, by straddling both possible columns the lion can come down on.  With the S gotten, we just have to navigate past the elephants to get to our next letter.   The nook with the E conveniently has just enough apples for us to get back.   From there, getting the D is simple. Back to the raft! This was a fun puzzle, honestly. It’s easy to overcomplicate by thinking you have to get the zebra all the way up by the lion, but a little up and over is enough.  The pop quiz includes another trinket level word - this time, it’s ONCE, the most recent level with the Jeep. Maybe the rest of this batch of levels will be nice, after all! Level 74. TIRED ”Changing a flat tire made Dad tired.”  Collect the letters of the word T-I-R-E-D, in the proper order. Don’t forget the E in the word “tired”!Wh— What on earth is this?! After some inspection, there are two ways to do this level. If we head left off the raft...  ...we’ll have to immediately run downwards, chased by two rhinos.  We immediately run into a problem once we hit the bottom of the safe ground. We can run left, onto the hot coals, but if we run too far to the left, the fire demon will flambé us. It looks like there’s no safe ground... or is there?  Turns out, if we take only a half step into the fire demon’s danger zone, the demon won’t shoot. However, we immediately need to turn around and head the other way. Of course, by that time the rhino will be at the very bottom of the screen, so we need to do the maneuver again, moving only a half-step left before turning around. This technique, which I’ll call ‘jiggling’, requires incredible precision and gives us a total of 3 hot coal turns. But that’s not all!   The lower rhino turned around, but the upper rhino has not. When they collide, they’ll both turn around again - so, to save our hide, we’ll have to run back onto the hot coals and do the whole ‘jiggling’ maneuver all over again. Hot Coal Turns [on this side of the river]: 6  With the rhinos finally out of the way, we can run back upwards.   Next, we need to get the bridge, but we don’t have much leeway with the rhinos about to turn around. So the way the game expects us to proceed is - back onto the hot coals! Hot Coal Turns [Left Bank]: 9 (also note the pit if you overshoot on the last one)   There’s a catch with taking the long way around, though. If we head straight to the upper path, we’ll emerge onto the riverbank right as one of the rhinos charges into us! So, we have to turn around and walk back and forth on the hot coals at the top, until the rhinos have left.   It takes one full back-and-forth, plus a bit extra at the end (otherwise we’ll collide with the rhino and stop on hot coals). Hot Coal Turns [Left Bank]: 14  Finally, we can walk behind the rhinos and grab the bridge. Now, there are a few easier ways to get to this point.  First off, if we were to do the fire demon segment with perfect timing, we’d be able to run upwards after the lower rhino, and just make it to the bridge. Hot Coal Turns [Left Bank, Close Rhino Follow Strategy]: 6 Alternately...   The game normally stops us from falling into the river - if we try to walk into it, it’ll act as though we hit a wall. This means that if we press the ‘up’ or ‘down’ keys from our starting position on the raft, we will have ‘moved’ without changing position. Which means everything else in the level will start moving. With this trick, we can stay on the raft until the rhinos are in a favorable position, then walk between them to get the bridge. Hot Coal Turns [Left Bank, Timeout Strategy]: 0  No matter what method we choose, once we get the bridge, we can wait for the rhinos again, then walk up, lay the bridge, and get to the right side of the level.   Once we’re on the other side, we have a mostly clear path to the letter tiles, but we still do have to do a few tricky maneuvers. To start with, we’ll need to move this boulder into a position where we can push it to block the dart demon. This puts us in the line of fire, or rather the line of hot feet. Hot Coal Turns [on the other side of the river this time]: 1  The main challenge of this side is this maneuver. Once the upper boulder is moved down, we have to push it to the right, do a hot coal turn downwards, push the lower boulder to the right once we draw next to it, immediately head downwards again, and head to the right and down until we’re on safe ground. This brings our hot coal turn count for the right side of the river up to a whopping 5, or 7 if we take a route that doesn’t risk us falling into the pit near the ‘D’. (The pic has the safer [?] way.)  At this point, we just need to loop around to get the letters in order, while taking care not to step into the lower dart demon’s line of fire. The rhino that’s on this bank won’t step on letter tiles (no animal will), so as long as he’s not charging right at us when we grab the T, we’ll be fine. And that is how you finish the level if you start by heading off the raft to the left. Now, if you head off the raft to the right...  That’s it!  