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  What Is This Game? In 1993 and 1994, the edugame company Bright Star Technology made a pair of games designed to teach children spelling, which were published by Sierra. Originally titled “Yobi’s Magic Spelling Tricks”, the first game was released as “Yobi’s Basic Spelling Tricks”, and then as “Spelling Jungle”. The sequel, “Yobi’s Advanced Spelling Tricks”, is similarly better known under another name: “Spelling Blizzard”. In both games, you play a villager who travels upriver to find out why your river is flooding. Along the way, you’ll have to travel through a series of top-down puzzles where you dodge wild animals, cross rivers, and collect letter tiles to (correctly) spell words. The big difference is that the second game is more challenging - and it’s winter. These games were on the school computers when I was a kid, and were a fond part of my childhood - but I never managed to finish them. I now have both games and a cantankerous Mac emulator, so we can change that. How Will this LP Work? This will, for the most part, be a screenshot LP. I’ll play through each level and provide commentary! It should be pretty short and sweet. Spoiler Policy Please don’t spoil the ending of either game, as I have never seen them. Notice of Simulcast: This LP is also posted over on the LP Beach! Meet new friends! See familiar faces! We have a cool purple background and collapsing boxes. Episodes Episode 1: Welcome to the Jungle Episode 2: Lions and Rhinos in Pairs, Oh My! Episode 3: Novelties of the Jungle Episode 4: Everything Wants a Piece of Us Episode 5: Fast Fingers and/or Feet Required Episode 6: Special ELECTION Update ft. Animal Antics Episode 7: Hippo HQ and Roundabout Routes Episode 8: Yobi's Day Off Episode 9: Pushing Through the Jungle Episode 10: A Decade of Zebras Episode 11: A Glitch in Time Episode 12: The Long Way Round Episode 13: Not-So-Bad Lip Reading, Jungle Edition Episode 14: Way Too Many Dangerous Orange Things Episode 15: Where's That Walkthrough? Episode 16: Back to the Future! Episode 17: Building Bridges Episode 18: The Day the Jungle Stood Still {more to come…} Videos Levels 1-5 Levels 6-10 Levels 11-15 Levels 16-20 Levels 21-25 Levels 26-30 Levels 31-35 [I've stopped making videos.] Quackles fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Sep 4, 2020 02:42
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Denizens of the Jungle This post will list all the features we’ll find as we travel upriver. It’ll be updated as we discover new things. Characters  This is Yobi, your mission control, guide, and a general all-round helpful presence. This is Crackers, Yobi’s parrot. Crackers squawks when you pick up letter tiles. Knows one and only one word: ”Crac-kers!” This is you.Terrain  This is Land. You can walk on this. Grass is a kind of land, but animals won't walk on it of their own accord. You can use it to keep safe from more dangerous animals. This is the River. You can’t walk on this, but you can get over it with the help of a Hippopotamus, Bridge, or Boulder. Or you can ride over it on the Raft. “The Trees are  Stone Walls are just as impassible as trees, but you can’t throw things through them, either. They also block Demons' attacks, and animals and Demons can't see through them, either. Mud is frictionless! Once you set out in a direction, you won't be able to stop yourself until you hit something solid. Hot Coals are safe to walk over... as long as you don't stop moving while you're standing on them. If you stop moving while on Hot Coals for any reason, you'll have to start the level over. Pits are only a danger to you if you walk into them! Unfortunately, there's no safety railings.Animals and Enemies  Hippopotamuses will stay where they are by default, submerging in the water sometimes. You can walk over them when their backs are out of the water. If you feed a Hippo, it will let you ride it for a short time. Be sure to be somewhere you can safely disembark by the time the apple wears off, or you’ll be stuck in midriver! Zebras won’t move, usually. If you feed one, it will follow you, and you can push it around as well. Once the apple wears off, the Zebra will stand still. Gazelles are always in motion, normally running around the left or right edge of the terrain. If you feed one, it will stop, and you can push it around. It will start running again once the apple wears off. Elephants are like Zebras in that they normally won't move. If you feed one, you can push it around, but once the apple wears off, the Elephant will return to its starting location if possible. Rhinoceroses move back and forth in a straight line. If you run into the front end of one, you'll have to start the level over. If you feed one, it can be safely pushed around; if this changes the way it's facing, it will move in that direction once the apple wears off. Lions have a set 'home space', and chase anyone who's too close to it. They'll walk back to their home space once you're far enough away. If one catches you, you'll have to start the level over; they don't care for apples, and will ignore them. Tigers will start tracking your position if they see you (their vision extends up, down, left, and right in straight lines, and they can see through trees). They will walk vertically whenever you walk vertically; they will walk horizontally whenever you walk horizontally. When doing this, they'll always try to get closer to you, and if they get too close they'll chase you even if you stand still. Tigers will stop tracking you if they lose line-of-sight, which means that you can fake them out by ducking around a corner or trapping them in a cul-de-sac.  Alligators patrol the outside of the body of water they're in - until you get too close. Then they'll start following you around, even coming up on land to do so. Running into one means starting over. Alligators will abandon their chase if they get too far away from where they left the water, or from you. The Fire Demon throws fireballs vertically, horizontally, and diagonally, as long as it can see you and you're in line with it. Fortunately, these fireballs have a very short range (2 squares). If one hits you, you'll have to start the level over. The Dart Demon shoots darts vertically and horizontally, if it can see you and you're in line with it. These darts travel pretty quickly, and will go until they hit something solid or leave the screen. You'll only be able to pass safely from a ways away, or if you can block the darts' path with a stone wall, boulder, or animal. The Wind Demon can't harm you directly, but it sure can push you around! Wind Demons blow vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, turning to face you as you move. Their wind has infinite range, and blows at the same speed you walk, so you won't be able to walk against it effectively. You'll stop if you hit something solid.Items  Collecting Letter Tiles to form words is your main goal as you venture upriver. If you grab the wrong one, you’ll have to start over. Apples can be thrown at animals to feed them. Different animals will have different reactions to being fed. A Bridge can be placed to cross the river.   Boulders can block off pathways or shield you from harm. It can also be pushed into the river to cross it, but the boulder won’t hang around for very long! A Jeep is like a boulder, but it will roll on its own once pushed, stopping once it hits something solid. It can only be pushed forwards or backwards. Jeeps will sink in water and can't be used to cross rivers.         Ooh, shiny! Trinkets are found every 10 levels, but collecting them may prove difficult. Can you pull it off? Potions have special beneficial effects, but they're rare and last only for a short time (about 11 seconds). There are 5 kinds of potions in the game:• The Walk on Water potion lets you cross rivers without a bridge! If you're still on water when it wears off, expect to get wet and have to start over.•  The Anti-Dart potion protects you from Dart Demons' darts. Being out of line of sight once it wears off is a good idea.•  The Anti-Fireball potion protects you from Fire Demons' fireballs (but not the effects of hot coals). It's a bit more niche than an Anti-Dart potion, but if you need it...•  The Anti-Wind potion keeps you from being blown around by Wind Demons.•  The Time Stop potion freezes time! Only you and anything you push around will move. Boulders will not fall into the river while time is stopped.Et Cetera  The Raft is your ticket into and out of levels. It will duck out once you start a level, and return once you’ve collected all the letter tiles.
