Mack and Mesh: Indie Month Competition Winners!

We here at Encrazed Crafts are long time fans of internet wizards and legends, Mack and Mesh.  Back before everyone and their uncle was doing Reaction videos on youtube, Mack wrangled his unlucky friend Mesh to play some FPS games in front of a camera.  Mesh is, shall we say, rather excitable and tends to play the games the same way as us, just with the emotional dial cranked up to eleven.  And that’s being modest ^_^

For example, here is the video that quickly earned their place in my heart many years ago.  Normally, Mesh plays with Mack right at his side.  This time he must have lost a bet, as he played the game completely in the dark and alone!  He screams bloody mary during the day and with a friend, so this was quite a sight.

Time passed, they disappeared.

Sad face  

But they came back!  Last year they even started a mini-series on Minecraft that quickly became their longest running series yet.  I’ll do a post about that next week for Minecraft Monday.  It’s good stuff, ya’ll love it XD

Too often do big companies completely forget the bottom line, the sole driving force that got them that comfy chair and massive empire of sales: The Consumer.  They have more often than not just set a deadline, tacked on a higher number at the end of the title, and forced games out of the developer’s doors and Mack and Mesh had enough of it.  Thus lead to Indie Month which lasted all of October.  During which they even had little bonuses for the fans in that you could win one of the games they played for the Indie celebration by sending them an email and answering one of their questions at the end of the respective video.

Here is a vlog of a very suave Mesh telling the fans who just won copies of what games, but first we are presented with a lovely rant about the evils of DLC, the very thing that helped spawn the idea of Indie Month in the first place. Here’s a link to a particularly good part, but be mindful of the surroundings when you hit play.  Previous video was bleeped, this one is not.  (The part linked to directly is safe, but just a heads up if you watch it ’till the end at work, etc.)

The question was, if Mesh gave a black berry (the fruit, not the smart phone) to a developer, would they make a DLC out of it?

In case you missed it in his accent or deep, ivory eyes, we won a copy!  Specifically, I won a copy for the Misses.  She doesn’t even know I entered, and she loves tower defense games and mods, so she’ll love this.  I already played the first two levels and had a blast even on the training stuff as I unlocked a bunch of achievements that I cannot seem to erase after two attempts of uninstalling and even wiping out all traces of the game off the computer.  Those achievements will be slightly awkward to explain, but I don’t think she’ll mind too much XD

So there you have it, folks!  Mack and Mesh approved and all that!

I was going to make this the splash/banner image up top, but that meant I had to crop everything out minus his eyes to the bottom tip of his ‘stash and it got pretty darn creepy awful fast  haha  Sorry Mesh!  Maybe once it’s shaved off I’ll toss one up there.

Check out their youtube page here to see what antics and other crazy-scary games Mack got poor Mesh to play already.  If you like what you see, feel free to subscribe and let your friends know about em!  Their goal is 3,000 subscribers and they are darned close!  Let’s help get it for them!

Pfft! Who Needs Nyan Cat? We Have BACON!

Granted, the melodic rhythm of the Nyan Cat ‘theme’ can be quite enthralling, but do not fall for its siren song!  Nay, my friends.  For too long that feline idol has poisoned our ears and turned our brains into giggling, “kawaaaai!”-ing puddles of goo.

We have the cure.

How long has it been since you’ve thanked a pig from Minecraft for its trusty service?  It not only amuses and can randomly carry you along its travels with the proper attire, but it more often than not goes the way of the tauntaun. Only instead of sleeping in it, we hack it to bits to eat its gummy innards. Does it not deserve our praise?

I say we replace the kitty idol of old (heck, they conquered Egypt years ago.  They had their time!) and instead raise our pink friend to new heights!  Live long and amongst the stars, little one.

We salute you.

Minecraft Cake – For Realies!

