Jewel Quest For Mac

Scouting for capital: A case study on oil patch financing

A decade ago, Bill McCaffrey was like a lot of wide-eyed dreamers in Alberta – a refugee from the corporate world with a big idea for a patch of ground near Fort McMurray.

Most of those visionaries fell by the wayside, victims of gyrating oil prices and a harsh climate for long shots in the oil sands.

But Mr. McCaffrey’s star continued to rise, as $100-a-barrel oil turned Fort Mac into a global shopping bazaar. Today, at 54, he runs a much-admired independent producer, and about $2-billion of cash in the bank.

The difference between him and other dreamers was an iron discipline and a tireless quest for global money. “There is a big prize at the end, but if you structure your financing wrong, it may never see the light of day,” Mr. McCaffrey says. “We were very patient.” Calgary-based MEG is a company built in the ground south of Fort McMurray and in the air over North America, Asia and Europe, as Mr. McCaffrey took his road show to the world.

Faced with a tough market in Canada, he circled the globe to find blue-chip investors who shared his long-term vision – from New York private equity players to Middle East sovereign funds and China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC).

He waited 11 years to take MEG public – an unusually long stretch for a capital-hungry energy startup. Meanwhile, he attracted $3-billion in private equity funding, one of the largest intakes for a North American company in the pre-initial offering stage.

His long-haul strategy was rewarded last month when the Canadian Venture Capital Association named him its Entrepreneur of the Year for building success with venture capital backing.

Indeed, Mr. McCaffrey did attract VC money – Calgary’s KERN Partners was there near the start – but many large Canadian institutions are kicking themselves now for not getting in the ground floor.

It reflects a different world in 1999-2000, when oil was around $12 a barrel, and MEG was pioneering costly in situ extraction technology that was less familiar than the prevailing mining approach. And China had not yet become a voracious buyer of Canadian energy assets.

In 1999, Mr. McCaffrey, his brother-in-law and a friend sunk just over $150,000 into their first property leases around Christina Lake, 120 kilometres south of Fort McMurray.

Now, almost a year after the IPO, his stake in MEG is worth more than $50-million, and his 30 elite institutional backers aren’t complaining either. “They’ve done very well,” he says.

Jewel Quest: The Sleepless Star Review | Mac games

This Jewel Quest game is part of the series of match 3 plays so familiar to casual gamers. The story goes back further in history than the Rupert and Emma Pack’s tales. This one focuses on an ancestor of Rupert’s, Percy Pack. You may remember him from the Jewel Quest Heritage. In the turn of the century when the Industrial Revolution was underway, Percy was hot on a trail of a missing Indian jewel mystery.

Percy Pack on his way to investigate claims of a fantastic gem meets Pattawaset or Yellow Feather an Algonquian tribe member. The jewel stolen by men in uniforms will need to be retrieved and put back in its rightful place in the Algonquian tribal altar. The 2 unlikely allies join forces to get back the Sleeping Star. The search will take Percy and Yellow Feather across severe terrain and through 2 continents in hopes of retrieving the powerful gem before it’s too late.

The classic play is to match 3 or more gems in a row to change the tiles into gold. After changing the entire board to gold, you complete the level. A new part of the game is to win artifact bonuses to get 10 seconds added to the timer once per minute and other helps. Another level is the climbing board where part of the gems cannot change the tiles to gold with matches until the jewels are matched at the bottom first. Once the bottom section of the screen is turned to gold, then the gems above it will be able to be matched and the tiles turn to gold.

The game boards change as the story changes. The climbing board, path finding, light fire, disarm, evasion, and secret entrance are new additions to the jewel quest series and make matching gems more interesting. Explanations of each board are displayed at the left of the screen so you can continue on with your game play.

Jewel Quest: The Sleeping Star like the others in this JQ series are well made and have interesting stories. However, even with the new boards, the game feels all too familiar. For JQ fans will be happy with another challenging game and dramatic story. The artwork is great as always and the voice acting and music are good. There are 200 boards of playing a variety of modes. I give this game a 3.5 for a solid game.

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