Quackles fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Sep 4, 2020 02:42
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Episode 1: Welcome to the Jungle First off, it’s time to start the game! We’ve just booted up SheepShaver, a somewhat cantankerous PPC Mac emulator running Mac OS 8.5. I don’t remember why I named the main HD of the emulated computer ‘Mask’, by the way.  Now let’s play the…  Oh.  OK, let’s try that again.   Note that the version of the game I was able to lay my hands on was one before the name change. It’ll always be ‘Spelling Jungle’ in my heart, though.  The ‘Spelling Jungle’ title card looks like this, for comparison.  We fade in on a tidy map scene. This menu screen shows your progress - and, on the ‘EXPLORERS’ board, anyone else who’s playing the game and the latest level they reached, too. Eheheheh. Hello! Prepare yourself! When you are ready, choose a stone.This is Yobi. He’s going to be our mission control for our journey. He is also fully voice acted - with lip flaps! Not bad for a game that’s only 10 MB in size.  Clicking on ‘NEW GAME’, we get this name entry screen.  Type in your name.I wasn’t kidding about the lip flaps, by the way. Just look at that enunciation!  ‘QUACKLES’ seems like a good name… I sure hope it got the last few letters, though.  That brings us back to the menu screen. The river is flooding, and our home is in danger! Our tribe has chosen you! Your journey upriver will find the cause… good luck! We click PLAY, and are confronted with a loading screen.  Heh! Your journey is just beginning!This would take ages to load back on the school’s 68k Macs. I suspect the voice clips associated with each level are heavily compressed. Yobi has some idle animations to pass the time (thunking that staff of his, wiggling his toes) but it still felt like forever. Since SheepShaver is being backed up by all the power of a 2014 MacBook Pro, the loading screen only hangs around long enough for Yobi to finish talking. Level 1. FIRST ”First is really second today.”  Here is our first puzzle level!  That’s you on the raft! Collect the letters of the word F-I-R-S-T, in the proper order. Remember, in the word “first”, the I-R sounds like an R!The flow of this dialogue makes it clear that Yobi has voice clips for each individual letter, as well as sentence fragments like, “sounds like” or “in the proper order”. It still sounds good, though, and it’s super impressive for something from 1993. Use the arrow keys to move. Walk over letters to pick them up.A caw from Yobi’s parrot signals the start of the level. Our goal, as noted above, is to collect the letter tiles in order, then return to the raft. The one-liner at the bottom of the screen is a mnemonic that relates to the word we’re here to collect. It changes with every level.  Before we start, we pause the game. This activates the help function; if we click on anything onscreen, Yobi will tell us about it.  “This is your journey.” “The trees are thick.”Trees can’t be walked through, but that’s not what’s important about them. When I was a kid playing this game, me and my friends were absolutely sure Yobi was saying, “The trees are fake.” We got a lot of humor out of that one line.  Once we step off the raft, it disembarks, heading towards the bottom of the screen. It’ll be back when we’re done.  Collecting letters makes them appear on the board above Yobi’s head. This board will also store our inventory, once we get anything else worth picking up. Now, you may be wondering: what happens if we collect the wrong letters? Well…  Whoops! The letter S would have been a wiser choice.When you fail levels due to spelling-related reasons, Yobi will typically deploy a proverb on you. Every letter must be placed well / in every word / you seek to spell.And finally, the thing he’ll say for every do-over… Let’s try that one again. A quick fade out, and the puzzle is reset.    This time, we gather everything in order. Back to the raft! Once the puzzle is complete, Yobi will bang his staff three times. In addition to bringing back the raft, this clears away most entities that are left in the puzzle, like leftover letter tiles or wild animals. Yobi has this to say about the raft, by the way:  “You will reach your goal by taking the raft.” Back on the raft, we continue our journey.  We fade back in at the site of a pop quiz. There’s one of these after every puzzle level.  Spell “first”.The first word we’re asked to spell in these will always be the word we just collected in the puzzle.  We spell the word, and a little figure climbs onto the signboard. It may be hard to see, but we (on the raft) just paddled a bit farther to the left. Fantastic! Spell the word ”reading”.  We do, and another figure climbs up onto the board. Way to go! Spell ”plant”.  You got it!With our third spelled word, the quiz is complete - for now. The figures wave goodbye as we paddle offscreen. Level 2. PRACTICE ”It’s fun to practice skating on ice.”  Now that we’ve completed the quiz, the game segues immediately to our next puzzle level. Collect the letters of the word P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E, in the proper order. Remember, the E is silent in the word ”practice”. Press the Space bar to throw an apple. If you feed a hippopotamus, you can ride on his back!You’ve already heard what Yobi has to say about hippos, but if you click on an apple while the game is paused, he says,  “Feed the apples to animals if you need their help.” Hippopotamuses, at rest, don’t move. They alternate between submerged…  And surfacing. You can walk on their backs while they’re surfaced, but they won’t move for free.  We’re going to need the hippo’s help to cross the river and get the next letter (the R), so we grab the two apples on this side (which go onto the board above Yobi’s head for storage) …  And then we feed one to the hippo! It turns bright pink. We can now walk onto it and control it with the arrow keys for a little while, so we use it to cross the river.  By the time we get the ‘R’, the apple is wearing off. (It’s not visible in this screenshot, but the hippo flashes between bright pink and its normal color for a few seconds.)   We have to feed the hippo again to get back. Note how apples travel when we’re not right up next to the animal: they fly straight forward in front of us.    From here, the rest of the letters are easy. Back to the raft!  The hippo vanishes, and the raft reappears. Away we go!  As expected, it’s time for another pop quiz. Spell the word ”practice”. You’re movin’ now! Spell ”march”. This time, I screw up - I hit Enter too soon, and the ‘H’ isn’t read. Not only do we not get credit for the answer, but… “March” is spelled… M-A-R-C-H. “March”.…Yobi also spells it out for us. Spell the word “action”. There you go! Spell ”cheese”. You can click on Yobi in case you want the word repeated. In this case, I do, because the voice clip is near-silent on the ‘eeze’ part of ‘cheese’, so I can’t hear the word properly! Yes, even with headphones.  You got it!Finally, I just guess. Fortunately, I’m right.  Between levels, Yobi has another proverb: A correctly spoken word is heard at an instant! The correctly spelled word is permanent.Level 3. NICE ”Nice igloos cover Eskimos.”  Our third puzzle level. Collect the letters of the word N-I-C-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget! The C can sound like an S. Press the Space bar to lay down a bridge. If you feed a zebra, it won’t leave your side.Importantly, this level has our first instance of a letter tile that does not belong in the word. If you collect the S at any point, it’s like picking up letter tiles out of order - you’ll have to start over. Yobi has this to say when asked about bridges:  “Bridges are useful for crossing the river!” We start on the right side. The N isn’t here with us, so our first job is to get across the river.   We grab the bridge (it goes into our inventory) and deploy it by pressing SPACE while next to a 1-tile-wide stretch of river. Bridges are permanent until you’ve collected all the letters.   Once we’re across, we have a different problem: the zebra is between us and the N. We grab an apple and toss it to the zebra…   …and it starts following us around! Once it’s somewhere out of the way, we stop and wait for the apple to wear off.  Zebras won’t move when they’re not fed, which is fine for us. We snag the N.    From here, finishing the puzzle is just a matter of some time-consuming backtracking - and avoiding the S. Back to the raft! The raft makes the bridge, zebra, and S all disappear, leaving a straight shot to the finish.    We go through another pop quiz, before paddling to another puzzle. Level 4. EASY ”Spelling easy is as easy as slurping yogurt.”  Another puzzle with a decoy letter. In a game about avoiding spelling mistakes, this will not be anything near the last. Collect the letters of the word E-A-S-Y, in the proper order. Don’t forget! An S can sound like a Z. Gazelles will only stop for food! Once they stop, they will go anywhere you push. Push Boulders to block danger, or into the river as a stepping stone. Gazelles run endlessly, like Yobi promised. They don’t pose a threat to us, but they can get in the way.   Once we’ve collected the E, we have to push the boulder out of the way to get to the A and S. Gazelles simply route around anything that’s in their way.    For the heck of it, I decide to use the boulder to cross the lake once I’ve picked up the A. Boulders are single-use— this one sinks after I cross. (They also sink if you wait a bit without crossing.)   From there, collecting the remaining letters is E-A-S-Y, especially with the raft docking spot right nearby. Back to the raft! Off we go!  It’s worth noting that the pop quizzes are the only part of actual gameplay that’s backed by music. The puzzles just have ambient sounds, based on what’s in the level. Music: Spelling Jungle Drums Can you spell ”easy”? You’re right! Spell ”vote”. Yobi says, vote. You heard it here first, people! Goo-hoo-hoo-hood! Spell the word ”nature”. Yes!That completes this quiz. Off we go, arriving at… Level 5. BEGIN ”Begin exploring good ideas now.”  The puzzles are still easy, but they’re starting to pick up in complexity. Collect the letters of the word B-E-G-I-N, in the proper order. Some words are not spelled the way they sound.I know one of the spelling mistakes they were expecting people to make was B-E-E-G-I-N, but what’s that A lying around here for?? Anyway, this level introduces stone walls. Like trees, they’re impassable. Unlike trees, you can’t throw things through them (this will be relevant later on).  Sadly, I didn’t think to click on a wall and get Yobi’s explanation, but I did click on two very important things I hadn’t asked about before.  I am Yobi. “This is Crackers.” Crac-kers!   We won’t need the apple for this level, so we head for the B, then push the boulder out of the way.   We get the E once the Gazelle passes, as it’d block our way otherwise.   After grabbing the G and the bridge, we push the boulder aside again so we can get back to the open area on the left.   Here’s how Gazelles behave when fed: as promised, they stop, and you can push them around.  They start running again once they’re no longer full, though!  Back to the raft! After we grab the N, the bridge, gazelles, and extra letters all disappear. Note that the boulder does not disappear; the game considers it part of the scenery, and we may have to make a bridge with a boulder later on to get back to the raft.    We clear the next pop quiz without difficulty. However, once we get to the next puzzle this time, I decide to go back to the map by clicking on ‘MAP’ in the next puzzle screen.  Now that we have a save file in progress, the map shows us our progress. Spelling Jungle has 101 levels, so we have a ways to go! Wait, a second, though. Do I see what I think I see? Our name is preserved for posterity up on the high score board! Our record is saved for eternity! Our—  … oh, dag nab it. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: Rhinos and lions and fireball hurlers, oh my!
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Sep 4, 2020 02:43
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SelenicMartian posted:The artist put a lot into the walrus nose. Alas, it does not. BTW, the video of the first five levels is now up! It's a slightly cut-down version of the episode, but it may be of interest. It also has the title theme music at the beginning, too.