I’ll let you all guess which way I did. Back to the raft! Oh man. That was either a really easy level, or an utterly galling one, depending on which path you took - with the potential for between 7 and 21 hot coal turns if you took the long way ‘round. Can you imagine them putting a trinket next to the bridge? Or, worse, on the hot coals down by the fire demon?  Anyway, we do our pop quiz and get out. Level 75. SAID ”She said she knew first aid.”  Collect the letters of the word S-A-I-D, in the proper order. Some words are not spelled the way they sound!Another generic remark from Yobi, but the level looks interesting. There’s enough grass and obstructions to make tiger-herding a challenge - and we’ll need all the help we can get, with that alligator up top in the river.  We start by grabbing the two apples in the upper section. The river’s long dogleg means that while we’ll attract the alligator’s attention while down near the I, we can shake it by waiting up towards the top.   Now properly supplied, we can move the zebra out of the way to get to the S... but the alligator is coming towards us, so it’s a better idea to move the zebra as far away as we can.   We’ll also need the boulder later, so we move it back to a pushable position before grabbing the S.    Our next step is to get the A - which means leading the tiger away. After hiding from the alligator at the upper part of the level, we lead the tiger down and over, near to where we led the lower zebra.  Now, by going through the grassy corridor at the far left, we can get the A safely.  If we take the shortest route from the A to the I, we won’t be able to get back - the tiger will follow us and stand ready to chomp on us. So, we’re going to do something clever instead.    Crossing the river, we get the tiger’s attention, then lead it down so it’s stuck on the lower promontory of the riverbank.  Then, we can just walk up, cross back, and grab the I.   After waiting out the alligator, we can lead the upper zebra away with one of the two apples we have left.  Grabbing the D finishes the level. Back to the raft! The more the game tosses alligators at us, the more it’s [1] in combination with other hazards, [2] less of an issue because the alligator’s not meant to be the main challenge, so grass and level design combine to make the ‘gator less dangerous. Funny how that works.  Our pop quizzes are regularly featuring earlier words now. QUARTER was from the very first level to have an alligator - Level 18. We’re 3/4 of the way to the end of our journey - and it really shows.  I honestly don’t think any of the kids back at my old school ever made it this far. But for the walkthrough, we are entering uncharted territory. We shall perservere, whatever happens next. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: Let’s do the time warp again!
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Apr 29, 2023 02:41
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You can practically hear the developer conversation that happened around level 74. You know those letters didn't start there, which means you know you had to do almost the hardest of the approaches you described. BTW thanks so much for continuing this LP! Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Apr 30, 2023 |
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Apr 29, 2023 06:08
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Some of these levels are just ruide
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Apr 29, 2023 15:55
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Episode 16: Back to the Future! We’re back! Or ALREADY back, I should say. The levels might get harder after this, but there won’t be any sessions as tumultuous as this going forward. We’ll see why in a bit. Oh! The end is in sight!Level 76. ALREADY ”We will always get along because we’re already pals.”  Collect the letters of the word A-L-R-E-A-D-Y, in the proper order. Remember, there is only one L!Dun-de-dun! You thought that ALWAYS and ALONG were the last you’d seen of this mnemonic - think again! And the puzzle is complex enough to be dangerous.   We start by heading left and pushing the boulder down to clear a pathway through. We can’t get the apples on the bottom level, or the dart demon will snipe us.   Note the fire demon’s range in the first pic. For now, we’re just placing the bridge so we can get the apples, but when the time comes to ride the hippo, we’ll have to come at the island with the As from the left, or from below.   Walking carefully around the fire demon on the upper side (and the pit), we grab the apples we can (the three on the top row). If we try to get the apples on the right side we’ll get shot.   After we make our way back, we go down right to get the A, careful of the demon. Once we make it back to shore, we can get the L, too.   We work our way back around to get the R. We still can’t get the apples on the right side, though - we barely dodge a dart as it is. Instead, we’ll have to use our two apples to make it to the islands with the A and D, and rely on the apple on the D island to get us back.  