Hey guys n’ gals!  You might have noticed that yesterday the lovely kaozz of the ECTmmo blog got the free gift we sent her via the knit it forward post a few months back.  You might have also noticed that her cats went nuts over it, because we stuffed these bad boys with catnip, baby!  Everybody loves them some cake, kittehs are no exception!

Just wanted to let ya know that we threw one of these up on our Etsy store, so if you have a cutey kitty that totally deserves to be spoiled, you know where to find one of these for your very own furry companion

While you are there, be sure to give Kaozz’s Etsy shop a look-see as well!  She’s got a lot of nifty graphical options for all your imaging needs.  To summarize: the lass is a Photoshop wizard.  If she was in Salem a few hundred years ago and they saw what she can do with a pixel, she’d be running away from a zippo is all I’m sayin’.

Minecraft News

Might as well round it off with something new I just found from the ol’ Notchster’s tweets!  The combat one sounds awesome, but both are interesting.

I’ve spent a day and a half trying to make town borders look good, and I’m getting very sick of it. Back to combat tweaking for a while! (source)

Town borders, he says? Like fences?  Curious…

Hitting a mob while rushing now sends them flying. It’s satisfying, and I’m giggling a bit. (source)

Now that sounds epic.  I keep flashing back to the Stronghold with a ravine going through it and thinking how cool it would be to duke it out with a mob army in there.  Being able to punt an enemy off a ledge and down to his demise is nearing the top of my list of things I cannot wait to do once 1.8 goes live.

Have a great day, all!

Keep the Craft Alive: Knitting It Forward

A bud of mine by the name of Carrie is a fan of fancy stitchings and she made a post regarding Knit it Forward the other day. Basically she is willing to make the first five people who post on her blog a small, free craft item for no charge.  (I guess that free part made no charge redundant, ha!)  But in exchange for the item, the person who accepts the crafting gift, must in return give five others a free craft of their own.  I think the only other stipulation is that the crafts must be completed by the end of the year, and they should be kept smallish as it is out of the kindness of their heart sort of dealy!

Welp, I regarded that as a challenge!  I accepted her offer, and now I must, in turn, continue the process outwards.  We, Encrazed Crafts, do hereby offer the first five people on this post a free, small, Encrazedly-crafted item.  By posting your request for one of these bad boys, you acknowledge that you must, in turn, provide the same offer on the blog of your own, and give five others a freebie as well!  (There is no limit on what the crafted item you make for them is, from like a pot holder to a drawn picture, etc.)

So then, who’s up for the challenge? XD

P.S. We will need to know where to ship these special items out to, of course.  So we’ll need contact info from ya eventually.  And no the piggeh’ blanket is not a ‘small’ item, you bunch of sneaks

Piggeh! Subtitle: Etsy Shop Finally Got Some Lovin’

Ladies and gents, I am quite happy to announce that we here at Encrazed Crafts are proudly presenting to you are first item up in our shop in… uh… awhile!  Yes, awhile.  Such a precise aeronautic term, I know.  But, after much debating, spell checking, re-spell checking, and spell checking for the thrice time (to make sure the checker itself was not messing up words when we weren’t lookin’) we finally posted our item that’s been created since October.  (I’d say things have been a bit crazy over here, but with a name like Encrazed I’d hoped yall got that already ^_^)

Ladies and Mentlegen, Pirates and Ninjas, Zombies and Robots, I give you…

Pixel Piggy Lap Blanket of AWESOME!

Scaled down to contain the epic levels of pork within...

(Yes, it IS inspired by the pink, four-legged bacon dispensers from Minecraft!)

I know a few people were proddin’ us with suggestions of actually putting things into our store to make that link in the corner worth clickin’, so finally there is something within it. 

/Raises a frosted mug of root beer and skittles

May our shop need be frequently resupplied, and new items continually added! To paraphrase a wise, old Jedi:

Remember, Luke.   The Pork will be with you.

Always.