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Sep 4, 2020 06:59
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Episode 2: Lions and Rhinos in Pairs, Oh My! So far, the only hazards of our journey have been collecting the wrong letter tiles or falling into the river. This is about to change.  Yobi, chatty as ever, has something unique to say when the game loads from the map screen. Your persistence is your strength!Level 6. JOURNEY ”Journey only upon roads not expecting you.”  Collect the letters of the word J-O-U-R-N-E-Y, in the proper order. Remember, the Y is silent! A rhinoceros will pace until you feed him. Watch out for his snout!Yobi’s not joking about the rhinos. They’ll walk back and forth in a straight line, turning around when they hit something solid. But if they run into you from the front, well…  Let’s try that one again! J-O-U-R-N-E-Y is the word.Before we continue, I should note that this level introduces something that will be very, very important later on. See that green stuff?  “The grass makes animals anxious.”This is grass. Animals will not walk on it willingly, and if pushed into it, they won’t move (I think). Effectively, it’s a kind of ‘safe zone’ for dealing with anyone who might want to take a bite out of us. As you might surmise, there will be animals coming up who might want to take a bite out of us.  This time, we wait for the rhino to be out of the way before grabbing the J.   We have to do it again for the O and the U, as they are both in the rhino’s path.  Even though there is an apple on this side of the river, we don’t need to use it to get the hippo’s help. All we have to do is walk across when it’s not underwater!   We grab the N, and dodge around the second rhino to get the E.  The Y is going to be tough to get to, though… so we feed the rhino.  Once the rhino is fed, he stops. Now we can push him around safely like a zebra or a gazelle. There’s one more cool thing about rhinos - once the apple wears off, the rhino resumes pacing. However, because we made him face right, he paces horizontally instead of vertically! This means we can move rhinoceroses to be safely out of the way, as long as we have apples.  Back to the raft! With the word finished, we proceed onwards.  Past this point, I’m going to condense most pop quizzes, unless something interesting happens. Can you spell ”journey”? That’s the first one! Spell the word “potato”. You’re right! Spell “poem”. Well spelled!Away we go. Level 7. ENOUGH ”Enough nagging often upsets good humor.”  This level looks… kind of ominous. Collect the letters of the word E-N-O-U-G-H, in the proper order. Don’t forget! In the word ”enough”, G-H sounds like an F! A lion guards his den fiercely!To hammer the point home, we immediately hear a digitized lion roar.  Lions are fairly straightforward. They have a ‘home space’ (their starting position), and if we’re within a certain distance of it (I think a 2-square radius), they’ll leave our position and chase us. They won’t walk onto the grass, fortunately.  In fact, as long as we stay entirely on the grass, this lion won’t be able to harm us!  Once we’re far enough away, the lion stops following us and returns to its home space. Critically, though, if a lion catches us while we’re ever off the grass…  Let’s try that one again!I’m sure everyone saw that coming from a mile away.   This level, in addition to introducing lions, kind of doubles as a tutorial on grass. All the letters are on grass, there’s enough space to always stay on the grass while moving from letter to letter, and the fact that you have to walk past the lions shows you how they’ll behave when they get far enough away from you.   We get the letters on this side of the river and deploy the bridge, carefully dodging around the Fs. Yobi would have had “enuff” of our attempt if we tried.   The lion on the right side ignores us, even while we collect the G. It’s mostly there to point out that it’s not safe to disembark the raft anywhere a lion can eat you. Back to the raft!  That lion is gone by the time we re-embark, anyway.    The next pop quiz goes mostly smoothly, though I have to prod Yobi to repeat himself a few times on “crisp” - once again, the sample is quiet towards the end.  Yobi has more loading screen advice for us. To spell a single word correctly is to avoid many mistakes!Level 8. NEITHER ”Neither time did ‘I’ go first.”  OK, quick, how does it go? I before E, except after C, or when sounding like A, as in… oh, gently caress it. “Neither” is one of those words that blows that rule out of the water. Also, I may have typed it wrong 3 or 4 types in a row, and had to backspace and correct it, while writing this post.  Collect the letters of the word N-E-I-T-H-E-R, in the proper order. Remember, the E-I sounds like E in the word “neither”.  The actual puzzle is somewhat more straightforward. We start by getting the N, then moving the zebra out of the way.    After grabbing the E, we load up on apples and move the boulder out of the way (we won’t need it), then ride the hippo across the river. Thinking on it, the game encourages you to spell the word with ‘E-I’ using the puzzle design, in addition to everything else; if you plan everything out before you start, you’ll notice there aren’t enough apples for two trips across the river.    The rhino has a long travel time, so we dodge around it and collect the I, T, and the H.   Then it’s just a matter of taking the hippo back across to the left bank - though our first apple misses as the hippo submerges unexpectedly.  And we’re done. Back to the raft!  During the pop quiz, I manage to nail the spelling.  We also get a repeat of “march”, seeing as we messed up on it a few levels ago.  “Grass” is another word where I have to ask for a repeat. So far, all the words that are to quiet at the back end tend to end with either a ‘P’ or ’S’ syllable. This might be due to the recording technologies used - it’s common for professional voice recording to use a ‘pop filter’, to prevent a burst of air from hitting the microphone all at once on syllables that ‘pop’, like ‘P’.  Note that this doesn’t explain why ’S’ syllables are quiet - though it’s possible that the recording was also processed to remove undue hissing noises, such as those produced by ’S’ sounds. Ultimately, all we can do is speculate. Level 9. PLEASE ”Please let every animal safely exist.”  Collect the letters of the word P-L-E-A-S-E, in the proper order. Remember, the S can sound like a Z! The Fire Demon is dangerous from many directions!I’m sorry, the what?  A Jeep will roll on its own, and wisely used, protect you.OK, before we continue, let’s talk about Demons. The Fire Demon is the first of three types of entities that aren’t exactly animals, but will seek to ruin your day in various ways. I’m informed the manual calls them ‘Tricksters’ instead of ‘Demons’, possibly to avoid upsetting parents and teachers; but in here, Yobi calls them Demons, so Demons they shall be. The Fire Demon doesn’t do anything yet. We’re not close enough, and thanks to the stone walls, it can’t see us.  Our first job is to deal with this rhino. We’ll have to walk on its path to get to the P and the rest of the puzzle, so we’ll have to keep it from stampeding over us!   We push the Jeep with good timing, after the rhino has gone past. The jeep keeps rolling even after we’re not pushing it, and traps the rhino. We take the opportunity to grab the bridge. (For those who are wondering, you can’t move a Jeep if you push from the side, only from the front or back.)  On our way to get the P, the Fire Demon sees us. It turns out the Fire Demon can throw fireballs! …but the fireballs only have a maximum range of two squares, about to the range shown in the picture. We’re safe for now, but the L will require us to take some care.  We carefully stick near the stone walls and grass to avoid the Fire Demon, who it turns out can throw fireballs diagonally as well.   After retracing our steps, we grab an E (there will be no “pleez” mishaps here today), and toss the bridge down so we can get to the A. If we hadn’t blocked in the rhino now, we’d be in a bit of a pickle - it’s hard to set up a bridge with a rhino bearing down on you! The gap to the right of the S wouldn’t have worked, because we have to get the A first.    We snag the last three letters without much trouble. Back to the raft! Jeeps, like boulders, don’t disappear when the raft returns.    We pass the pop quiz without any trouble. Level 10. SUGAR ”Sugar usually gets a reaction.”  Collect the letters of the word S-U-G-A-R, in the proper order. Remember, there’s no H in the word ”sugar”. Trinkets are highly prized, but difficult to collect!Just when we think we’ve seen everything, the game throws a new wrinkle at us: trinkets! A trinket will appear every 10 levels, and serve as an optional goal that makes the level harder. If we want the trinket, we’ll need to nab it before we collect the last letter, or it’ll disappear when Yobi bangs his staff. If we do grab it, the trinket will appear on the map screen when we’re signed in, as a bit of bragging rights. This trinket level isn’t too hard - the game is starting us off easy so that we get used to the concept, and it mostly serves as a final exam on how to deal with Fire Demons.   Grabbing the apple that’s on this side of the river, we head around to grab the S and the U.    We then use the apple we picked up to get the zebra out of the way, giving us the G and a bridge.  The bridge gets us to the A. Note that the Fire Demon can see us, even through trees! It’s too far away for its fireballs to reach us, though. At this point, I could backtrack, grab the R, and leave without the trinket. However, this is going to be an all-trinkets run of the game, so retreat is not an option.   We’re going to need to block off the Fire Demon from having a clear shot before we can grab the apple that’s on this side, so we push the boulder around and up next to it.  Now, we can ride the hippopotamus to the island with the trinket. (Note the fireballs! We have to go around the top side of the island for this reason. If we went around the bottom side, we’d end up flambéd and have to start over.)  Trinket Get! Once again, we are out of fireball range (though just barely). For those who’ve been paying particular attention, you may have noticed that apples go in the top row of the inventory board, bridges in the second row, trinkets in the fourth row, and letters on the bottom row. What goes on the third row? We’ll see, but not for a while.   Now, I think it’s at least theoretically possible to ride the hippo to the island, grab the trinket, and ride back on just one apple. However, if it is actually doable, the timing is pretty tight, and we’d risk being stuck in mid-river. Instead, I wait for the first apple to wear off, then feed the hippo again with the apple that was next to the trinket. Back to the left bank we go!  We grab the R and declare victory. Back to the raft! The raft takes us to our next pop quiz, but there’s a new twist waiting for us.    After our first three words… Alllll right! Can you spell ”energy”?…we get asked to spell a fourth!  You’re right!A new figure climbs up on the board, and we make our way upriver. Every 10 levels, pop quizzes are upgraded, requiring us to spell one more word to pass. This will be the case whether we grab the trinket or not! This upgrade pattern will cap out after Level 70, where we’ll be spelling 10 words each session. For the time being, we make our exit, then return to the map.  Our trinket is waiting for us! If we’d passed it by, there’d be an outline here instead. Even though we’ve gotten a bit farther, though, and gotten cool swag, it seems our journey has only really just begun. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: Up for a nice game of darts?