We grab the E first, of course.  If we were to try and land on the left side of the island with the D, the Fire Demon would roast us. So we need to take the long way around. I opt for a daring (and risky) maneuver where we go as far as we can to the right on a single apple, grabbing the A on the way.   We’re able to make it the rest of the way on our other apple without much trouble, and we get the D and the last apple - our ticket home.   The trip back to the bank is uneventful. We have enough leeway to grab the Y before the dart demon’s darts reach us - and since the word is done, Yobi’s staff takes everything away. Back to the raft! We have a rare opportunity to jump on the raft early, before it reaches its return position. Honestly, as long as you’re careful of the fire demon, and use your apples judiciously, that puzzle isn’t so bad. It is funny that the devs threw in one last ‘AL’ level in, as a treat - so to speak.  The pop quiz has a number of words from earlier levels. There’s OFF (from Level 35), TOGETHER (Level 62), and SCHOLAR (58), as well as DOLLAR (29). It’s just another way the game shows we’re getting towards the end. Level 77. AMONG ”A monkey is among us.”  Collect the letters of the word A-M-O-N-G, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O in the word ”among”!Ooh, we haven’t had a mud level in a while. Sadly for Sierra, Spelling Jungle predates Among Us - and all the inevitable memes - by precisely 25 years.   With only one real starting option, we head up, grab the bridge, and surf the mud to the right, towards the A. There’s just enough leeway for the darts to miss us, and the wind demon blows us to where we can grab the A.  So we do.   Since we’re right by the M and there’s a convenient patch of riverbank, we deploy the bridge and grab the letter. However, getting back across to the left side of the level to grab the O is harder, and we’re forced to take a roundabout route and surf back across the central alleyway.  This is followed by heading back the other way so we can get to the bridge.  Once we’re there, we grab the N without much trouble, though - the dart demons won’t hit us as long as we keep moving.   Heading back across the bridge, we have to take the same route we took to get to the O, but turn left, to get the G. Back to the raft! Followed by one last mud surf to make it to the finish line.  That was a lovely breather. What will the game throw at us next?  Besides a pop quiz, of course. (ft. OFF again, FORTY, TRULY and THIRSTY from before.) Level 78.  Level 78 doesn’t exist. There is nothing that I could do to make my copy of the game load this level. So, we have several routes around it.  With my trusty hex editor, I once again edit our save file, setting the number of levels cleared from 4D to 4E in hexadecimal (77 to 78 in decimal math).  And with my trusty screenshot utility, I fished out this screenshot from Youtube - so we’ll get to see how we would have played the level to completion. Level 78. MINUTE ”Memorizing is not usually this easy!”  To start off, we’ll need to do something about the lion and tiger to get the M. The tiger is first. If we walked over and pushed the Jeep up, the tiger might move down - then, the Jeep would end up stopping in a place that blocks where we’d need to lay the bridge later. Instead, we move right to catch the tiger’s attention, then back left until we’re in line with the zebra. By moving up and down, we trap the tiger in the alcove. Then, we can go left, down, and grab the apple.  With the tiger out of the way, we can stand below the zebra and throw the apple up at it to block the lion. By moving up once it’s moving, we can get it to stop in front of the lion’s den by walking up to stand next to it, there. (This would probably require some tricky timing depending on when the lion notices us and starts moving, but worst case, we can probably get it blocking the lion’s den halfway, at least.)   Now, we can push the jeep to trap the tiger, and get the M and the bridge.   With the bridge ready, we can cross the river, get the apple, then pass the elephant to get the I and the N. We need to get the upper I so that we have an extra apple to feed the second zebra later.   Now, we can get the U and move the zebra out of the way so we can clear a path to the T.  From here, we can easily grab the T and the E. Back to the raft! You’ll have to imagine the pop quiz, as the hex editing was a success. Now it’s time to get back on the road... er, river. Level 79. CUPBOARD ”You’ll find a cup in the cupboard.”  Collect the letters of the word C-U-P-B-O-A-R-D, in the proper order. Remember, the A is silent!Hot coals again! But it looks like this time, it’s set up in a way that won’t make it too obnoxious to handle. We will have to dodge the alligator in the top of the river, though.   We set out, grab the bridge, and wait for the alligator to pass before heading upriver.   