Hi, I’m Eddy! Welcome to my home, EmuCasino!
Some of you may already know this but I’ve been a huge fan of online games for practically my whole life and my home perfectly reflects that. Since the beginning, EmuCasino has had loads and loads of the best games from all over the world and this not-so-little collection of mine has just kept growing over the years. On top of that, I believe that games are best enjoyed with others so making my home as nice and comfortable as possible for my friends (and future friends!) has been another thing I always prioritise. It’s because of reasons like these and more that people love coming to EmuCasino to play with me!
Oh, you want to know more about me? Sure thing! Just let me get my photo album…
If you want to skip to a specific year, just let me know!
What happened recently at EmuCasino? Well…
After a long and hectic holiday season, it seemed like a great idea to just rest, unwind and indulge in one of my more relaxing but no less exciting hobbies: word search puzzles. I always get a kick out of successfully finding a hidden word in them because it makes me feel like a detective who’s just found a clue. (Sometimes I even dress up like one when I’m solving these puzzles just for the heck of it.)
Because I wanted to see if my friends were better word sleuths than yours truly, I decided to come up with my very own word finder puzzle for them to solve. To make things even more fun and challenging, I created a list of clues hinting what the hidden words were instead of giving them the words outright. The best word sleuths were naturally rewarded and it was so well-received I’m definitely doing it again in the future!
My Life: A History in Peck-tures
Curious about little old me? Have I got a tail for you!
2012
Like every other emu, I’ve been insatiably curious since I hatched in July 2012. My parents love to tell stories about how I used to explore every corner of my home which is EmuCasino and get myself into all sorts of trouble as a chick. (We can laugh about it now but I used to make them panic quite a bit by going off exploring without telling them.)
In fact, that’s how I discovered my love for online games which I filled my home with and met my best friend Dingo! From that point forward, the two of us were inseparable and we spent all our time finding and playing all sorts of games together.
2015
2015 was a big year for me mostly because I celebrated my 3rd birthday by renovating EmuCasino from top to bottom. Aside from the new furniture and fresh coat of paint, I added a ton of online games of all kinds to my collection and set up the EmuShop. It was my way of letting my close friends enjoy themselves even more and have the chance to get cool stuff while they’re at it.
But that wasn’t all; we all got our first mobile phones so we could play on the go! It really made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to be able to have fun with my friends even when we were apart.
2017
Things were great for a while. People loved coming to my home and playing my games with me even more after my housewarming party! I thought things were going to remain happy and peaceful forever… but then as I was planning my Christmas party, I found out that the Grinch was in town.
I couldn’t let him steal all the presents I’d prepared for everyone so I asked my friends to help me stop his nefarious plan. Together, we secured the presents, saved Christmas and sent that green grump packing! (Oh, and my party was a blast, of course!)
2018
Everyone had their feathers all ruffled up because of the World Cup and even I got swept up in the football fever so much that I tried out for the national team. (Did you know that emus are really great at running and kicking? We’re practically made for football!)
Believe it or not, they let me join even though it was so last-minute… AND WE WON! I was so eggs-tatic I got all my friends a ton of World Cup merchandise and some special gifts to top it all off!
That year, I decided to do something really thrilling for Halloween on top of our usual costume party and organised a themed hide and seek game. I called myself Eddy Kreuger and everyone else hid anywhere they could in EmuCasino as they did their best to avoid becoming one of my ‘victims’.
We had so much fun we ended up playing until sunrise and I gave out some well-earned prizes to those who managed to escape my deadly claws to the very end. (I think I may have overdone it a little though because some of my friends said I was really menacing so maybe I should tone it down somewhat next time?)
I got an invitation to visit Santa’s gingerbread factory with my friends for Christmas that year and we had tons of fun while we were there! The elves taught us how to make all sorts of things out of gingerbread and I wasn’t the only one getting my feathers dirty in the process. (I think Dingo ate more than he made but he was so sneaky about it I can’t be sure.)
Once we were all done, we even helped wrap the presents and load up Santa’s sleigh. Santa was so grateful for our help that he let us take home the leftover gingerbread… and Dingo definitely ate more of it than I did!
2019
As we were preparing to celebrate Valentine’s Day, a huge fire-breathing dragon showed up out of nowhere and kidnapped one of our friends Daisy! Dingo really wanted to go save her himself but he’s terrified of dragons so I put on a suit of armour and went in his place. Just to be safe, I even brought along a bag of gold coins to use as a distraction. (All dragons love gold, right?)