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Sep 6, 2020 12:27
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Episode 3: Novelties of the Jungle Now that we’ve got our first trinket, you’d think the game might let up on us. And it does, but only so it can introduce lots of new stuff. Oooooh! More surprises await you.Level 11. SURE ”Surely unicycles require energy!”  Hot on the heels of SUGAR, we’ve got another level to remind us that English words don’t ever start with S-H-U, unless it’s pronounced /ʃʌ/ (‘shuh’) instead of /ʃu/ (‘shoo’). Collect the letters of the word S-U-R-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget! In the word “sure”, there’s no H!  If you got the trinket, this is a nice breather level. If you skipped it, this level will teach you about the art of riding hippos over long distances.   After grabbing the S, we do our best to get as much of our remaining ride time as we can from the hippo. We still have to dismount back onto the island and feed the hippo again to make it across, though.   We get to the far side and grab the U. We also grab another apple, so we’re still holding nicely at a steady supply of two.  Next, we set out on hippoback and collect the R (and another apple).  This time, we wait on the island for the apple to wear off, rather than risk being stuck in mid-lake and having to start over.   Past this point, it’s a straight shot to the E. Back to the raft! It’s a pity there wasn’t an extra ’T’ tucked into the corner of this level. I would have liked to try to have spelled “chute”, even if it would have ended in disaster.  Another pop quiz down. I can appreciate that the answer to… Can you spell S-U-R-E?…is, “sure”. Level 12. ABOUT ”Let’s go out and about.”  Collect the letters of the word A-B-O-U-T, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O-U in the word “about”! It will take planning to pass the Dart Demon.Ooh boy, ooh boy, ooh boy! We’ve got another Demon, folks. We’ll see what this one does when we get closer to it. I also, finally, thought to get Yobi’s take on stone walls before the level starts.  “Stone blocks can’t be moved.”  We start by going right from the raft - not left. This is so that we can grab the bridge and set it up in the top. The Dart Demon hasn’t done anything so far, mostly because we’re behind a pair of stone walls that block its vision.   We nab the A and B.   At this point, to get to the O, we’ll need to grab the bridge first. We do so, but make sure never to get directly in line with the Demon…   Because the Dart Demon, perhaps a bit unsurprisingly, shoots darts at us! The demon can only fire left, right, up, or down, and as long as we’re far enough away and keep moving across the line of fire, the darts will miss.  As with the bridge, we can get close and grab the O without any problems.   For the U, though, we’ll need some help. Ducking past the darts again, we push the boulder to block the Demon’s line of fire to the left.   Now we can get the U and T safely. Back to the raft! The Dart Demon is cleared away like every other enemy before we leave, fortunately.  The pop quiz gives us little trouble. The game won’t really bust out the longer words until we get farther upriver.  Yobi Proverb time! To spell a single word correctly is to avoid many mistakes.Level 13. PARTY ”Parties are reasons to yodel.”  Yeeeeikes! Sadly, I’ve already used my ‘lions and tigers, oh my’ joke for the LP, or I’d certainly drop one here. Just look at that puzzle layout! Collect the letters of the word P-A-R-T-Y, in the proper order. Remember, the Y sounds like an E!And on top of that, there’s an annoying new animal to deal with. It is difficult to escape a tiger when he sees you. We start by going to the right and collecting all the apples, mostly so we can demonstrate something a bit later.  On our way to the boulder so we can cross the river, our path falls in range of three tigers, and they start following us! The way tigers work is that they can see up, down, left, and right to any distance in a straight line. If you cross their line of sight, they will start tracking you. When you move vertically, any tigers that are following you will move vertically as well, trying to keep line-of-sight (or get closer if they can). When you move horizontally, tigers will move horizontally in the same way. Normally, tigers stop moving if you break eye contact, so you can fake them out by going around a corner of something solid, or trapping them in a cul-de-sac. Tigers also won’t move if you stand still - unless they’re very close to you. If they’re too close, they’ll run at you, which is usually followed by Yobi saying “let’s try that one again” before your tea even has a chance to get cold.   The lions in this level are a lot less of a threat, as they only defend their territory. One follows us as we push the boulder to cross the river, but gives up once we’re far enough away. As we run down to the grass pathway, both tigers that can follow us do follow us. We’re going to be staying on this grass path as if our skin depended on it - which it kind of does.   Feeding an apple to a tiger does absolutely nothing. (The same is true with lions, by the way.)  Following the grass path, we’re able to safely get the P and the A. Note how the tigers track us as we pass. We now have a small problem: the R is farther along the path, but the other A and the I are both in the way, so we’ll have to step out of our ‘safe zone’ briefly to get there.  This ‘corridor’ between the two lions’ ranges proves to be the best way to cross. The lions are both too far away to bother us, and the tiger can’t get at us ‘cause the lion is blocking it.   We follow the winding path to the R, and then the T. At this point, we could try walking on the path to above the Y and jogging straight down, but that would put us at risk of being eaten by the tiger just to the right of us.    We take the long way around instead, and only walk off the grass path at the end, when we snag the Y. Back to the raft! Seriously, look at that! That level had 4 lions, 6 tigers, and 3 decoy letters to boot. Now it all vanishes as we head upriver.   We get some bigger words in the pop quiz this time. Level 14. HEIGHT ”High elevation is good helicopter territory.”  Collect the letters of the word H-E-I-G-H-T, in the proper order. Remember the silent letters G-H in the word ”height”. You will lose your traction in the mud!This level is very straightforward, and mostly serves as an introduction to mud. Once we step on it…  We keep moving, and can’t change our direction!! We’ll only be able to move around once we hit something solid, or find ourselves on solid ground again.    We slide down to the bottom, and get the E and I by going right and left.  From where the E was, we can collect the bridge and the apples - albeit by a very roundabout route.  From there, it’s easy to head up and to the right so we can set up the bridge…   …but we’re sliding straight into the path of a charging rhino! A thrown apple lets us pass, and we set up the bridge.    We slide over and down to the G, then up and around to the H.   From there, it’s a short trip down and across the river to the T. Back to the raft! Getting back to the raft involves a somewhat circuitous route, this time. Mud doesn’t disappear just because Yobi bangs his staff!  Away we go.  Our next pop quiz proceeds without incident. Yobi’s back to tossing shorter words at us. Level 15. LOVE ”Lions often visit elephants.”  Whoa! Now this is a level. Is that… lava? In a jungle? It sure doesn’t look healthy. Collect the letters of the word L-O-V-E, in the proper order. Remember, there’s no “you” in the word “love”. Don’t stay too long in the hot coals!Well, that’s deep. I realize that Yobi said the letter U, and not “you”, but it's still a heck of a thing to hear him say! Anyway, let’s talk about hot coals.  You can walk over hot coals safely! But if you stop while you’re on them…  Let’s try that one again! After we restart from the raft, we grab some apples and the L.   We work our way around, grabbing apples as we go, and head into the heart shape to get the O.  Fun fact: A gazelle blocking you in where I’m standing is the one way you could accidentally get KOd by hot coals in this level. We narrowly avoid this.  We get the V. It seems the board is maxed out once we have eight apples - or letter tiles.   After a brief misadventure where a gazelle gets trapped in the entryway to the heart, we finally grab the E. (Gazelles, as well as other animals, won’t walk on hot coals.) Back to the raft! Like with mud, we do have to be wary of the hot coals when we make our exit.   Our next pop quiz… is Yobi trying to tell us something? Don’t worry, Yobi. We’ll get a personals magazine for you, just as soon as the journey upriver brings us by a traveling magazine stand.  But that’ll have to be for later. For now, we’ve finished another leg of our big spelling adventure. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: We meet even more Demons, and one last addition to the ‘dangerous animals’ crew.