After some wrangling to get the gator to move, we deploy the bridge. Then, we take the safe route across the hot coals to get to the C; heading to the highest row we can and charging across when the rhino is elsewhere.  The way back requires a slightly less safe route - across the second highest row as soon as the rhino passes - but it’s worth it to not have to do a hot coal turn.  We grab the U. If we had trapped the alligator above where the bridge is, it would have been able to chomp on us.  To my generalized shame, I fumble the navigation and the alligator chomps on us anyway. Let’s try that one again!  This time, we put the bridge a lot lower down, trapping the alligator [and the rhino] on the right side.   I charge for the C, but with poor timing, and the rhino blocks the path off the hot coals. Let’s try that one again!  We put the bridge in the same place as last time, and successfully cross the hot coals to grab the C.   With it collected, we carefully time the rhino’s passage, recross the hot coals, and make our way back to the lower bank.   Getting the U requires just a long walk, but since the alligator is trapped near the P, grabbing it means we need to make sure we don’t catch the gator’s attention.  Getting the B is worse! We have to dodge the rhino and the alligator, and get up there (across the hot coals) and back before our Anti-Fireball potion runs out. (We make it, somehow, including a perfectly executed hot coals U-turn.)   The way back is a bit hair-raising (the rhino is right on our tail), but we make it, and head up to grab the O.   With the bridge keeping us safe, the way to the A and R is now clear.  To finish, we just have to cross the bridge again and get the D. Back to the raft! I wonder if it would have been better to put the bridge at the corner where the river bends? It would have meant more space to dodge the rhino and alligator, compared to what we had to do above.  There’s a pop quiz! It even has the word from the missing level, MINUTE. Let’s see what our trinket level for today looks like... Level 80. FIERCE ”Fire is every rhino’s certain enemy.”  Collect the letters of the word F-I-E-R-C-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget! The C can sound like an S!I’d like that mnemonic better if fire actually did something to rhinos in this game. And the trinket... wait, the trinket is in the middle of the river! We haven’t seen a Walk On Water potion since level 20, but it’s making its triumphant return!   We can’t push the boulder from this side (though I didn’t realize it at the time), so we’ve got no choice but to start by going up and across to get the F.   We have to go back across to get the next letter... but I get confused and take a wrong turn. Whoops! The letter I would have been a wiser choice. Every letter must be placed well, in every word you seek to spell! Let’s try that one again! For the next attempt... well, this is where I figure out you can’t push the boulder from this side. Let’s try that one again!  It goes properly the next time: the trick is to go down, left, and up after getting the F, so we can loop around to the I.  Now that we have the I, we pretty much have no choice but to take the path leading to the E.   The path to the R and C is similarly near-automatic. But now, we have a tricky maneuver to do. Once we grab the C, mud-surfing down will force us to grab the Walk On Water potion. We’ll need to immediately go to the left, push the boulder into the river, follow it, and walk up on the river to get the trinket - all before our potion wears off.  Nailed it.  We grab the E and claim our prize. Back to the raft! After all the challenges of this section of the river - up to and including the game outright crashing on us - I can’t help feel like this level was a bit of a breather before we parachute into the final fifth of the game.  We finish off our pop quiz and go on our way.  We’ve almost made it to the end of the river, but we are definitely not there yet. The river still has plenty to throw at us, and we’ll need to work hard if we want to keep ourselves out of T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: 7.8/10; too much water (and mud).
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Aug 14, 2023 23:58
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I do enjoy this lp a lot,
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Aug 15, 2023 01:35
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Fantastic work, thanks for keeping this up! I'm getting very curious about these errors, and how prevalent they may be, and why it's so hard to find a copy of the game anywhere.
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Aug 15, 2023 05:09
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Discendo Vox posted:Fantastic work, thanks for keeping this up! I'm getting very curious about these errors, and how prevalent they may be, and why it's so hard to find a copy of the game anywhere. I didn't have any further errors in my playthrough. I'm guessing 'bit rot'.