At the end of the day, it turned out that the dragon just needed a ‘princess’ to lock away in a castle so that he could impress a dragon he liked for Valentine’s Day. When it worked, he was all too happy to let us leave without a fight. Talk about complicated courtships!
7 is my favourite number so you can bet that when my 7th birthday came around, I pulled out all the stops and made it my biggest birthday bash ever so far! One of my favourite books is Alice in Wonderland so I made it a costume party where everyone had to dress up as a character from the story.
We played so many games and everyone gave me a ton of amazing presents but I gave them some in return so everyone got something at the end of the day! If only every day could be my birthday… Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Halloween was really strange that year. A carnival called the Circus of Terror came to town and the whole time it was here, it rained a lot and there was this creepy fog that just wouldn’t go away. But that wasn’t the weirdest thing that happened. Dingo and I got separated shortly after we arrived and he told me later that he saw me dressed as a really scary clown playing trick or treat with other people. Then there was this red balloon that kept appearing everywhere…
I don’t remember any of this though so what really happened to me there? To be honest, I’m a bit scared of finding out…
I felt like I needed to do something really upbeat to get over the craziness of Halloween so when I heard about the upcoming Wildlands Festival, I knew that was the ticket. I really wanted to make a splash so I signed up for a crash course to learn how to be a DJ. Listening to all that great music from my games must have rubbed off on me because I took to it like… well, an emu to running, I guess? Needless to say, I totally wowed the crowds and played some really electrifying sets!
While I was there, I met a lot of people who love playing games on their phones like me and were interested in seeing my collection. This gave me the idea to make EmuCasino even more accessible to on-the-go players in a really cool way – a mobile app!
By the time Christmas season came around again, I’d completely gotten out of my Halloween funk… and just in time too because Santa needed my help! Both he and his trusty reindeer Rudolph weren’t feeling well so it was up to Dingo and I to save Christmas again.
For the fun of it, I dressed up as one of my favourite Christmas movie characters and called myself Eddy Skellington while Dingo put on his Zero costume and took Rudolph’s place. Together, we managed to deliver everyone’s presents and have enough time left for our own party!
2020
It was a brand new year and the whole wide world was waiting for my friends and I! So many things to do and so many places to go! Since New Zealand has always been a place of interest for me, I decided we should hop over there first and do everything there we’ve always wanted to do like visit the Shire.
After that, I opened a world map, pecked a country at random and we wound up in… Canada! (I’ll say this about ice hockey: The learning curve is a bit of a slippery slope but once you get the hang of it like I did, you’ll find yourself practically flying across the ice!)
We were exploring the Canadian wilderness when Dingo told me something while the two of us were alone that I didn’t see coming: He was finally going to confess to Daisy on Valentine’s Day! I always knew that he fancied her but I never thought he’d ever work up the courage to actually do it even though I’ve been trying to encourage him to tell her how he feels for so long.
Of course, he was still scared of being rejected so I promised I’d play cupid and help him create the most romantic atmosphere possible. Being the best wingman ever, I did my job perfectly and now the two of them are the happiest couple I know. Gosh, just thinking about it makes my heart flutter!
As much as I’ve been enjoying my globe-trotting journey, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel even a little bit homesick. You know what they say about home being where the heart is and for me, that’s the Australian Outback where I was hatched and raised. Eventually, it was too much for me and I started telling people about my adventures back home to make myself feel better.
Wonder of wonders, they loved my stories so much they kept asking for more and I got inspired to make a slot game about it. Now when people ask me about it, I can present to them EmuCasino’s very first exclusive game Eddy Dundee starring none other than me! It was such a huge hit I ended up inviting people to join my friends and I in a race and even a week-long stay in the Outback!
I’m always up for having a great time with my friends and any excuse to have a party is a good excuse to do just that. (If it gives me a chance to dress up, all the better!) Because it’s a guaranteed fun time and has a fun dress code to boot, St Patrick’s Day is one celebration I look forward to every year without fail and this year was no different.
This time, however, I decided to go the extra mile and prepared a little bonus for my friends so they could have a real blast when they visited my home for this celebration. Everyone got to choose between two door gifts which I named Shamrock and Pot of Gold to go with the theme when they arrived. After that, there was nothing else to do but knock back a few drinks while using those gifts to play my games with me which everyone did, naturally!