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Sep 11, 2020 11:53
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Episode 4: Everything Wants a Piece of Us So, who’s ready to journey upriver? We’re due for a second trinket this time, so I don’t think this batch of levels will be as easy as the last. Remember your purpose!Level 16. FAVORITE ”Favorite Aunt Vera ordered raspberry ice to eat.”  Collect the letters of the word F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O in the word ”favorite”!So, I may have mentioned before now that you can throw apples through trees.  Guess what: Dart Demons and others can throw things right back!   After some careful planning, we decide to push the lower boulder so that we can snag the bridge.   Then we push the other one so that we don’t get skewered by darts when we go for the O and I later.   We grab the F. We can push the boulder to block the upper Dart Demon so we can get the second bridge.   Instead of going to get the bridge, though, I grab the V and the O first. Then, I decide to do something clever.  What if I were to cross to the island with the ‘R’ on the boulders, then about-face quick enough to return?  I only realize my mistake after I push the first boulder. Pushing the second boulder won’t let me cross to the island! Let’s try that one again! Our second attempt starts the same as our first, but I put the bridge somewhere a bit more centralized. I can always walk around the lower Dart Demon if I decide to finish with the lower E.   This time, after getting the A, we do grab the second bridge.   And after getting the V and O, we push the upper right boulders away, do not step on any of them, and deploy the second bridge.  R acquired.   The I, T, and E aren’t far behind…  …which presents a problem when our bridges disappear and we’re stuck on the wrong side of the river.    Carefully routing around the upper boulder in the group that housed one of the Dart Demons, we push the middle boulder in the group to the right, and use it to cross the river. This is the only boulder you can use to get back in this way.  Upriver awaits.  Our pop quiz this time has another slightly longer word (“election”) in it. The game is slowly turning up the heat. Level 17. BIRTHDAY ”A little bird remembered my birthday.”  Collect the letters of the word B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y, in the proper order. Remember, in the word “birthday”, the I-R sounds like an R!This level is set up to teach us a useful advanced technique involving animals and Dart Demons.   At the start of the level, we grab the bridge and, having no other options, run onto the peninsula with the apple and the V.   With still no other options, we feed the zebra and go down to collect the second bridge. Note where the zebra ends up! This’ll be important in a moment.  We walk back across the isthmus - but the Dart Demon doesn’t fire at us! The secret is this: Demons’ line of fire is blocked if an animal is in the way.  We cross to the right side of the level, and quickly grab the second apple and the I.  The R requires pushing a boulder into place to block the Dart Demon…  And for the rhino guarding the T, we can push the Jeep without much timing. Animals won’t ever walk on letter tiles, so the rhino can’t be trapped by the T - the Jeep will always wall it off from the tile.   Getting the H, D, and A is very straightforward.   Then it’s just a long walk back around to pick up the Y.  Once the trick is shown off, the level is honestly pretty straightforward!  Hey, JOURNEY’s from Level 6! It looks like once we beat a puzzle level, we unlock its word to be used in later pop quizzes. Level 18. QUARTER ”Quite unusual— a red toad eating radishes.”  This level looks empty, but it actually contains a significant threat. Collect the letters of the word Q-U-A-R-T-E-R, in the proper order. Don’t forget the U in the word ”quarter”! An alligator will come out of the water if you tempt him. OK, look up at the top. See that green guy in the river? That’s the alligator. Alligators are a pain in the caboose.  By default, alligators patrol the edges of the river (or whatever body of water they happen to start in).   However, if you get too close to an alligator, it will abandon its patrol behavior and start following you. They actively move to be as close to you as possible, so it’s not like you can stand still, like tigers. Note that an alligator will happily follow you on land or water depending on what terrain is nearby. They’re amphibious!  The conditions to get an alligator to stop following you are a little fiddly. My current theory is as follows: [1] When an alligator is patrolling, it has no ‘home position’. [2] When an alligator stops patrolling and starts following you, its home position is set to wherever it was last swimming before it started following you. [3] If an alligator is far enough from either you or its home position, it will stop following you and return there, or at least start swimming again. I'm not quite sure if this is accurate, but no matter what, the exact combination of requirements makes alligators hard to shake off.   We already got the Q before the alligator started chasing us. Now we need to get the U, but it looks like we’ll have to take the long way around. We grab the bridge and set out.  We’re ready to get the U! Let’s head down there and… whoops.   We head right to lose the alligator, but I return and grab the U a little too early… or late.  Let’s try that one again! OK, let’s be smarter about it this time.   After grabbing the Q, we shake off the alligator in the same way as we did before and go get the bridge.   This time, we wait for the alligator to pass the peninsula before trying for the U. The alligator starts tracking us again, but hiding in the bottom left corner is far enough away that it convinces it to mind its own business.  The U has been acquired.   With the alligator still on the other side of the river, we get the A-R-T, and follow it up with the E.   The ‘gator does start tracking us again as we go to get the R, but we hide in the corner again and it goes back to swimming.  And we’re done. Back to the raft! This is, sadly, not the last we’ll see of alligators, though.  Hey, “march” showed up in the pop quiz again! Maybe that’s when this LP’ll be done.  I’m actually surprised ‘FLY’ is in the game, too. Three-letter words seem a bit short for a spelling challenge.  Yobi checks in. A minute to learn to spell the word, a lifetime to display the knowledge!Level 19. WHITE ”White hippo’s invaded the enemy.” (sic)  Collect the letters of the word W-H-I-T-E, in the proper order. Remember, the W-H sounds like a W! The Wind Demon can make progress impossible!Coming in to make our life annoying, it’s the fellow that blows hot and cold, the Wind Demon!   Wind Demons can blow wind up, down, left, right, or diagonally. They’ll always turn to face us. As their appearance might suggest, Wind Demons blow wind that pushes us away from them!  The wind blows at the exact speed we move, so by walking against it, we’ll be able to stop our movement - but that’s all.  After taking the long way around, we go back and grab the W.   Getting the H requires a similar detour. Note that the wind demon in the bottom right is blowing us around through a tree - like with Dart Demons, trees obstruct your movement, but not Demons’ effects.  After getting the H, we let the lowest Wind Demon blow us to the river crossing. Note how we stop briefly when we hit the boulder - boulders count as ‘solid walls’ that only we can move, so we can stop and collect ourselves without risk of falling in the river.    One river crossing later, we step into the gap in the trees and are blown around to the I, T, and E. Back to the raft! This level was, arguably, another tutorial - but we’ve been able to find out how Wind Demons work pretty effectively, so it’s served its purpose. Wind Demons’ gusts have infinite range, by the way.  The level also doubles as a breather (ha) level, because what’s in store for us next can only really be described as ‘some dexterity required’. Level 20. TONIGHT ”Tonight only nurses in green hats talk.”  Collect the letters of the word T-O-N-I-G-H-T, in the proper order. Remember the silent letters G-H in the word “tonight”! Potions are rare and powerful - use them wisely!Oh boy, oh boy, another trinket level! This one isn’t going to be as easy as the first one. The only way to get at the trinket is to approach from the bottom edge of the screen - which is coincidentally guarded by a hungry tiger. We’d have to tangle with this tiger even if we only wanted the G in “tonight”, but luring him out enough to get the trinket is going to be a job and a half. By the way, that blue bottle at the bottom of the screen? This is the potion Yobi was talking about. There’s several different types of potions in game, each with their own appearance and effect.  We head to get the bridge first. We’re not going to grab the T here because we’ll be on this side of the river after getting the H, and I have no idea where that tiger is going to end up once the level’s nearly over.  Instead, we set up the bridge and get the T on the left side. This also gives us wiggle room so we don’t accidentally step on this T after collecting the N and I.   We grab the O, N, and I. We won’t need the apple for the rhino - once we get the trinket, we’ll be able to block it with the boulder. (It’s possible some of you may have figured out what the potion does at this point. Don’t worry - I’ll give all the details when we do get there.)  Seeing a tiger chasing me, I automatically run away from the G. Then I realize my mistake.  When I finally grab the G, well… Let’s try that one again!  We start over, cross the river, and pick up the letters T-O-N-I.   This time, we grab the G and run like hell. We eventually lose the tiger around a corner. However, there’s a problem. If we’re to go down to the bottom left corner of the screen, we need to get the tiger farther away so it doesn’t catch up to us.  To try and bait the tiger out, I walk vertically where it can see me…  …and that’s how I get reminded that tigers will chase you when they’re really close, even if you stand still. Let’s try that one again! T-O-N-I-G-H-T is the word.Third time’s the charm?    We gather the letters up to the G, and run from the tiger, putting us about where we messed up before.  This time, though, we go over to the right side of the block of trees. Tigers can see through trees, so this tiger starts following us again - but this time, we’ve got a bunch of space between it and us!   We go up carefully, then walk to the right (even though we’re not going anywhere) to get the tiger to try and sneak up on us. This strands it around the corner, and we can go back down and it won’t follow.  Now we can finally safely head down the left corridor. The tiger stops chasing us when we go around the corner. Let’s see what this potion does, shall we?  When we pick up the potion, it appears in the third line of the board over Yobi’s head - the one that was previously unused. In addition, a shimmering sound effect starts playing that overrides most other sounds.  The potion we’ve grabbed is a Walk on Water potion. We use it to cross the river! Quick design sidebar: why is this a potion, and not a bridge? It’s possible that if the tiger was chasing you more closely, it could come around the corner (maybe; I don’t know for sure) and keep chasing you here. There wouldn’t be time to lay down a bridge, but running onto the potion and then the water would provide a highly effective set piece on ‘potions can do really cool stuff’.  Trinket get #2!  With our secondary objective complete, we start pushing the boulder up so we can get at the H. Note that the potion icon in the inventory has turned dim. Potions last for a limited time (the Walk on Water potion lasts 11 seconds), and ours is about to run out. In case you’re wondering: if you’re still on water when the potion runs out, you’ll go dunk in the lake, followed by Yobi’s standard one-liner.   The rhino is trapped, and we grab the H. Note that the tiger’s following us again.  At this point, though, the level is effectively won. We grab our second T and head for the finish. Back to the raft! Phew! Not going to lie, I was sweating during the tiger chase segments. If you don’t know how to manage tiger movement or haven’t any idea what’s up with the potion, getting the trinket feels like it’d be near impossible.   Once again, pop quizzes (or should I call them R-E-V-I-E-Ws?) have been bumped up, this time to 5 words.  And back on the map, we have another shiny trinket in our possession. But we’re still only 20% of the way upriver! I’m sure the rest of the journey will be even more long and perilous. But fun. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: We have to do a lot of fast and/or precise footwork.