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Aug 15, 2023 05:14
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Episode 17: Building Bridges We’re on the home stretch. The last fifth of the game awaits us. Today, the theme will be ‘crossing bodies of water’. Level 81. TROUBLE “Trouble is being out of socks.”  That mnemonic is so true. Collect the letters of the word T-R-O-U-B-L-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O-U in the word “trouble”!The actual level itself looks to be fairly straightforward, as long as we make it our priority to get to the island with three more bridges, instead of just trying to cross the river by the fire demon immediately.   We start by grabbing the apple and getting the zebra out of the way, so we can grab the first bridge.   We’ll need to grab the rightmost bridge to get the others - which means we’ll have to dodge multiple pits, including one inconveniently placed right where we need to go to outrun the rhino.   Fortunately, there’s a little wiggle room on the other side of the pit, and we wait there before ducking in and grabbing the bridge.   With the second bridge laid, we can easily get to the T.    While we’re able to dodge the rhino to get to the R, the gazelle blocks its path on our trip out and we have to beat a hasty retreat. It takes another cycle before we can get back out.  We’re now on track to get the O, U, and B, but we need to grab the Anti-Fireball potion first if we don’t want to get roasted.   One potion later, the fire demon will ‘trouble’ us no more. We only have the L and E left to pick up.    The L is right nearby, and the only tricky part with getting the E is making sure we don’t fall into a pit on the way. Back to the raft! It strikes me that it would be surprisingly easy to forget or misplace a bridge on this level, especially with the trees on the island dividing it into three parts. Fortunately, it’s all done now.  Today, the game’s thrown a word from all the way back at the beginning of the game (EASY) into our pop quiz. It’s not hard to spell, fortunately. Level 82. ROUGH ”I thought I bought enough drops to soothe my cough.”  Collect the letters of the word R-O-U-G-H, in the proper order. Remember, the G-H can sound like an F!Du-du-du dun-de-duuuun! We’ve seen ENOUGH, COUGH, THOUGHT, and BOUGHT, and you’d think the mnemonic would be exhausted by now - but it’s come back for one last helping. That alligator in the lake is going to be a problem too (though not as much of one as you’d think).   We dodge the rhino and cross the lake so we can get to the R, revealing something very important: you can’t get bitten by an alligator while you’re on a hippo.   We grab the bridge and R without incident, before using the bridge to grab the apples.  Getting the O presents a problem. The alligator can’t attack us on the way there, but it can block our hippo from moving in the direction we want to go.  With careful timing, we wait until the alligator is on the other side of the lake, and get to the island with the O just before it.   The O is far enough away from our landing spot that the alligator loses interest and starts patrolling the lake again. We take the opportunity to return our hippo back where we found it.  With the bridge from the O island, we can cross the river and get the U.   From there, it’s just a matter of crossing the lake again to pick up the G...   ...and coming back to get the H. Back to the raft! The alligator is more of a blocker than a threat here, but we still have to manage it like we’ve managed it in previous levels. Otherwise, not too hard.  We’re getting past words in our pop quiz almost every time, now. Not only does TROUBLE show up, but also FIRST (the first word we ever spelled). Then, on we go. Level 83. DANGER ”Beware, there’s danger when a tiger is full of anger.”  Collect the letters of the word D-A-N-G-E-R, in the proper order. Remember, this is not spelled the way it sounds!This level is honestly a lot like TROUBLE. Both require you to place bridges thoughtfully - and have Fire Demons to deal with.   We can’t ride the hippo yet (no apples), so our only option is to go left, down, and around, pushing the boulder to cross the river.    After grabbing the bridge and apples, we place the bridge in the middle of the bank, where we can cross and get its replacement. We then repeat the process up top with the bridge by the A.   Now we can bridge the river and ride the hippo.  We take an immediate left turn as soon as we’re in the lake, as going further up would lead to us getting barbecued.  However, while we grab the D, I try to get back to dry land on the same apple. I don’t make it, and we get stuck in mid-lake. Let’s try that one again!  This time, we wait on the far shore for the first apple to wear off, before we ride the hippo back.   Now, we can go back around and get the A and the N.   Getting the G requires a longer trip across the lake. We still take an immediate left turn to dodge the fire demons, before crossing the hot coals to grab the letter.  We have to be careful on the way back. It’s a long trip, and we have to be fairly precise with the Fire Demons still hanging around.   Now we can go around and grab the E...   ...and go back to get the R. Back to the raft! We do have to be careful on our way back to the raft that we don’t overshoot and stop on the hot coals, but we make it and head safely upriver.  Today’s pop quiz includes visits from OFF (Level 35), ALREADY (76), and DOLLAR (29). Then, on we go (again). Level 84. MOTHER ”A moth landed on my mother’s nose.”  