When I think about it, there’s something about Easter that just gets me all fired up and I can’t quite put my feather on it. Is it the eggs? I mean, I did hatch from one after all so that could be the reason. Regardless, I just find it so much fun to hide all the eggs I’ve prepared for this occasion all around my home every year for my friends to find and enjoy.
Naturally, I did the same thing this year and invited everyone to my home for a gaming good time throughout the whole Easter weekend. Aside from the egg hunt and sack race, my friends and I had a ton of fun playing all their favourite games with me for four whole days. By the time the long weekend was over, everyone was full to the point of bursting with fun… and chocolate, of course!
Things got really hectic around the beginning of the second half of the year and I lost track of time more often than not. At almost every hour of every day, I was putting my natural-born running skills to good use dashing here, there and everywhere so fast I think my feathers caught on fire once! The strange thing is, I never seemed to see Dingo or even Daisy and my other friends anywhere the whole time.
It turned out there was a pretty good reason: I’d been so busy I’d forgotten my own birthday was coming up and didn’t plan anything to celebrate it! Being the best friend in the world that he is, however, Dingo took it upon himself to plan a surprise birthday party for me and got Daisy and everyone else to help make it happen. Suffice to say, it was a blast and everyone walked away with their own share of the presents courtesy of Dingo!
Some of you may not be aware of it but I’ve actually been running an EmuCasino YouTube channel which I’ve mostly used to showcase my newest online slot games and their unique features as well as provide sneak peeks into a few of my crazy parties over the years. Recently, however, I decided to add a little something to it: my new Top 5 series which celebrates all the things that are worth celebrating and more!
What are these things, you ask? You see, I’m always one super happy emu when I see my friends score a big win, get to show off my latest game or even just find out one of them turn out to be a huge hit. In other words, every month I’ll release several videos on the newest, most popular and most rewarding games as well as the big winners for the past month based on actual data collected by yours truly so go watch them if you’re interested!
Early this year, a group of slot enthusiasts approached me and shared with me their vision of creating a platform that would offer entertaining insight into the world of slot games. Infused with the magic of theatre, it would put the best and latest slots in the spotlight… and I naturally said, “SIGN ME UP!”
Once we got the ball rolling, I could see these guys meant business when they said they would always keep the reels spinning! Every new episode of their video series dives deep into the slotverse, allowing its audience to uncover some of the best player-centric slot games that are out there from high-paying slots to the top-rated games of the month!
What was once merely an idea has become a reality… and what a majestic breath-taking reality it is! Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you… The Slot Show!
The spookiest time of the year, Halloween, was upon us once again and I decided to shake things up a bit by hosting my party at the spookiest place I could think of: a creepy castle located high up in the mountains of Romania surrounded by all sorts of Transylvanian terrors from ghosts to ghouls! To complete the aesthetic, I took on the persona of the dreaded DracEddy while Dingo created for himself the identity of Frankendingo.
Once everything at DracEddy’s Castle was set up, we invited all our friends for a whole week of fright-filled fun with trick or treat (un)naturally being the highlight of this long Halloween. Everyone had a good time picking from either one of the two baskets we’d prepared and sinking their teeth into the traditional Transylvanian treats I made. All in all, it was a fang-tastic party and I’m already looking forward to next year!
There was something in the air in December and it wasn’t just the smell of fresh pine needles (although that was actually pretty relevant). That’s right, it was Christmas season again! It was time to send out the invitations, bring out the decorations, buy and wrap the presents and start singing those beautiful carols like The 12 Days of Christmas!
As I sang it, however, I started to wonder why I had to follow tradition and limit my Christmas party to just the 12 days of Christmas season. It’s my party, I said to Dingo, so who’s going to stop me if I want to spend the entire month dressed like Santa and celebrating Christmas? No one, that’s who! Even Santa Claus himself agreed because he let me borrow his spare sleigh when I asked so I spent 28 days of the month going down my friends’ chimneys with Dingo delivering presents every single day. I even got so caught up in it I visited them all on New Year’s Day too!
2021
At the tail end of January, Dingo came to me strangely all nervous and beating around the bush about how February was just around the corner. I’m ashamed to admit it took me a while to realise why he was behaving like that, seeing as I was busy planning my upcoming Valentine’s Day party… and when I did, I tossed all my plans out the window. It was his and Daisy’s first anniversary as a couple and he wanted my help again! How could I say no?
Because I wanted them to have the best time ever, I asked him all kinds of questions about things like what Daisy liked but we didn’t get anywhere until he mentioned that lavender was her favourite flower. Since she really enjoys the countryside, I had the perfect idea: a stay at a lovely little holiday hideaway located on a lavender farm! I even arranged for them to have a romantic tour of the farm… and to be honest, watching them kind of made me wish I had someone like that too but for now, I’m happy with just giving my friends the Valentine’s Day gifts they deserve!
When St Patrick’s Day came rolling around again, you bet I got everything that would make my party not just green all over but so good it would make everyone who couldn’t attend green with envy. There were costumes for anyone who forgot theirs, tons of food because no party is complete without something to eat, games so we could have all the fun we want and last but not least drinks! Lots and lots of drinks of all kinds because it wouldn’t be St Patrick’s Day without a pint or ten!
But there was actually something else I did while I was running around buying all my party supplies: I’d dressed up as a leprechaun, filled one of my spare pots full of gold coins and run around town like I was looking for a place to bury it. However, I also acted like a total klutz dropping said coins everywhere and then later told my friends about it – without revealing I was the ‘leprechaun’, of course – before suggesting that we should go look for those gold coins. They figured out it was me pretty quickly though… but on the plus side, it didn’t make things any less fun!
There’s that old saying about how all good things come to an end and while I do agree with it somewhat, I also think that it doesn’t apply to everything. Take my favourite slot games for example; as fun and exciting as it is to watch the reels spin away, they need to stop for me to find out if I’ve won anything or not. However, the end of one spin just means another one can start, doesn’t it?
Thinking along these lines, I began to dream about having an infinite amount of spins and an eternity to experience them. Better yet, they’d be free spins instead of just regular spins! Then I realised something: Why couldn’t I just make that happen myself? And I did when I came up with Spinfinity by Eddy which my friends can use to get seven sets of daily free spins with just one deposit!
I was putting together my guest list for my birthday party when I realised I had a lot of friends… but it still didn’t feel like I had enough. Then again, it didn’t seem possible to me for anyone to have too many friends especially if it’s little old me. The more I thought about it, the more I realised I wanted to have even more friends even though I had no idea how I was supposed to make more in such a short amount of time.
As I was trying to come up with an answer, my eyes happened to land on my old copy of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. In a flash, I got the best idea ever: Instead of having my friends come to my party, I should just take them along on a globetrotting trip so I can make even more friends! Naturally, Dingo came along too and just for fun the two of us dressed up as Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout respectively for the trip. We travelled by train, steamer, elephant and of course even hot air balloon and it was so much fun I almost didn’t want to come home!
During my globe-trotting trip, I happened to see all kinds of places and that included amusement parks. There were just so many of them and some even had more than one theme… Oh, how I wished I’d had more time to visit them all! Then I thought to myself: Why not just create my own? It was genius! Without wasting any more time daydreaming, I got to work with Dingo’s help I very proudly unveiled Eddy’s Amusement Park!
Since the timing worked out so that its grand launch would be at the start of October, I made Halloween the inspiration behind the park’s first zone which I named Spine-Chilling Terror-tory. One of its main attractions was DracEddy’s Haunted Castle where I as DracEddy tried to scare my guests to death. The other one was called The Run for Your Life Maze and those brave enough to try it had to find their way out before I, the dreaded Eddy Kreuger, managed to catch them.
When November rolled around, it was time to open up the next zone of my amusement park and boy, was this one a real trip – a trip back in time, you could even say! Inspired by all the castles I saw and the legends I heard during my trip, I made this zone medieval-themed and called it Escape to Camelot. After all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to hang out with King Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table?
This time, I felt like makings things a challenge – literally – so I dusted off my family’s ancient set of armour and became Sir Eddy. Standing before The Knight Fight Ring, I called out to other ‘knights’ asking if any one of them was brave enough to test my sword skills. Meanwhile, Dingo dusted off his Robin Hood hat and set up his own competition called Dingo Hood’s Archery Contest where everyone could see if they were a better marksman than him.