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Sep 16, 2020 07:33
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Black Robe posted:Imagine living in this place. Half the living things around you are apex predators or unnecessarily lethal giant herbivores from multiple continents and most of the rest are various types of demon. About the only things we've seen that aren't actively after your blood are zebras and possibly Yobi's parrot. I imagine that the village(s) we've been seeing get sited away from dangerous animals, or at least in such a position that any dangers can get repelled by pointy sticks like Yobi's. As for 'multiple continents', all I can really say is the old Monty Python line: "A tiger?! In Africa?" PS: Just wait until we get to Spelling Blizzard. Penguins and Polar Bears both show up in the game... Quackles fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Sep 16, 2020 |
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Sep 16, 2020 22:40
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Episode 5: Fast Fingers and/or Feet Required With the second trinket collected, the game has begun in earnest! We’ve still got a good 80% of the way to go, though. Level 21. AFRAID ”You need aid when you are afraid.”  Don’t think I don’t see that alligator there! Most of the level is close to the river, too, making it a bit harder than QUARTER. Collect the letters of the word A-F-R-A-I-D, in the proper order. Don’t forget the I in the word ”afraid”!Nothing to do but get ready to move fast.  We grab the A, and get ready to quickly run to the bridge so we can get the F.  However, I fumble on the keys and we don’t get out of the way before the alligator arrives.  To make matters worse, there’s nowhere to hide that’s far away from the river to shake the gator off! Outrunning it doesn’t work, either, so it’s either start over or get chomped on. We choose to get chomped on. Let’s try that one again!   This time, we go around and get the bridge first, then head towards the A when the alligator is detouring around the far right bend of the river.  After grabbing the A, I try to find a good place to put the bridge. Alligators won’t swim past bridges, so you can trap them with them.  Instead of trying to place the bridge in the obvious locations - at the tips of one of those big middle peninsulas that stick out into the river - I decide I’ll try and trap the ‘gator up at the top, where it can’t come out of the water due to the grass.   It doesn’t work. When the alligator gets close, it locks onto us, and we can’t get it to swim past us so we can throw the bridge.    With no other good options, we deploy the bridge, head to the right edge of the screen to shake the alligator off, then double back and collect the F when it’s not there.   Getting the R and A is easy, and by the time we go down to get the I, the alligator is heading back to the top of the screen and is far away from us.   On our return trip to the D, though, we walk back around…   Waiting until the alligator is taking the long way around before finishing our trip to the D. (Though I ended up messing around and waiting a bit too long, as seen above.) Back to the raft! Alligators will never not be annoying, but the long river switchbacks of this puzzle at least helped with this one. I wonder what the next ‘gator level will be like?   We finish the quiz without any trouble. A few short words are still hanging around, surprisingly.  This time, Yobi delivers my personal favorite proverb… If it is worth writing, it is worth writing right!Level 22. QUITE ”Quite useful is the eraser!”  Hey, parts of the level are missing! I’m sure Yobi can explain. Collect the letters of the word Q-U-I-T-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget the U in the word “quite”. Don’t get too close to the pit! It’s a long way down! Pits are completely harmless as long as we don’t step into them. They don’t have any safety railings or anything, though, so we'll have to be careful.  While normally the best strategy for dealing with pits is to stay far away from one, levels with pits tend to feature narrow land bridges that require careful maneuvering, for some reason.  The Q and U are no problem, at least, because we can stick to the outside edges of the puzzle area.  Crossing the river, we head, with care, to the spit of land that has the I.  On our way back, the inevitable finally happens. Let’s try that one again! I should mention that for all its good points, Spelling Jungle has one flaw: its controls are kind of slippery. To be specific, the game is divided into a grid which is half the size of a single square tile. If a movement key is being held on (as far as I can tell) any frame on which your character is in a grid half-square, they will proceed to the next grid half-square and this action cannot be canceled. This is awkward because it’s easy to undershoot or overshoot the exact position you want, especially when you have to make a hard turn. Combine that with bottomless pits with narrow walkways, and— well— accidents can happen...    Getting the Q, U, and I is the same as before, but this time we carefully walk across the chasms and get the T.   That’s the dangerous part over. For the E, we hug the outer wall again. Back to the raft!  OK, I lied. We have to take care heading back to the raft, too! But now that’s everything.   Another quiz, and off we go. Level 23. AUTHOR ”Authorities understand that hippo’s once ruled.” (sic)  Collect the letters of the word A-U-T-H-O-R, in the proper order. Remember, there’s no E-R in the word “author”!Hello, Yobi? I’d like to lodge a complaint. Your mnemonic is having an off day. Not only is there a grammar error with the apostrophe, but you had the perfect excuse to start it “Authors understand…”— and you didn’t.  Jokes aside, this level doesn’t seem too A-U-F-U-L— though there is a bit of fast footwork, as it introduces an advanced maneuver we’ll have to do again later. Note the range on the fireball that’s being tossed at us! This is being thrown by the upper left Fire Demon, which means we won’t be able to pass by it while we’re on the left side of the river.   This means that we can get the A with the bridge, but we’ll have to cross the river at a different spot to get the O.    The only tricky part about getting the U, T, and H is making sure not to wander into the range of the lower Fire Demon.  Now we come to the O. The only safe way across the river is this big boulder. And as for how we get back…  …we run like hell! This trick is the one I tried unsuccessfully on FAVORITE, but it is possible - provided the alignment of boulders is set up beforehand so we can actually do it. We have about enough time to run over there and immediately run back before the boulder sinks. This isn’t the last time we’ll have to do this.  We collect the R, and the level becomes far less dangerous. Back to the raft! I wonder why that rhino and that apple were in the level in the first place? You can’t push animals onto hot coals, so using a Gazelle to block a Fire Demon was out of the question. It must have just been a red herring.  A tough level makes for an easy quiz, or so they say…  Wait, is this a quiz or Yobi’s shopping list?! Best get upriver before we find out. Level 24. COULD ”Could old Uncle Larry dance?”  Collect the letters of the word C-O-U-L-D, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O-U in the word “could”! An elephant will move for food, but ends up back where it started!We’ve got a new member of the animal crew: the elephant!  We’re clearly going to need to bribe that elephant to get the C. Unfortunately, the only apple is within range of a rather territorial lion, as demonstrated by how he reacts to our grabbing the bridge.  As the saying goes, “get in, get out, get  We push the elephant out of the way and nab the C.  This is where it gets interesting. Once the apple wears off, the elephant returns to its home space, in front of the C! This makes their behavior about halfway between that of a lion (but a harmless one) and a zebra.   Setting up the bridge, we get the O - but we can’t get the U from this position, because we can only walk past the Dart Demon safely if we’re on the left side of the river.   Boulder push time!  Our next task - getting the L - runs the risk of getting us eaten by a hungry lion. We’re not even going to bother going for the left D, for this reason.  It’s a close shave, even going full speed. If we’d stopped, it’d have been curtains! Well. It’d have been “let’s try that one again” time, at least.   We grab the safe D, and we’re done. Back to the raft! It’s interesting how empty this level looks without the various items, animals, and enemies to spice it up. No fancy floor types here!   Today’s pop quiz is fairly straightforward… but the next level is less so than we’d like. Level 25. BURN ”Burping unicorns requested nuts.”  Whoa, that’s a minefield of hot coals! To get the bridges, we’re going to have to in and around without stopping. And not only do we risk the hot coals roasting us, but if we go in too far, the Fire Demons will flambé us. Actually spelling the word’s going to be a cakewalk in comparison. Collect the letters of the word B-U-R-N, in the proper order. Remember the U in the word “burn”. We immediately go for the first bridge, overshoot by half a grid square, and get barbecued by two Fire Demon fireballs at once. This would a good time to remind everyone that Spelling Jungle’s slightly dubious controls exist. Let’s try that one again! This time, we get into the hot coals, snag both bridges, and get out again, in one smooth movement.   Getting the B and U are no sweat, now that we have both bridges.  Then it’s just one smooth run to the finish. Back to the raft! Something to consider: we are now 1/4 of the way upriver! We’re making serious progress…   …after we finish one more pop quiz, that is.  I remember when I was a kid. This game was so full of generalized wonder and mystery. It helps that I never managed to get this far back then - the game was on the school computers, where save files had a tendency to disappear. Well, we can make up for lost time now. Onwards! Next Time on Spelling Jungle: It’s time for some animal antics!
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Oct 1, 2020 10:55
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StrixNebulosa posted:e: naturally my laptop has no optical drive so I cannot check this sucker out You can buy USB DVD drives for reasonably cheap these days.
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Oct 2, 2020 00:10
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Coolguye posted:That'll be the game that's being played right now. Spelling Jungle was also known as Yobi's Basic Spelling Tricks. Spelling Blizzard is also known as Yobi's Advanced Spelling Tricks. Funny story. One of the other games I played as a kid was Super Solvers Mission T.H.I.N.K. In the game, there's these fountains that lift you to new warehouse levels. The thing is, the game's collision detection was kind of bad, so it was possible to inch next to the gaps left for fountains to get back down when you were done, instead of going different paths as the game intended. I though this was a deliberate trick when I was a kid. I only realized it was poor collision detection when I came back and played the game again as an adult.
