pad puzzle and dragons is one of those phone games imported from japan. which probably explains why it's "puzzle" (singular) and "dragons" (plural). it's kinda popular. here and in the land of the rising tentacle porn sun. i'll explore why i've been spending way too much time playing this stupid game over the past year. when i could have been doing something much more productive. like writing blog posts. heh. anywho, pad is a puzzle, collection, and advancement game. that's three of the five gamer stereotypes. exploration and socializing are the missing two. you enter a dungeon with a team of monsters. you encounter other monsters and overcome them by playing the puzzle game. which is pretty standard fair for phone games. match three (or more) orbs in a row. they vanish. and more orbs fall from the sky to replace them. possibly making more matches. orbs come in five colors plus pink hearts for healing. oddly enough, each of your monsters is also one of the five colors. when you match blue orbs your blue monsters get to attack. and so on for red green light and dark. red green blue have a sort of rock scissors paper thing going. red (fire) does double damage to green (wood). cause wood burns real good. and half damage to blue (water). cause water doesn't burn good at all. light (good?) and dark (evil?) do double damage to to each other. so there's some strategy to which monsters you take into which dungeon. sometimes when you defeat a monster it will drop an egg. which hatches into a brand new baby monster. which you get to keep. ie the collection part of the game. you can alternatively sell the new acquisition. or feed it to your other monsters to make them stronger. the advancement part of the game. it pleases my twisted mind to think of this as hunting for girl monsters. killing them. and ripping open their bellies to collect eggs from their still warm corpses. muhahahahah! sorry, some thoughts once though cannot be unthought. anywho, you don't get to keep eggs or coins until you clear all the floors in the dungeon. some monsters can be evolved into higher level forms by feeding them a diet of special monsters found in special dungeons. evolution generally bestows better stats, more abilities, and cooler looking art. and by cooler looking art, i mean the cute large-eyed childlike innocent looks is replaced by big boobs. it is a japanese game after all.  ¶ 8:00 AM