So figured I would give an update on my personal gaming experiences.

Whoa. Wait. What the heck?!! You're leaving already?

Stop.

Tell you what. You read my post with your eyes open, and I'll give you a chance to win something. Good old fashioned Steem style bribery. I'm thinking...a Splinterlands pack. Yeah?

Okay, so that's the deal. AND you have to act like you actually found my post thought-provoking and emotionally moving. I want you to tell people that this post changed how you see the world. You're a different person. A BETTER person.

I'll spill the details for the contest in a bit.

But first, let's talk NextColony.

In one of my previous posts, I explained how it took me over 100 explorations to find my first planet. The Quackians from Planet QUACK have done an admirable job of wasting tons of plutonium searching big empty squares of space. But then, I guess that's why they call it space.

But thankfully, their work paid off! Introducing my third planet (named for my favorite Splinterlands Splinter):

The residents of Planet DEATH are quiet, considerate neighbors. No parties. No banging on pots and pans. And they have no need for space suits. After all, they don't breathe. Most of them are skeletons or ghosts. However, they do have an intense interest in sucking the soul from every living person in the universe.

So there's that.

I'm just not sure they will even get the chance to try. You see, Planet DEATH sits on the fence between my "space yard" and the giant bulldozer of occupied space that is quickly advancing into my territory. It's looking pretty terrifying.

Let me illustrate with an image:

Within a matter of days, Planet DEATH was quickly surrounded, scanned, and analyzed by unknown explorers. It now rests "behind enemy lines".

But don't worry. I quickly invested time and resources into building a better bunker. I have been told that the improvements should increase the protection by 0.5%.

Thank God.

I'm pretty sure that means Planet DEATH has been saved.

---

In other news, I don't know how many of you played Pokemon Go. I haven't been playing it much recently, but I have lots of fond memories running around like goofballs with my kid.

Well, the folks that made Pokemon Go have finally released Wizards Unite, the GPS-based mobile app game based on the Harry Potter universe.

I'm a total geek for stuff like that, so of course we went nuts the first day it was released, which was about a week ago.

I think it has a lot more depth than Pokemon Go,

There just seems to be MORE layers to it. Making the profile was fun since it involved choose the components for your want, deciding what House to be in, selecting a profession, and playing with all the avatar options for displaying your picture.

It's also cool that the premise of the game seems to revolve around an actual storyline where it's your job to figure out what's happening and how to stop it.

There's potion crafting, skill trees, and very detailed animations.

Like most GPS games, it does get a little repetitive after awhile (I've tried other ones too like Walking Dead and Ghostbusters). But overall, it's still fun, and if you're a Harry Potter fan, you'll definitely enjoy all the references and attention to detail.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the game evolves.

---

Okay, I saved the best for last.

SPLINTERLANDS!

Wow. Just wow.

I just wanna say that you guys all suck. I hate you all.

I'll try to do my daily quests, but I usually don't have a lot of time to do more than that. Then, when the season is close to ending, I'll pop on and sprint to Champion 1 (most veteran players know that it's easier to "rank up" in the last couple of days before the season ends).

I don't need to be in the Top 50. I'm okay with not winning Beta Packs (although, that WOULD be cool). I'm mostly interested in just making sure I end the season as Champion 1. As long as that happens, I'm happy.

But this season? Come on, people! What's your problem????

JUST LET ME WIN ALREADY!!!

That's the problem with decentralized games. I can't just tell Yaba to give me the cheat codes. Activate GOD MODE. Ugh.

I think my DEC capture rate is in the negatives. When I win a fight, I get a dialogue box that says "You Owe Us 300 DEC".

I don't know how I'm gonna add another 200 to my Rating (which is what I need for Champion 1).

You guys are making this SOOOOOoooooo hard! I think each season is progressively getting more competitive than the previous one. I can tell that people are getting freakin' SERIOUS about this game. Like cold stone killah, man.

Case in point. Take my wife, @raynie. She is one serious mofo.

She's gonna kill me for giving away one of her gaming "secrets", but I'm pretty sure she's gonna write a post about it anyhow. So...

This woman has a very specific tournament routine that is equal parts VooDoo and OCD.

She has to sit a certain way, wear certain shoes, and...heck, I dunno. Wear a certain color? Face NorthWest?

If this continues, I'm convinced that I'm going to eventually witness her explaining that it's time for a tournament right before she calmly walks outside to sacrifice a goat to the Spirit of the Forest.

Whatever crazy witchcraft she practices seems to work. Or maybe she's just really good at the game?

---

So there was an internal meeting with the Splinterlands team not long ago. I shared some of the design concepts for the mobile app, and people immediately went coco for cocoa puffs. I think you can find some of the screenshots floating around Discord and random posts from the past week.

I'll try to make time to write up something meaningful about the journey to creating something that's gonna be really, really cool.

But I don't think anyone doubts that Splinterlands Mobile is gonna be YUGE.

---

Okay, I promised you a contest.

So here's the deal.

Yesterday was my wife's birthday. But one of the presents I got her isn't due to arrive until tomorrow (well, technically, it's today now...).

What is the fearsome Gaming Ace @raynie getting for a present?

CLUE #1 - It's larger than a fist.

CLUE #2 - It's smaller than an elephant.

CLUE #3 - It is either a Solid, Gas, or Liquid.

CLUE #4 - It exists within this plane of existence.

CLUE #5 - It is a physical something (it is not digital).

CLUE #6 - There is no clue 6.

Leave a comment with your guess. What makes this contest interesting is that you can guess literally anything, and it will count. The person who is closest to color, weight, size, texture, whatever will win the prize.

Obviously it's better to just guess what it is. But if you say "human head" and she gets a bowling ball (or vice versa)...Well, you might win!

The Winner will be announced sometime on Wednesday (in a few days).

The PRIZE will be your choice of either ALPHA pack, BETA pack, or ESSENCE ORB.

If anyone actually guesses EXACTLY what it is, I will award that person with TWO PACKS of their choice!

So no matter what happens, SOMEONE is gonna win SOMETHING.

But wait...there's MORE!

Even the losers will benefit. Every person who participates will get at least one 10% upvote from me. Maybe more. It just depends on how many people participate, haha.

I'm a big believer in Splinterlands, and I try to support what we're doing as best I can. So while it's been available on Steem Engine, I've been buying and trying to accumulate Splintertalk Tokens (SPT). So far, I've got 500,000 SPT staked. So even if my STEEM value doesn't do enough to make your ears perk, I'm hoping that the upvote will at least result in distributing SPT to people who are interested. Plus I've got another 4,000 PAL staked if that helps too.

So yay!

Final rule: Only 3 guesses per participant. If you guess more than 3 times, I am only going to count the first 3. If two people guess correctly, the prize goes to whoever guessed FIRST.

Ready. Set. GO!

(After you've made your guesses, resteem or spread the word. Let's spread the SPT love!)