Please stand by.

I guess you could say I don't check out just 1 game for game 12 of the Christmas Special Block. You could say it's a whole slew of games as Mr. Wheel gives me the Confounding Calendar! I still have a load of games from 2024 to check out. So let's start where I left off!

SliceCraft is the first game I try. I guess my objective is to collect the flag that's enclosed in a little cage. How do I get myself out of the first area? Pushing the full box doesn't help. It's only when I use the triangle block as that pushes the full block to the right and I can move the triangle all the way to the left and it'll push itself down. Giving me access to the bigger area. There's a cutting laser up top. Just be careful. Don't cut your entire self because then you'll have to restart. I do figure out how to get access to the box with the up arrow on it. I have to slice myself in half, fit into the small little gap, cut myself again until I am 25% of my original size. Only then can I access the up machine. For each move I make, that box moves up a tile. Annnd this is where I get stuck. I don't really know what I am doing with the up machine at this point. Where I am supposed to move it and how. It moves up for every move I make so it's always going to be touching the laser. I never did end up grabbing the flag. I know I missed something that was probably stupid and obvious. But for now it was time to move on to a new game. Flower Surprise. Dare I say an even more confusing game. Apparently how you move certain flowers will determine their color and placement. There's a key up top that says what color each flower is supposed to be. Seems like placing a flower right next to the other will push in a... I don't know I want to say it's a dull blue flower? And pushing the other one to the right. Then there's one where if you place a flower in between 2 others, or that and the very edge, it'll give you a dull green flower. That's as far as I could figure out. Getting the 2 dull green flowers on the edges. I didn't know how to get the other flowers in their proper places. And I wasn't going to spend overtime figuring that out. Thankfully Unique Trees was one of the... many few easier games in this calendar. Do I know exactly what makes the trees unique? Honestly it's not easy for me to explain. You just have to grow the trees a certain way, each one getting one more branch than the other. If the game determines your next tree isn't unique, it'll gray out a portion until you fix it. At that point can you grow the next tree. It took me just over 3 minutes to complete all 9 trees to my unique ability!

As a little added bonus, I could then try going for a 3 branch tree. But I was like... yeah nah I am good. Trying to do a 3 branch tree threw off my other trees and made them not unique. I completed the main story. I moved on to Wolf, Goat and Cabbage. The idea, you're supposed to transfer them to the right side of the area. Which at first seemed easy, Until I tried... what I guess was the Wolf? I could do the other 2 easily. But for some reason when I tried to move the wolf, I found myself stuck suddenly... oh so they don't make it easy... okay... I see. So it turns out the goat and cabbage are helpful. In terms of so you can get the wolf across. That middle section has a bunch of unfilled boxes. They're not just for show. The goat lets you pull the boxes and the cabbage lets you push them into specific places where then you can take the wolf and easily guide it across the middle field. In the short time I had, I never did figure out the correct placement of the boxes... then again I never figure out anything in these small games. Good grief these are harder than they look. Am I just bad at puzzle games? Maybe I'll have luck with Technicolor Difficulties. Not really. I mean I kind of understand it? There's a row of colors on the bottom and you have to match them by adjusting 3 rows of color columns on the screen plus adjusting a rectangle frame in the box. I never got past matching 6 of the colors. I kind of understood how it worked? But at the same time not really? Same with Glowmaker. Based on what tiles I set where would depend on which ones are glowing and which ones are not. I ended up with 45 seconds left to play this game got 5 tiles connected and glowing together. The diamond up top, then the X below that, then the less than sign with a double X to the left. Below the less than being a double diamond. How the hell those shapes correlate is beyond me. Clockwork Island was one of many games to actually have sound. Crazy right? It's a game about managing your time. In 30 seconds, you have to satisfy the sacred fire, sacred dance, and sacred offering. If not then the island resets and all your satisfactions are reset to undone. In the 30 seconds, 4 big events happen, A water geyser, waves rise up on the island, a gust of wind, and a lightning strike.

You control a fox with the... worlds cutest bark I must admit. And also a disturbing ability to eat butterflies... I end up satisfying the sacred dance by heading up to the worms on the lower right of the island before the waves rise. But by then the island resets. But now i can't seem to satisfy the dance because now they're asking for... something... I don't know what exactly they're asking for. I realize once I get electrocuted, I have a one time fire breath. And there's a convenient little grill right up on the upper right of the island I can light to satisfy the sacred fire. While I never really realized how I did it, I guess the sacred offering is doing by making the crow eat up the snail so then its shell hits the geyser. So technically I did end up doing all 3 satisfactions. Just never at the same time. So how many puzzles have I completed? Like... 1? Well... I guess I have one final shot. Can I beat Strange Signals and end off on victory? Your goal is to decode a message sent from an alien by adjusting dials on a TV. The coiumns dial... well it does what it sounds like it does. It adjusts the pixel positioning and how big the rectangle is overall on screen. The shift dial moves the picture left and right. As I adjust the columns, I am able to create what looks like the unscrambled image. Hence the clean alien head. But after that I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. It says to click the blanks to enter the unique answer but I don't know what it is. The example shows clicking the lower left tile but I think that wasn't any more than just an example as I would have to click each blank a different way. Well that's a bummer, I tell you, these are some creative puzzles but holy balls are they difficult. I swear sometimes these puzzles make me feel dumber.

But then again, confound does mean confuse. So the event lives up to its name.