Video Games are Complicated

I normally don’t play video games all too often, but I do play one game on my phone which is called Love Live! School Idol Festival. It’s a Japanese rhythm and card collecting game that also involves dealing with math, time management, not to mention screaming if you are a more serious player like I am. The story of the game follows two high school idol groups, Muse and Aqours, that you can switch between as you play the game.

Photo-ception (n.)- the act of taking a picture of someone taking a picture.

The actual rhythm portion is in the format of a semicircle around the top center of the screen. The difficulty of the game varies from way too easy to way too hard, but as you get better you will start to see that the hardest setting is very easy while any setting below is very difficult to do.

Photo-ception Part 2

This game is honestly a great way to sharpen your reaction times, however it is not a very good game to play in many places. On hard, expert, and master modes, it’s impossible to pause without breaking your combo and this is a two-hand game. It’s best played at home, on the bus, or during breaks.

The main time where math comes into play is team building. To get the strongest teams possible with the cards you have, you need to play around with card positions, leader boosts, and equip-able booster tokens. Your strongest cards go second from the center on both sides, while your weakest cards go forth from the center. Then card that yields the highest boost to the team from being in the center obviously goes in the center. Lastly, you can add tokens to make an individual card stronger. The game does part of the math for you, but it’s better for you to do all the math yourself.

As for time management, this game is considered “F2P” or free to play should you not purchase premium in-game currency with real money, and one energy point takes 6 minutes to fill if you just let your bar fill. Songs cost 5 to 25 energy points and the best rewards come from 25 point songs, especially in events. It saves so much time and energy. Also, during these events, a full bar sitting is worse than an empty one. You need to manage your time wisely in order to do well in these events and still juggle a full class load, work, and social life.