Day 22 - Infinite Craft

AI, Has Treant Protector In It, Immersive Sim · 22 May 2024

Skeeter’s Take:

Water Earth Fire Air

Long ago the four elements lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Alchemist attacked.

Infinite craft is essentially like those old Alchemy games where you combine the four basic elements to see what new element or object you could create. For example, if you combined earth and water, you’d get a plant or a seed or mud (it varied depending on the game). That plant, seed, or mud would then be unlocked to be used to combine with these other elements. You could then take mud, and combine it with fire and get clay - the clay would then become available to use, etc. It’s a lot of trial and error and sometimes you would get stuck because you couldn’t quite figure out the dev’s line of thinking. A lot of times you’d end up randomly combing every element you had unlocked to find a new element all because you didn’t know you needed to combine “Coconut” and “Lava” to get “Dragon”. Infinitecraft falls into that same trap because of what it is innately. Infinitecraft (if you couldn’t already guess by the name) is technically infinite. You combine any 2 materials in the world (starting with the basic 4 elements) and can technically make anything you can think of.

Streamers were racing to create 9/11 when this first came out, for example. Anytime you are the first to discover a new combination of things, the game lets you know and it gets added to your “Discoveries” tab - see my modest discoveries below:

I had to download an extension to play this in dark mode

Yeah I’m kind of a big deal. First person to discover Mew-Mole, but it’s whatever. Don’t mention it at parties I’ll be swarmed. Just kidding, I don’t go to parties. Anyway, since there are technically infinite combinations, and multiple ways to get to the same conclusion - it is near impossible to be able to follow the “logic” of some of the results you may get. Sometimes, the combination doesn’t work. Other times, one of the elements you are trying to combine will just eat the other one and nothing will change. It just makes it feel a little unreliable and you have to brute force a lot of things if you are trying to make a specific discovery. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not necessarily a selling point - it more feels like a tradeoff. This game makes up for this by, well, being infinite. That single concept makes discovery so fun. When you do eventually smack two things together and it works, it feels good. And that feeling is multiplied if you happen to make a new discovery - something nobody else has discovered. But the flip side of this is the game feels really bad when you combine two things that should work, and then they don’t. Again, this genre of game has always been plagued by that, but this is on such a massive scale, you run into it way more often than just a few times like you might those old school Alchemy games. I think this game works better if you treat it as what it is: An infinite discovery. I mention this because (full disclosure) I have played this before today with some friends and we all were trying to race to see who could make Kim Kardashian first. I did not win. But I did find some funny things along the way. I do think racing to an element is really fun, and recommend you trying it with some friends, but it can get frustrating when you are combining “Brazilian Butt Lift” with “Woman” and it gives you “Marriage” instead of “Kim Kardashian” (not a real example). The second time I played this was today. I was somehow convinced I had made “baby yoda stripper” at some point, and upon launching had seen that my previous game’s discoveries were still there. I scrolled through and realized - there was no baby yoda stripper. There never had been a baby yoda stripper and I am probably losing my god damn mind. One, for coming up with the string of words “baby yoda stripper” and two, for believing I had somehow stumbled across it last time. I felt like that kid yelling “Kill those titty-sucking babies!” from Baby Shooter. Anyway, obviously that became my new mission for today - I was going to be the first to discover “baby yoda stripper” - after all they did say you could discover anything and the game is supposed to be infinite (he said with a sense of foreboding). So I set out - Already having Yoda unlocked I was at an advantage. I just had to combine him with “baby” and booya “baby yoda” - the rest of my time was spent trying to figure out how to make “stripper”. I messed around for nearly a half-hour and still wasn’t any closer. I had tried so many things, but nothing was working. I gave up and found a nice website that showed me some recipes for infinite craft - turns out “Stripper” is just “Blackhole” and “Tease” - OOOoooh of couuurrrseee. Silly me for not knowing that! Anyway, we were off to the races.

Turns out, you can’t combine “stripper” and “Baby Yoda”.

I thought, “Oh, yeah, well duh. That makes sense.” I hadn’t really considered the implications of “baby yoda stripper” until the game just said “no”. Fair enough game! Better not to put that abomination out into the world.

So, I moved on to the next best thing - Yoda Stripper. That didn’t work either. I tried so many things with “Yoda”. “Yoda” with “Lap Dance” “Yoda” with “Exotic Dancer”, “Yoda” with “Pole Dancer” but none of it was working. Finally, I thought maybe I was being too direct and had to get there in a roundabout way. I combined “Jedi” and “Stripper” only to get “Sith” - I’ll admit that was a little funny. Then I took “Sith” and “Stripper” and got… “Darth Titties”. I laughed.

But still no “yoda stripper” I could combine Boba Fett with the various dances - Lap Dance Fett, Exotic Dancer Fett, etc.

Why would they feel the need to restrict me, no, DEPRIVE me of “Yoda stripper”? I will never understand.

“Infinite”?

Recommend: Yes, but serious lack of yoda stripper

Replay Percentage Chance: 15%

Time Played: 45 Minutes

Sam’s Take:

So obviously, in order to be infinite, the game has to be run by AI, which does lead to some weird behavior. Outside of some strange combinations Skeeter mentioned, I was able to get several new discoveries by just combining numbers together which, without fail, would add the two numbers together into a new undiscovered number on it. I was able to create a similar loop by combining Cinderella with Kindle to create Cinderella 2.0, then Cinderella with Cinderella 2.0 to create Cinderella 3.0, then 7.0 then 10.0 etc…

I think this game’s greatest success is proving how fucking stupid we all are. I played this at work (don’t read this boss pls) and my coworkers and I cheered out loud when “Zombie” and “Shaun White” created “Shaun of the Dead”. There’s something about combining two things and having an unknown judge decide what we mean that triggers the same part of me that wants to open trading card packs. It could be funny, it could be boring, there’s an off-chance that it actually makes sense! One of my coworkers sent me a message saying they got Cigarette, and I tried for 30 minutes to get it too (unsuccessfully). It’s not explainable. We should not like this, but we do. We have dumb ape brains and this is what we want, to smash two things together until we get weirder, cooler things. Now fucking clap sheeple. CLAP AS I SEND YOU A SCREENSHOT OF MY ATTEMPT TO GET A CIGARETTE: