Currently Playing: June Mobile-5
Shibuya Grandmaster
I played this obsessively on a fourteen hour coach journey to GDC:EU last year and since redownloading it, the old fire has returned. All you have to do is match and eliminate a stack of coloured bars, but the tremendous speed of play means you are constantly teetering on the edge of loosing mental control. A huge array of colour schemes to suit every form of colour-blindness meaning everyone can give the game a go, making it equally good for whiling away a lunch-break alone, or for friendly pass-&-play competitions.
Crab War
A nicely polished tapper, Crab War works admirably hard to give the illusion of gameplay depth depth where fundamentally there is none. But, at the end of the day, it IS a tapper, and that genre of gamified figiting really doesn't do it for me. I zipped through 100 levels by drumming my fingers on the screen whilst looking out the train window; that time could be better spent. I was also weirdly uncomfortable with the fact that the majority of the enemies did not fight back, they sat in my path, wincing in pain with every hit to the face, before dying in an onslaught of pincers. It was oddly bleak.
China Wall 2
I'm on the fence about this one, as it cut me off from playing before I really got into it. I was quite enjoying it, but I'm not honestly sure whether it truly has the strategic element, or whether I was projecting one in due to my love of city building games continuing to go unfulfilled. Did my choice to do things in this order, rather than that order, really make that much of a difference? When I had to sign up to a mailing list in order to continue playing, or shell out a fiver, I stopped to contemplate. As it still not really sure, it seemed wiser not to let the moths out my wallet.
Zen Koi
The player owns a virtual fish pond filled with koi carp, and nurtures them up to eventually evolving into massive Chinese water dragons. If you like virtual pet games, or you just really enjoyed the opening levels of Spore, then this is a great game for you. I hope it finds a good audience, because it's a really nice idea and one that has been thoughtfully executed. It could be a great relaxation aid to a lot of stressed out people.
WindIn
A match-3 with a small but clever twist, the creators should be proud of the quality of what they have produced, I just worry it doesn't stand out as much as I assume they were thinking it would in a such a massively over-crowded genre. But with good App Store ratings and customers clamouring for more content, it could be that this was a calculated teaser move. Hopefully they capitalise on it! It's not a Candy Crush killer yet, but I like how this award-winning little Turkish team think.
