Well, I gave Kamaeru another shot, but when I got to the frog breeding minigame, which involves using tic-tac-toe to determine dominant genes (with the remainder being randomly selected) I threw in the towel. The game play is tedious and none of the things that "work" work well enough to be interesting or rewarding beyond a few minutes.
Decided to tear myself away from FT2 before my game brain atrophies completely and I can't play anything else.
Kamaeru is a cozy frog-collecting game. The frogs are cute, but so far most of the species variations are uninteresting (different color combinations). You can buy items to place on the farm and you can build up wetlands and catch bugs. Cooking is a mini-game with reflex-based bonuses. It's also kind of buggy (ha) so I had to look up a workaround to actually play it. It's very much take-it-or-leave-it at this stage but I may play around with it a little more to see if it opens up.
Finally unlocked cherry trees.
I decided I kind of hated having all my chickens in one big mixed plot, so I started breaking them out into their own areas. I'm experimenting with landscape fencing and mixing in trees and flowers. I'm also spacing out my ducks. After I realized ducks will interact with water I wanted them all to have their own ponds. I'm still trying to avoid having massive livestock tracks.
Also trying to create more mixed flower arrangements and beds, using checker and stripe patterns.
I have been having a blast in FT2, and didn't bother blogging since it's just "THIS IS FUN Weeee".
It's holiday time! Maxed out the holiday event and made a little area. Originally it took up a whole plot but I have since condensed it to half a plot since the poinsettias really don't need to take up that much space.
I picked up the Meadow and Gothic expansions to treat myself and am thrilled with both. The only "issue" is the houses, especially the gothic one, are freaking huge. The Gothic pack has more stuff generally but I really dig the flower fences and art style of Meadow.
Lots of re-arranging and expanding favorite areas (since taking these screenshots I've rearranged at least 3 of those areas), I'm experimenting with less roads we'll see how that goes.