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Oct 20, 2020 23:09
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Reports of my death are not only exaggerated, but this evening, I bring you a special ELECTION update! Episode 6: Special ELECTION Update ft. Animal Antics  Now strap in, folks. We’ve got another set of five levels today, and several are going to be particularly hairy… pun intended. There is much left to explore!Level 26. FRIEND ”I’ll name each friend before I end.”  Collect the letters of the word F-R-I-E-N-D, in the proper order. Remember, the I is silent in the word ”friend”!Wow, lotta animals around these parts. The tricky bit is going to be circumnavigating the Straits of Rhino over there on the left.  The F comes quickly, but the R is on the other side of the river. We’ll need to duck past the rhino to get the bridge.   Getting in to get the bridge is easy, but getting back out’s a lot harder; the gazelles keep blocking the rhino’s way, forcing it to turn around. We almost get skewered!  Once we get out of there, we place the bridge right where the raft was - it’s just far away from either lion that neither of them will be bothered.  We get the R, and…  Uh oh.  I quickly realize that, with the bridge where I put it, there’s no way to get back across without attracting the attention of at least one lion.  Running for it proves futile. Let’s try that one again!Interestingly, this lion’s behavior shows off something that I only noticed later: the half-square on either side of a bridge acts as a ‘safe zone’ that animals can’t enter. The lion was only able to KO us once we were out of that ’safe zone’. This is going to be relevant again a little ways down the line.  F-R-I-E-N-D is the word.  We collect the F and dodge the rhino again, but this time, we set the bridge up at the bottom edge of the screen. Not only is this area out of the lions’ range, it’s also protected by grass in case the lower lion gets too interested.   We collect the R, and the lion ignores us.    Getting the I and the E is no trouble, and while we do have to attract the attention of the lion to get the N, we make sure to keep on the grass so that it can’t get to us.   After one last rhino-dodging session, we grab the D, and we’re D-O-N-E. Back to the raft! This level isn’t too hard once you figure out where to place the bridge, overall - the apples can be used to feed the gazelles or the rhino to get out of a tight spot, but it’s also possible to stand in the gazelles’ way to trick them into paths where they won’t block the rhino in the first place.   Once again, Yobi offers a pop quiz between levels. Level 27. WERE ”Were eels really electric?”  This one’s a breather level. There’s no hazards in sight, just a long walk and some bridges. Collect the letters of the word W-E-R-E, in the proper order. Some words are not spelled the way they sound!  We disembark, grab the bridge, and use it to get more bridges.  From here, we go to the first island, with the E’s…  …to the next island, with the R’s…  …and then use the bridge on that island to get to the final island and grab the W.   We backtrack slightly to get our first E, before unbacktracking to the nearest R.  All done! Back to the raft!  We’re left on E Island once the bridges disappear, so we push a boulder to get back to getting back to the raft.   This pop quiz is harder than the level itself was! A whole bunch of 6+-letter words. Level 28. ADVISE ”Only advise if you’re sure you are wise.”  I like this level’s mnemonic. Instead of initialisms, like we had in a lot of earlier words, here the phrase finds the important part of the word in smaller words. FRIEND had another good one of this type, too. The level itself… well, we’re going to be interacting with animals a lot, and this one might require some fast feet early on. Collect the letters of the word A-D-V-I-S-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget! The S can sound like a Z!  We start by grabbing the apples, the A, and the D.  We have to feed the elephant and push it into the path of the Dart Demon so that we don’t get sniped. (After we get the V, we get out quickly before the elephant leaves.)  The I is now gotten. We could just grab the bridge and get the S now - but Dart Demons can shoot through trees, so it wouldn’t end very well.   Instead, we push the zebra to block the Dart Demon’s path, then cross the river.  With the E gotten, the level is done. Back to the raft!  After pushing some boulders, up the river we go….   …after a pop quiz, of course. Level 29. DOLLAR ”That doll cost one dollar.”  Collect the letters of the word D-O-L-L-A-R, in the proper order. Remember the two Ls in the word ”dollar”!Two elephants? We’re moving up in the world. The mud looks like it makes this level more complicated, but I’d say it really makes things more simple.   We head down first. Not only do we get the D, but we’ll need the two apples to get anywhere in the upper half of the puzzle.  We have to push a boulder to get back across the river. We manage to stop ourselves from walking onto the mud in time - if we had, we’d grab the R and would have to start over.   After grabbing the O, it’s time to go get the L. Once we push the elephant out of the way, we can move the boulder into its place.  While the Wind Demon blows us over to the Ls, note that the elephant hasn’t moved back to its home position - the boulder is in the way.   We get the two Ls.   From there, it’s a smooth slide over to get the A - and we use our other apple to push the second elephant away to get back out of the muddy area.  It’s just a short walk over to the R! Back to the raft! With the exception of WERE, each level in this block has had at least three animals or enemies - and FRIEND had more. I wonder how many the next level will have?  Before we get there, we run into a little trouble in the pop quiz. Wonderful! Spell "north".…is what Yobi said. But the audio sample is slightly foreshortened, and it sounds a lot like ’N-O-R’ instead.  After a long time trying to figure out what he said, I go with “nor”. “North” is spelled… Thanks, Yobi.  The rest of the quiz goes by without further trouble. Level 30. SOUR ”Our grapes tasted sour.”  Collect the letters of the word S-O-U-R, in the proper order. Don’t forget the O-U in the word ”sour”!Ohhhhhhhh boy. Okay, so on first glance, this level appears straightforward if you ignore the trinket. Grab the S, dodge the rhinos to get the O and U, and come back to the near side of the river for the R. It’s the trinket that complicates things. We need something to block the Dart Demon’s path if we’re going to go grab it, but…  …the only thing that will work is this boulder, on the other side of the entire level. Buckle up, folks. It’s going to be a long ride.    After getting and placing the bridge, we take the long way around the two rhinos and grab the S.  We push the boulder up next to the O so we can move it right. If we pushed it any farther up, we wouldn’t be able to push it down later.  From there, we get the O and push it to the right.   The next step is to push the boulder down to the lower corridor so we can push it farther right. Before we do, though, we sneak up and grab the U.  It’s only once I’m on the final push do I realize I screwed up. The rhino won’t let himself be pushed onto grass while he’s active! There’s not enough time for me to take the long way around, feed the rhino, and push the boulder into position - if I had wanted to do that, I would have needed to feed the rhino before I began pushing the boulder. Still, perhaps there’s a way to salvage this…   Taking the long way around, I feed the rhino - then try to push him across the bridge! It doesn’t work. Remember how I mentioned before that the half-square in front of a bridge is a ‘safe zone’ that animals can’t enter? Unlike grass, where you can push animals onto it when they’re fed, bridge entry zones will not admit rhinos under any circumstances.  To compound this, when the apple wears off, the rhino sees he’s half-on and half-off grass, and moves back to blocking the path. I decide to honorably give up. Let’s try that one again! This time, we put the bridge one square to the left.   After a narrow escape involving the game’s poor controls and a rhino, we go and collect the S.    We push the boulder the same way as before…   …before grabbing the U and pushing the boulder into place.  It’s only once I try to push the boulder across the river that I realize the flaw in my plan: the rhino is next to us, snout primed to headbutt. Even though the game doesn’t animate it turning around, it’s changing direction fast enough that we make contact with its front end. On top of this, even if I had successfully pushed the boulder across the bridge, there wouldn’t be a way to get to the left of it to push it to the right side. In short: our initial bridge placement was the correct one. Let’s try that one again! S-O-U-R is the word.OK, at this point, it’s clear: we’re going to have to do something about that lower rhino if we want to move the boulder through its territory.    This time, after pushing the boulder into place…   …we feed the rhino and push it out of the way. Because it’s fully on the grass, the rhino won’t move even after the apple wears off.   We grab the U and push the boulder down…   …and this time, we can finally push it across the river.   With a bit more pushing, the boulder blocks the Dart Demon, the trinket is acquired, and order is restored.  Getting the R finishes the level. Back to the raft! Finally! That was the hardest trinket puzzle yet.   Only one more to go! Spell the word "election". …and the pop quiz has been augmented. We’ll now have to spell at least six words whenever we come here from now on. (Told you it was going to be an ELECTION update. ) Our progress upriver is going smoothly! Those trinkets look great - and there's only seven left! Next Time on Spelling Jungle: Stone walls and hippos galore. Quackles fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Nov 5, 2020 |
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Nov 5, 2020 05:50
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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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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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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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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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Don't forget - the sequel, Spelling Blizzard, is harder!
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Mar 7, 2021 05:22
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Keldulas posted:It looks like they kind of tripped up on difficulty scaling, but well, some oopsies will happen. Don't forget, there's a sequel. [insert  but it's Yobi]...wait, poo poo. It's literally just , isn't it.
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Apr 9, 2024 06:15
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Junpei posted:Does Blizzard pick up right where Jungle leaves off in terms of difficulty? Or is there still a tutorial section that eases you in there? It is a standalone game and it starts much as Jungle starts (first all letter tiles only, then slowly introducing new mechanics), but there are some things that make it harder in general. Words tend to be longer and more complex (incl. such stumpers as RECEIVE), and Killer Whales (the Blizzard equivalent to Hippos) swim around instead of waiting in one place for you to feed them (so your aim has to be on point). Stuff like that. I haven't gotten to the end of it, but I imagine it meets or surpasses Jungle's endgame.
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Apr 9, 2024 08:10
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Here is Yobi transparent, large and small. Do you think either of these sizes will work? They both have less of an outline than something like , though.
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Apr 9, 2024 17:32
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OK, upon inspection, they can be up to 90 wide but at most 25 high. That's... tight. The expression is nearly unreadable.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:39
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Coolguye posted:crackers in mid squawk is probably the only thing that is going to show up. these old games didn't exactly have 4k resolutions in mind. Yeah, it runs at 640x480.