December marked the time for me to open the third and final zone of my amusement park, and since it was Christmas season I couldn’t think of a better theme for it than… well, Christmas itself! Pure white snow, piles and piles of presents, the smell of delicious festive food filling the air… If it even remotely made you think of Christmas, it was right there at Xmas Xcitement Xpanse!
Because no amusement park is complete without a roller coaster ride, I set up one which I called The Spooky Santa’s Sleigh Ride. The twist was that I was there as Eddy Skellington so you can bet it was a real scream for my friends! For those of my friends who preferred to keep their feet on the ground, Dingo was there to welcome them to a branch of Santa’s Gingerbread Factory. There, they were all able to help Santa make sure there was enough gingerbread for the big day.
2022
It was while I was cleaning up after my New Year party that I realised something horrible (to me, at least): I was so busy planning and running my amusement park last year that I completely forgot to celebrate Oktoberfest! Oh, how could I have let that slip my mind?! All those drinks, all that food, all the fun… All missed! I’d have to wait until it was October again to make up for it!
That was when my best buddy in the whole world Dingo came to the rescue. “Why can’t we just make up for it now in a different way?” he said, and you know what, he was absolutely right! Inspired, I set up Eddy’s Peckin’ Good Pub where the two of us served delicious meals (or pub grub as it’s called). As for the drinks, we had a nifty idea for the bar: Instead of just ordering the drinks they wanted, my friends spun a wheel and got whatever the arrow was pointing at when it stopped. Talk about a wheel-y fun and rewarding time!
Since I knew my friends would appreciate some entertainment while they chowed down on my pub grub and drank their fill at the bar, I decided to provide them with some quality tunes. How did I do that? Why, what else but form a band with Dingo and Daisy to play live music in the pub! Naturally, that wasn’t the only thing I – or we, to be more precise – had planned.
When Valentine’s Day came around, we didn’t play as a live band; instead, Dingo and Daisy took the stage and sang all their favourite romantic duets. It was their way of celebrating their anniversary and sharing their happiness with our friends at the same time. I swear, the whole thing was so sweet I think I got a beakache after the first song! What was I doing while they were serenading each other, you wonder? Nothing less than the obvious – being the great wingman that I am and recording the whole thing on my phone, of course!
I opened my cosy little pub mostly as a way to make up for missing Oktoberfest last year but truth be told, there was one other reason and that reason arrived in March. That’s right, I’m talking about St Patrick’s Day because what could be a better place to have a celebration that’s all about drinking than a pub? A pub that’s owned and run by little old me, of course!
With Dingo’s help, I gave my pub a St Patrick’s Day makeover from top to bottom and left not a single inch of it undecorated in some way or other. Banner flags with shamrock patterns on them, pots of gold, dyed drinks… I even went to the trouble of changing the lighting in my pub sign to green so it could match the décor. Oh, and I prepared little door gifts for my friends that had four-leaf clovers in them too! (That was my way of saying Irish them the best of luck when they play my games.)
The day had arrived. After three fun-filled months, it was finally time to close Eddy’s Peckin’ Good Pub and I have to admit it felt like I was having my heart broken into a million little pieces. As much as I knew that it wasn’t going to be a permanent fixture when I opened it, I was still sad to have to finally let it go and judging by my friends’ reactions, they felt the same way.
Because of that, I felt like the only right thing to do was make a big deal out of the whole situation and end it with great fanfare. Eddy’s Peckin’ Good Pub was opened with the goal of being a huge source of fun so it was only right that it provided as much fun as it could in its final days. To achieve that, I held the Last Orders Tournament where my friends had to race each other to see who could down the most drinks before I rang the last call bell. (The winners got cool prizes, of course!)
This year, Easter was a lot later than it usually is and I have to admit that if I hadn’t checked the calendar I would probably have ended up having my Easter party a whole week early. Imagine me hiding all the eggs for my friends to find, decorating my home, preparing all the stuff we’d need for the games and going to say hi to the Easter Bunny only to find out he’s still sleeping… Wouldn’t that have been embarrassing!
In any case, I chose to see it as a blessing in disguise because that meant I had more time to get everything ready for my Easter party. That’s when I had the idea – a genius one, if I do say so myself – of making my usual Easter egg hunt even longer and more rewarding than usual by hiding more eggs after all my friends had found the first batch. Needless to say, I made their Good Friday a great Friday and they totally loved it!
