LogFAQs > #980003616

Game #40 Complete! Crankulator

Throw This Quote On The Back Of The Box: "Calculate exactly how much money you're wasting!"

Here's Some Picture, I Guess:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/04c03c94.png
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7b053f54.png
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/1c82acc4.png
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/4e6c6342.png

Final Thoughts:
Crankulator is very special in my heart, because it is the game that has finally convinced me I need to move out the apps into their own separate category. I can't keep playing these pointless little apps and throwing them to the bottom of the list. That just isn't fair to games like Bub-O Collect. Those games have to try so hard to be bad and then a calculator app just shows up and utterly dominates it merely by existing. So, for now on, games on one list, things that aren't games on a second list.

I didn't record my thoughts while playing this, because why would I? Who wants someone's calculator reaction thoughts? Here's what mine would've been: "This is a calculator. This is a calculator. Why is this a calculator? This is just a calculator." Imagine how psychotic I would sound if I gave you a play by play of using a fucking calculator. Is there a more boring thing to give a play by play of? "I am now pressing the number two. Now I am pressing the number four. Now I am pressing the numbers 58008 and holding the calculator upside down...ladies and gentlemen, I think I may have found an easter egg."

So, and I've asked this question before, but: why? Why? Someone, somewhere got their hands on the Playdate and saw what it was capable of and they thought to themselves: "I should make a calculator!" You can do anything you want and you make a calculator? I was utterly perplexed by PLAYTIME Weird Alarm Clocks, but at least that guy had a thought. That guy woke up one morning and was like "I had clocks and keeping track of time and I want everyone else to hate those things, too. I should make the worst alarm clocks ever so no one knows how to tell time again." In contrast, the person who made Crankulator was like "hey what if calculators existed? that would be cool!" and then Blaise Pascal showed up from 1650 to hand them a violation of intellectual property. You can't just release a calculator on a gaming storefront. That's like that one awful house that would hand out toothbrushes and Bible verses on Halloween. These things are supposed to be fun. Or at the very least, these things are supposed to be not a calculator.

ALSO. Also. This is a worse version of a calculator. This is a calculator that is absolutely awful to use. They got the crank involved, for some reason, and you have to crank your way to the number you want to use. This is fine if you're six and adding 12 and 7 because your brain can't do math yet. But say you want to calculate 80 million times 45678. Hope your wrist is strong because you're about to do more cranking that [THIS SECTION REMOVED FOR HORNYPOSTING]. The Crankulator is the world's least accessible, least usable calculator. The numbers are read by a mostly unintelligible robot and you use a crank to get to them, and that's the whole gimmick.

There is exactly one and only one scenario where this game is worth purchasing, and that is as part of a white elephant gift exchange. "What is this thing?" "A calculator!" "A calculator...that seems normal enough." "No, this calculator talks like a robot that is having a stroke and you can only get to numbers by cranking to them." "Haha, that is the worst calculator of all time! Congrats on this hilariously bad joke gift." And then everyone claps because you found the single dumbest thing of all time. That's the only time you should buy this. Otherwise you know that thing you have in your pocket that you has a calculator built into it? Use that instead.

As a very quick conclusion - there is actually technically a game here. You have to find it. The developer hid it because they were afraid someone might have fun with it and that would defeat the point of a calculator app in the first place. If you hold down b for several seconds, you get taken to a screen that is something a bad teacher in 1993 would use to teach dumb children math. You are given a prompt (like "which of these doesn't equal 19" or "which are prime numbers" or "on a scale of 1-10, how sad is this game making you?") and you have to pick the five correct answers while avoiding the wrong ones. Some sort of monster creature shows up and jumps around some like he is a villain from Q*Bert that got laid off and took a job to make ends meet, and if you bump into him you lose a life. You also lose a life if you pick a wrong answer, and after losing three lives you're kicked back out to the screen and have to do more crank related math problems as punishment.

I'm not sure you can lose at this unless you're trying and eventually I just had to feed myself to the monster because I couldn't take another group of remedial math problems. Your lives refill after each question, which feels almost cruel because it traps you in this longer that way. I don't want to talk about that though because I can't talk about prime numbers any longer for the day according to my therapist. What I spent most of my time thinking about while playing this was actually "is this the least played game I've ever played?" The Playdate has a small install base. Fewer of those people are actually playing games on it. And then fewer still are purchasing from the catalogue. And then even fewer are buy a game that advertises itself as a calculator. And then, of those people, you essentially have to be someone weird enough to go in the discord and read up on how to do this, because while the store page hints at an easter egg, that's all you get. Have more than a dozen people played "crankulator: hidden math question mini-game"?

If you have, please reach out to me. I want to make us all t-shirts.

Should You Play It? No, on account of it being a calculator. If I ever recommend a calculator to you for one of your gaming consoles, I have already been replaced by a smarmy less handsome AI facsimile.

Final Score: 1. On account of it being a calculator that is difficult to use. I might even need a new ranking system because 1 is too generous. This one scored a calculator/10.

Games Completed: 40/172

Game Rankings:
37) HANA Spacetime Fantasy
36) Hidey Spot
35) Bub-O Collect
34) The Lushes Land
33) Nightingale
32) A Joke That's Worth 0.99 Cents
31) Recommendation Dog!!
30) Trickle Greenweed, Mermaid At Law
29) Whitewater Wipeout
28) The Botanist
27) Snak
26) DYG
25) Inventory Hero
24) Lost Your Marbles
23) Grand Tour Legends
22) Life's Too Short
21) Life's 2 Short: Unhooked
20) Demon Quest '85
19) The Fall of Elena Temple
18) Flipper Lifter
17) Questy Chess
16) Slitherlink PD
15) The Keyper
14) SKEW
13) Star Sled
12) Echoic Memory
11) Executive Golf DX
10) Omaze
9) Sasquatchers
8) Word Trip
7) Hyper Meteor
6) Castle Tintagel
5) Casual Birder
4) Zipper
3) Pick Pack Pup
2) Crankin's Time Travel Adventure
1) Saturday Edition

App Rankings:
4) Crankulator
3) PLAYTIME Weird Alarm Clocks
2) Boogie Loops
1) This space left intentionally blank