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Apr 10, 2024 05:25
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Episode 18: The Day The Jungle Stood Still Welcome back. We’ve got a few easier levels in our rotation today - which is neatly made up for by a confounding trinket level that introduces the last remaining potion at the same time. Level 86. OFTEN ”Think ‘of ten’ fingers or toes to spell ‘often’.”  Collect the letters of the word O-F-T-E-N, in the proper order. Remember, the T is silent!This level is remarkably chill compared to some of the stuff we’ve been doing. Once we figure out what to do about that Dart Demon, the rest will be easy.   We start by grabbing the two apples, and ducking in and out quickly to grab the bridge without getting hit.   Before we do anything else, it’s time to do something about the Dart Demon. After placing the bridge in the one safe location, we push the boulder across it and block the Demon’s vertical line of fire. That’ll keep us safe when we go for the F and E.   We’re almost done setting things up. After detouring around the pit, we push the rightmost zebra over and up so it blocks the horizontal firing line of the Dart Demon.  Now we can get the O safely.    It’s a long walk to the other side of the map, but with the boulder protecting us, we get the F without trouble.   Getting the T and E is no sweat.   The remaining zebra doesn’t bother us as we go collect the N. Back to the raft! It’s honestly nice to see some wide-open spaces again. As puzzle design has gotten more complex, levels have gotten a bit more cramped, but this is a return to early game form.  The pop quiz is uneventful. Level 87. SEVERAL ”I don’t ever need help spelling ‘several’.”  That one black pixel after “ever” in the mnemonic haunts me. Are mnemonics drawn instead of typed?! Collect the letters of the word S-E-V-E-R-A-L, in the proper order. Remember the E-R in the word “several”!This level is less dangerous than it looks. There are no hot coal turns (except for the one where the Wind Demon will ensure success), and the Fire Demon on the right can’t hit you unless you deliberately blunder into it.  We start by running left over the first stretch of hot coals, then pulling back so we don’t get run over by stampeding rhinos.   Once we pass by, we cross their ‘road’ and get blown upwards on the next stretch of hot coals by the Wind Demon.  With bridge in hand, we can cross the river and get to the S. This Fire Demon can’t hit us as long as we don’t go any farther down than our current position.   Of the two Es, one is right next to the bridge we’ll need to get to the other. We cross the hot coals vertically and grab both bridge and E together.   Unlike the Fire Demon on the right, the one on the left will be in a position to flambé us as we go to get the V. After we place the bridge to its section of the river bank, we push the boulder up and left to wall the Demon in.   We get the V and the E.   Similarly, reaching the R and A is no trouble. This only leaves the L.  We do have to be careful on the way back to the river crossing that we don’t run into a fireball headfirst, but after that, the L is easily gettable. Back to the raft!  With the rhinos gone, we’re able to take the clear vertical path, and only have to walk a short ways across the hot coals to reach the way forwards.  Today’s pop quiz has ALONG (Level 65) as a surprise visitor, along with ROUGH (just recently) - and LOVE, which dates back to Level 15. Many of the other words are fairly simple, though. Level 88. BECAUSE ”Barbara eats caramel apples until she explodes.”  Collect the letters of the word B-E-C-A-U-S-E, in the proper order. Remember the A-U in the word “because”!We’re back to terrible mnemonic hours again. Similar to ROUGH, the alligator is only there to annoy you and block you from placing bridges.   We start by grabbing the apple and three bridges. The first bridge goes to the spit of land the hippo hangs out by.  With our first apple, we ride the hippo up to the B. This presents an immediate problem: we can’t stay here, as we have nothing else to feed the hippo. We have to head to the island with the C or back to shore so we can collect the apple on the far bank.  My first impulse is to go back to shore, but the apple runs out and we’re stranded in mid-lake. Let’s try that one again!  On the retry, we head to the island with the C and grab the apple there instead, using it to head back.  This lets us grab the E, second apple, and fourth bridge on the far shore.   We ride the hippo again with the new apple we picked up, and grab the C. This gives us space to place the bridge to the next island, with the U.    Since the alligator is distracted, we place the remaining three bridges. We also grab the last three apples - we’ll need all of them for hippo fare.    Using the first of them, we take the long walk back to the other bank to get the A. Then we walk back.   One hippo ride later, we grab the U and S while the alligator watches enviously.   We spend our very last apple on one last hippo ride, letting us lay claim to the E. Back to the raft! This level is more long than difficult. The only tricky bit is when you’re stuck on the island with the C and haven’t placed the bridge to the U island yet, as there it’s possible to end up with the alligator blocking whatever you try to do.  This pop quiz makes up for the long trek. Lots of short and easy words. Level 89. LITTLE ”Little insects try to look everywhere.”  Collect the letters of the word L-I-T-T-L-E, in the proper order. Don’t forget the two Ts!Today, the Dart Demon has set us a puzzle. We will need to cross its line of fire multiple times to get all the letters.   After grabbing the apples, we head up to get the L. We’re just enough far away that we can run past the Dart Demon if we align ourselves with the left L.   I push the boulder up, and then turn around as I realize we will need a bridge to cross the river. For some unknown reason, though, I try to cross to the left of the L (where there’s no safe passage), and get sniped. Let’s try that one again! This time, I try leading the zebra up to block the Dart Demon, before realizing my mistake. We restart. Let’s try that one again!  On the third try, we lead the zebra over to where the bridge is, and use it as a shield to grab the bridge safely.    We’re able to make it to the L and back by dint of frantic sprinting. I don’t move the boulder, for some reason. I think I thought I could push it down from above to block the Dart Demon.  For some reason, my next move was to try going around the side by the E. But Dart Demon darts go fast. Let’s try that one again!   On our fourth attempt, we start similar to before: we move the zebra, grab the bridge, and run to get the L. But this time, we move the boulder up.   This lets us cross the river with the bridge. We run past the Dart Demon.  The rhino presents a problem, as the chokepoint in its path is right where the Dart Demon fires. By rushing boldly after the rhino, we dodge both darts and the rhino’s sharp horn.   Getting the I and the bridge, we can now cross to the little island and grab both T’s.    Getting back out of the rhino’s lair is easier than getting in. We run across the top of the map and make it to the L.   Then, we push the boulder up, and go left and around so that we have a straight path to the E. We run across safely! Back to the raft! I’m genuinely not sure what the boulder was for, except maybe as a red herring.    In the pop quiz, we misspell GUESS as GUEST, and get corrected by Yobi.  After that it’s uneventful, though we do end up spelling TICKET twice, interestingly. Then, it’s upriver once again. Level 90. BALLOON ”There is a ball inside that balloon.”  Collect the letters of the word B-A-L-L-O-O-N, in the proper order. Remember the two Ls!Oh boy. There are so many issues with the placement of that trinket. It’s across water, yet we have no bridge. We could cross with the boulder, but we’d have no way to get back. And on top of that, the inner alligator (one of two in this level) will chomp on us if we try. And yet, we’re gonna grab it. All we need is the help of that potion by the O - if we don’t screw things up. This level has a lot of ways to screw things up.   We start by walking right and grabbing the apple. However, this attracts the attention of the outer alligator.   Now that the alligator is locked onto us, we can’t head up on the right side without getting bitten. In desperation, I try riding the hippo up, but the ‘gator still follows us and chomps on us. Let’s try that one again!   This time, we run right and up immediately, only doubling back to grab the apple once the alligator is gone.    Next, we grab another apple, wait again for the alligator to get out of the way, push the elephant (which is positioned to form a one-way gate of sorts), and grab the B.   We get the alligator’s attention as it comes back, but manage to fake it out by walking away around the bend of the river. This causes it to turn around, leaving it safe for us to follow behind it.  We do, picking up the A and L. We can now hide safely from the gator by standing away from the lake it’s in, near the O.   After doing just that, we grab the other L. By lingering a little longer around the center lake than we specifically need to, we’re able to move the alligator out of the way. If we try to get the trinket, we’ll have to push the boulder from below, as the trees hinder us from coming from the right.    After some thought, we grab the O, then push the boulder down and left. It’s now in place for us to take a shot at going for the trinket.  The shortest way to pushing the boulder leads us over the potion, so we take the potion - and everything stops. The river stops, the gators stop, the hippo stops... only we (and Yobi) stay moving. This is the power of the final potion, Time Stop. Of course, there’s just one little problem. Because time is stopped, the boulder won’t sink! We can’t push it further because we can’t walk on water. We’re left waiting until time unfreezes - at which point the alligator wakes up, too, and we get bitten. Let’s try that one again! Normally, boulders only last for one river crossing. In order to cross safely (and be able to cross back), we’ll need to push the boulder into the lake, then take the time stop potion to freeze it while it’s acting as a stepping stone. This will also conveniently take the alligator out of action as well. The challenge now is simply doing it.  On our next attempt, we replay everything up to grabbing the O and pushing the boulder. Now, we want to get on the left side, so that we can push the boulder before grabbing the potion.   We could push the elephant again, but instead we go around and ride the hippo to get the other O. We’d have to do this sooner or later, so this gets it out of the way.   After riding to the top and walking down to the boulder, we push it - but we’re just a smidge too slow, and the boulder sinks into the river just as we grab the potion. Let’s try that one again! And on the attempt after that, I screw up the hippo ride and somehow manage to get stuck at the one single point in the upper half of the river it’s possible to do so. Let’s try that one again! On the attempt after that, we make it around the hippo loop, but I accidentally push the boulder out of position by mistake. There’s no way to get it back. Let’s try that one again!   This time, everything goes well up to the bit where we push the boulder. We’re now ready to try the trinket maneuver again.   Pushing the boulder only halfway over the water causes it to tumble into the river on its own, by which time we’re already running back to the time stop potion. We make it! The boulder is still suspended in the river.  We run across, grab the trinket, run back before the potion wears off, and make our way to the N in one triumphant motion. Back to the raft! I am given to understand that Spelling Jungle, like many other games that came on a floppy disk, included a paper manual of some kind. I can just imagine some kid hyping themselves up about the time stop potion - and then this is the first time they get/have to use it! Dear me. Fun fact: This level took over 20 minutes to complete, counting the multiple failed attempts. There are a few more equally or more-egregious levels still ahead of us, though.  Oddly enough, our pop quiz seems to have the theme of ‘words that end in the “er” sound’ for the first half - including DOLLAR, from Level 29. The back half is chill.  We are almost there! We are so close! We’ve gotten all but one trinket, and the headwaters of the river are only about ten levels away. We’ll see what’s left - next time. Next Time on Spelling Jungle: You are in a maze of little twisty paths...
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Apr 19, 2024 20:06
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Kangra posted:Just a gues Here's a full-size image:  Upon inspection, the "r" with the error and a later "r" in the mnemonic have the same pixel shapes, but different highlighting - it definitely suggests the highlighting may be drawn, even if the mnemonic isn't. quote:Are the higher levels any tighter on timing than the earlier ones? It doesn't look it; just a different set of challenges. Basically, you can think of Spelling Jungle as running in 'frame windows'. The game runs at 30 FPS, but we can divide that up into frame windows of 8 frames. This is the time it takes for you, or an animal, to move half a square. Spelling Jungle only scans for keyboard input at the start of a frame window, and once the player character starts moving, the game will not accept further input until the start of the next frame window. Nothing in the game requires frame-perfect timing, but numerous things do require frame-window-perfect timing, including hot coal turns and the whole thing we did with the time stop potion in Level 90. Incidentally, projectiles (fireballs, darts, apples) travel at four times the speed of the player, and take 4 frames to pass through one whole square.
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Apr 21, 2024 19:33
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