I’d been keeping a big secret from my friends for a while but it was finally time to reveal everything: Since I would be celebrating my 10th birthday which also meant it was EmuCasino’s 10th anniversary this year, I decided things had to be extra special and put a twist on the old “go big or go home” saying. That’s right, I renovated my humble little home to such an extent it was a whole new place!
Naturally, I threw a big birthday-plus-housewarming party and all my friends were invited to enjoy some good food and drinks, eat a slice of birthday cake and check out every corner of my new home. At the same time, I introduced them to my new friend Kiri the Kiwi who hails from where else but New Zealand. All in all, it was a smashing good party worthy of the grand occasion!
Being a good host (not to mention housemate), I gave Kiri an extensive tour of EmuCasino so she would know where we put everything and feel absolutely comfortable with living here with us. It made me a really happy emu to hear how much she adored – Adored! Her words, not mine! – everything I showed her and how delighted she was to call this her new home.
It so happened that as I was guiding her around the storage room where I keep all my old furniture and whatnot, a dusty old box caught her eye and she asked me if she could open it. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was inside so I was curious too and said yes. Wonder of wonders, it was an old promotion of mine called Free Spins Tuesday which she fell in love with on the spot. When she asked if we could bring it back, I thought, well, why not? After all, everyone loves free spins, don’t they?
It didn’t take long for Kiri to get fully settled in and really start treating this place like home and boy was I glad she did! In just a short amount of time, she’d thought about how to make things around EmuCasino easier and more fun for everyone especially when and where it counted the most. (Now that I think about it, why didn’t I think of it myself? Could it be I’m losing my touch?! Say it ain’t so!)
The whole thing started when she noticed that our friends were always a little down on Monday mornings which I suppose is perfectly understandable. Because she wanted to give them a little something that would perk them up and get them ready for the day, she introduced the Monday Match Bonus Cuppa! It was a little New Zealand thing she thought everyone would enjoy and after I had a cuppa of my own, I have to say it’s a really awesome way to start Mondays!
Kiri’s magic Monday cuppa did the trick and our friends definitely gained a spring in their step after just one sip. I was really proud of Kiri for thinking the whole thing up… but then it got me thinking about another day of the week that usually gets my friends down: the infamous hump day called Wednesday. I figured, why can’t we do something similar to help our friends get through – or should I say over? – that day too?
The idea seemed wonderful to her too so we put our heads together and tried to brainstorm a solution. We were at a loss until I suddenly imagined a whirlwind literally carrying us all away to the weekend – a whirlwind full of bonuses that would lead to a whirlwind of fun and wins. With that idea in mind, Kiri and I dug up one of the grimoires lying around EmuCasino and summoned up an actual whirlwind. Needless to say, that’s how Whirl-Win Wednesday came to be!
Another weekend was on the horizon and as usual I prepared everything I needed to make sure my friends would have a good time when they came over to play with me. While I was in the middle of buying my second cartful of snacks, however, I started thinking to myself: What if some of them were getting bored with the routine? Sure, they had fun every time they visited but what if they wanted something more?
That’s when I decided that maybe instead of having them over, I could invite them to go somewhere else just for a change of pace. It was quite the eureka moment and when I shared my idea with Dingo and the rest, they insisted we had to start that very weekend itself. Everyone began packing all the essentials (plus a few not-quite-essentials) and I made sure to prepare a Weekend Escape Bonus Bundle for my other friends. They naturally loved it and now our weekends are even more fun than before!
I’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving for quite a few years now but never really made a big deal about it. Looking back now, I can’t for the life of me figure out why… After all, everyone who knows me knows I love having parties and I’ve never once shied away from saying how grateful I am to have everything that I do especially where my friends are concerned.
My friends in Canada in particular are very near and dear to my heart because they’ve always been good to Dingo and I even before we started visiting them more often. It only made sense for me to finally make the most fitting of grand gestures to show how thankful I am to have them in my life: A Friendsgiving full of classic Canadian Thanksgiving dishes made by yours truly! (Dingo ate a lot of it but then again he’s my best friend in the whole world so if anyone deserves the biggest share I guess it would be him.)
After so long, I finally got to celebrate Oktoberfest the way I’ve always wanted and the festivities were even better than I could have ever expected. All of us really got into the spirit of it and I even went the extra mile of dressing up like Onkel Hans, the beloved mascot of Canada’s Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest. (As a fellow mascot, I bet he felt really honoured when he heard what I did!)