Collect the letters of the word M-O-T-H-E-R, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O in the word “mother”!At first, you’d think this level would be cake. But it’s really a rather fiendish puzzle - because of the pits bordered by the mud. Our first challenge: how to get to the M without falling off?    After grabbing the apples, we push the leftmost two boulders aside. This clears the way to the area with the M... from that direction.   My first attempt at getting the M is actually to go around, push the third boulder, and come at it from the top - but I learn quickly that bridges will not go over pits. I accidentally fall into the pit, and we start over. Let’s try that one again! In my second attempt, I slip on the mud and fall in. Let’s try that one again!   After some pondering, the secret reveals itself: that little strip of green above the mud is a fully walkable grass tile - we can scootch out and grab the M.   From there, getting the O is easy— we slide across the rightmost mud patch and down.  Since we can’t bridge pits, getting the T will require a long detour - first we head for the river so we can cross it.  On the way there, I fall in a pit. Let’s try that one again!  After redoing the whole song and dance, we slide across the mud and make it to the first river crossing.   The second river crossing is just below the first, but once we reach the right bank we have to stop and come at the T from below so that we don’t slide into a pit again.   Then it’s around and back to get the H.   We have to do the song and dance again to reach the E. Once again, we navigate very carefully after crossing the river a second time, as the mud will get us if we take a step too far coming off the bridge.   With great care, we navigate the crossing one last time to get the R. Back to the raft! Even with all the gazelles gone, we have to be careful when making our exit.  Our pop quiz is fairly chill this time. FIERCE was our last trinket level, but it makes a comeback here. Level 85. EVERY ”’Every’ is very easy to spell.”  Collect the letters of the word E-V-E-R-Y, in the proper order. Remember the E in the word “every”!This level’s actually fairly simple, to close things off. The only tricky bit is the bit with the zebra and the rhinoceros.    We start by getting the E, the two apples, and the bridge.   We use the bridge immediately. This lets us slide on the mud (with help from the Wind Demons) to get the V.   From here, we can surf to the upper river crossing, and push the boulder to get across. This nets us the second E, and a chance to go back around the wind demon loop again.  So we do.  Our next step is to get the bridge so we can get out of the mud. We need to use one apple on the zebra, but the other has to be for the rhino - this is because if we drag the zebra to the right gap in the rock wall, there will be no way for us to dodge the rhino while getting the bridge.  Instead, we feed the rhino, quickly also feed the zebra, and lead everyone involved to the left gap before either apple wears off.   With the zebra out of the way, we get the bridge.   Finally, we can deploy the bridge, cross back to the left side of the river, and get the Y. Back to the raft! Honestly, for the most part, this level was a breather. It’s nice to see something not too tricky every now and again.  Today’s recurring word is FUEL, from Level 44. And then - upriver we go.  We’re really getting close to the end now! Some of the game’s toughest challenges still await us, however. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: We finally find out what that potion does.
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Apr 8, 2024 04:39
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Quackles, let it be known that I appreciate you keeping this up - I know the number of kids who got this far could probably be counted on one hand.
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Apr 8, 2024 06:03
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Edward Mass posted:Quackles, let it be known that I appreciate you keeping this up - I know the number of kids who got this far could probably be counted on one hand. I certainly didn't have the time as a kid! I got to use the school computers in something like 30-minute increments. Meanwhile, I've captured all the footage, and let it be known that levels 98-100 took me 1 and a half hours put together. (Normally a level takes 5-10 minutes at most.)
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Apr 8, 2024 06:39
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Quackles posted:I certainly didn't have the time as a kid! I got to use the school computers in something like 30-minute increments. Meanwhile, I've captured all the footage, and let it be known that levels 98-100 took me 1 and a half hours put together. Dang thats an uptick on difficulty, but keep it up, you do good lp.
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Apr 8, 2024 11:53
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Yeah, this has been cool, keep it up!
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Apr 8, 2024 18:23
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This may be one of the best quality 'for children' games I've ever seen and definitely the best educational one. Simply introduced game mechanics that still add a bit of thinking and interactivity, and a charmingly earnest effort to teach them spelling. It looks like they kind of tripped up on difficulty scaling, but well, some oopsies will happen.
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Apr 9, 2024 05:47
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