Also, the number of loanwords in English is completely absurd. Some other languages resisted borrowing/stealing special terminology from other languages by coming to with their own clever new words.

For example, entrepreneur is a clear loan from French where a salesman is a simple and clear description of a man who sells something. If you don’t know French, you’ll have no idea what the word entrepreneur means, but if you know basic English, salesman should be crystal clear to you.

Many other languages developed lots of these types of clear words in order to make communication easier and less elitist. English is completely wild and there’s no central authority that could reasonably give any recommendations that anyone would listen. This sorts of uncontrolled wild growth and stealing has been going on for centuries, and now we’ve ended up with a complete train wreck of a language.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Wait until you hear about the history behind how spelling and pronunciation became the disaster we have today.

I think I see what’s happening here. There are some pure puzzle games that require no execution skills at all. In the opposite end of the spectrum you have games that are all about skill and execution with no puzzles included. I guess you could call them pure skill games to make the distinction clearer.

Most games appear to be a mixture of the two extremes, so they sit somewhere on this spectrum. In order to win, you have to know what to do and execute your plan well enough. I wouldn’t call them pure puzzle games, but they do have some puzzle elements in them. If the puzzle aspects are central to the gameplay experience, it could make sense to categorize them as puzzle games of some sort, even if execution and skills matter to some extent.

I think that’s an important distinction to make when exploring what is or isn’t a puzzle game. There are lots of games where flawless execution matters as much as knowing what to do. For example, FPS games lean heavily towards the execution aspect while mixing in some solution identification too.

The purest examples of each game design style are also interesting. For example, you can play chess through snail mail, so being physically able to perform specific actions isn’t really necessary for victory. In the opposite end of the spectrum you have the simplest form of darts, which is all about skill. Just throw all the darts at the center and you’ll win. There are also more complicated versions for those who want to play a game that sits somewhere in the middle of this puzzle-execution specturm. Now that I think of it, most computer games seem to be a mixture of the two styles.

What’s the name of that mobile game where you tap to shoot an arrow at the exact perfect time so that it lands on the right spot on a spinning circle? Well, that’s the game where I fail to see any strategy. It’s all about perfect timing and tolerating the anger boiling inside your head.

Oh, and there’s this other almost equally infuriating mobile game that I haven’t yet deleted for some strange reason. It’s called Stack, and your goal is to build the tallest stack possible by having supernatural timing abilities in your fingers. Oh, and what about Flappy Bird or the dinosaur game built into Google Chrome? Basically the same idea, but you don’t have a lot of time to prepare for what’s coming. You just need to have lightning fast reaction time and perfect timing. Now that I think of it, there are lots of games where timing takes the center stage.

Ok, so games that revolve around superhuman perfect timing are kinda pushing the idea of being a puzzle game. What about gambling games, where it’s all about the RNG instead? All you do is pull the lever and hope for the best.

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast which was interrupted by an ad about Ad Block plus.So many things about that situation was just so bizarre, that I listened out of curiosity. I guess some people also listen to that ad, pay a monthly subscription to an ad blocker, so that they don’t need to see ads in their browser any more. The irony is strong with this one…

Imagine if you had a bunch of screenshots of every update you installed. You could compare those dates with the official release dates and figure out if your computer was a test subject.

I would also like to add motivation to the list. If you’re not particularly hyped about any game, playing games isn’t going to feel engaging. Once you do find a game you enjoy, you won’t have much time for doomscrolling any more.

Initially, I installed all of the apps and started using them. When I noticed that one app was annoying me in some way, I added that line into a spreadsheet, and tested if all the other apps were any better in that regard. After a while, my list had about 20 important features and ratings for each app. After that evaluation period, I settled on Bean, Mlem and Voyager. For several months, I was quite happy with Bean. Every now and then I stumbled upon a situation that Mlem handled better, so I kept switching between the two when needed. I didn’t use Voyager that much, but I kept it anyway, because it had a lot of the features I appreciate.

One day, the suspicions of many Bean users were confirmed, and the app officially died. I just switched to Mlem and Voyager. At that point I also installed Thunder, because it had a fairly good score in my spreadsheet. Currently, I’m keeping it as a backup just in case Mlem or Voyager fail me.

At the moment, Mlem is my favorite Lemmy app for reading, voting and writing short comments. Voyager on iPad can handle long comments much better, and that’s the app I’m using at the moment. Maybe I’ll just use Voyager on the tablet and Mlem on the phone…

Voyager was previously called wefwef, and at the time it already had the wefwef.app which you could use as a web app. When Lemmy became more popular, there were hardly any apps available at the app store, so I used that web app instead. It was pretty good, but later I switched to a proper app when those became available. Anyway, it’s all open source, so have a look at the github page to see if it looks hard or easy to you.

If an app abuses the privilege of being able to show me notifications, badges or anything, that privilege will be swiftly revoked.