As things started winding down, I surprised my friends with one final event: an epic Bier Barrel Race! There was a qualifying round where all my friends learned the ropes and the ones who proved to be pros got to take part in the official race. The fastest of them won a spot in my exclusive Beer Tent where they enjoyed all the food they could eat, as much beer as they could drink and of course a mountain of amazing prizes!
A lot of my friends might not know or have probably forgotten but the truth is I’ve got a lot of hobbies – hobbies that don’t revolve around playing games and hosting parties, that is. Sure, there’s the adventuring, the globetrotting, the treasure hunting and a whole host of other stuff that has me on my feet moving a mile a minute… but truth be told, sometimes I just like to do stuff that doesn’t require me to leave the comfort of my house (or even my sofa).
One of these little things I like to do during these moments is sit down with the newspaper and testing my puzzle-solving skills by taking a crack at the daily crossword. Dingo helps however much he can and Kiri brings me a nice hot cuppa for each of us before she tries to solve her own copy. It’s a quiet kind of fun that I decided to share with my other friends by creating my very own crossword for them to solve. Those who found the answers got some nice rewards and everyone really enjoyed themselves so I decided I’ll do it again every now and then.
For Halloween this year, I hosted a househaunting party and invited all my friends to come in their spookiest costumes for seven nights of frights. I think some of them thought it was going to be a normal – well, as normal as one can get when it comes to Halloween, that is – party but boy were they wrong. Their first clue they were in for a spooky treat was the scary-looking closed doors they saw the second Dingo and I welcomed them inside. When they asked us what was going on, we told them that they weren’t the only ones who’d gotten party invitations…
See, these other guests had come with a plan to make their own fun: They were going to take turns springing spine-tingling surprises on any of my friends who were brave enough to seek them out and survive the encounter. If my friends could summon the courage to give them a fitting ghostly greeting on top of that, they’d even get a nice little present. Even better, those who did that with all of my ghostly guests got an even bigger terrifying treat from my royal ghost of honour: his special skeleton key which unlocks the treasure chest he spirited here as a gift for this very occasion!
A recent bout of nostalgia led me to reminiscing about the good old days and those memories made me feel like looking through some of the prized possessions of mine that I stored away long ago. Because of that, I decided to poke around my storeroom just to give it a somewhat overdue cleaning while I checked up on my old things. (Dingo naturally came along to help and check on his own old stuff.)
Amazingly, we were halfway through our dusty little expedition when I stumbled across something really amazing, not to mention sentimental: my collection of retro arcade machines! To make it even better, every last one of them was still in great condition! Dingo and I started testing them by plugging them in and turning them on, and boy were we happy when every one of them worked just like they used to in the past. We couldn’t help but start trying to set new high scores just like we used to… and that gave me the great idea to start Eddy’s High Score Hunt where all my other friends could challenge us too!
After four long and eventful years, it was finally back. What am I talking about? Why, none other than the World Cup, of course! I remember catching football fever just like everyone else last time and this round was no different. Dingo, Kiri and Daisy were in the same boat so it seemed only natural for us to start playing our own friendly matches with our other friends.
But that wasn’t enough for me, nosirree! I started to think, well, why can’t I just have my very own World Cup? That’s how I came up with The Emu Slot World Cup Tournament 2022 – a tournament where the four best teams from the slot world fought it out on the football field to determine which one of them deserved to be crowned champion. My friends loved it and showed up to cheer on their favourites only to discover something amazing –when their team won, they won prizes too!
As exciting as both the World Cups might have been combined, there was no way they could compare to the excitement that comes with Christmas season. So what if Christmas happens every year while the World Cup only takes place once every four years? It’s Christmas and nothing can compare to the thrill of playing games with your friends, eating and drinking your way through a traditional festive feast and of course opening the piles of presents under the Christmas tree!
This year, I decided it would be fun to sort of combine all three of those things in a fun way: While we stuffed ourselves with stuffing and everything else, everyone played my Christmas gift grab game in order to win the presents I’d prepared beforehand. But that wasn’t enough for me, of course; while everyone was distracted, I quickly dressed up like Santa and visited all my friends’ homes so I could leave them a couple of bonus presents just for them. All I took as ‘payment’ was some of the cookies and milk they’d left out for Santa and I sure ho-ho-hope he didn’t mind!