10 Minute Challenge: Cross Stitch Nightmare and Over Analization

It’s almost the yearly celebration of Hallmark’s flagship festivities, so of course I started work on a gift for the Misses today.  It’s been a few years since I last did a larger project with cross stitches, and right now I’m really not liking my choice of going with a solid black canvas.  Mind you it will look amazing once it’s done, but flying spaghetti monster is it an eye strain.  Massive.  Massive.  Eye strain.  >.<

But!  This is a self-imposed 10 minute challenge so that I can type up something worthy of an actual post (rest assured, minus sudden server failure Minecraft Monday is a go for tomorrow ^_^) but focus on the task at hand as well, as time is certainly short with the huge amount of work I still need on this piece.  Odds are I’m not gonna finish it perfectly on time, but her birthday is just after it so that buys me another 24 hours hee hee 

As stitching silently is stale and nearly depressing, I popped on a few Yahtzee reviews before watching a movie review which lead me to the Extra Credits video gallery.  I’ve seen it posted, but never watched one.  Perfectly good time now, captive audience is I!

Most of the shows I’ve seen thus far have been good, I disagreed with a few ‘points’ but the largest one is the last episode I saw about Missile Command.  The main premise of this episode was, can you tell a story merely by the game’s mechanics?  (No narration, etc.)  They chose Missile Command and went on for about seven plus minutes as to why, going so far to say the game forced you to decide what cities you might have sacrificed in order to save the majority, or if you let a military base die off in order to save a city.  End result was an attempt to say the game was extremely deep.

I disagree. 

It is a game.  And currently, I’m still looking at it that way.  Now, originally it went so far as to anger me, and my first thoughts were of snide remarks or comical rebuttals and the like… but I read over the comments this video sparked and found a few which changed my opinion, to a degree.

I still think the ‘in depth review’ of the game is far and above over fluffation of a simple arcade game from the 80′s.  Yes, yes, cold war and all that.  I get it.  The game does not tell me that, THAT is the problem.  But as I got about a minute to go, what this episode DID give me in the end was a possible idea, which in itself still is a bit snarky.

Why not have a ‘segment’ or post a week or every other or so, that goes in depth choosing random games and giving them a story the game itself did not?  (Zing.)  Say, that Mario planned to topple the monarchy from the beginning and Peach was just a captured spy used as a patsy to enact his coup?  Or… Sonic is addic… eh… I actually like that idea.  I’ll save that one for later hee hee

Here’s a link to the video in question, as their sharing button is full of failure:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2545-Narrative-Mechanics

After spell checking and making sure it is “Missile” and not “Missle”, I’m about eight minutes over my original intention.  I’ll work on muh’ speed.  Either way, back to more of their vids, and back to that cross stitch of doom.  Need to get Visine or something… or maybe ice water.  That stuff is certainly melting all over the place outside at the moment.

Loremaster in Teh RL, Yo

Just got wind of this little quiz fans of WoW might wanna give a go:

Gamespy:  The Ultimate World of Warcraft Quiz

I thought it was a pretty cool information quest, but sadly it gave me little xp and no monetary rewards.  (Must be a gray low-level quest.)  I gotta 42 out of 50, which I think is a solid B, which is a bit upsetting.  Was hopping to get a good A.  Raspberries!

Tomorrow is the last episode of the Walking Dead this season, people!  Cataclysm is releasing just days after that (I plan to wait in line, actually.  We-thinks they are gonna stop doing that in favor of digital sales, might as well make a good showing at the end!  First as last, baby!) so I better finish up some crafty-crafts and actually get stuff put up on Etsy before the season passes entirely.  (On a slightly related note, my dad wanted to get something for me mudder’ off QVC.  Said intended date of arrival was 1/21/2011.  Really?  Two months in the fast technology of today?  Six to eight weeks might be a slogan we all know, but it is certainly one of the past.)

Doh!  And I still need to get those Minecraft pics up and hammer out that music post once and for all in honor of Mr. Foucault! 

Oh, bother >.<