Currently Playing: December Mobile-5
INKS
Mentally, I have a separation of things I consider Games, and Toys. A toy can be really fun, but it lacks the complexity of structure of a game. Games have rules, to be interpreted, broken, or combined strategically to achieve an end goal. Toys have less structure, with creativity transmitted from the player through the toy, allowing the player to engage in more self-directed play. A doll is a toy, a paintbox is a toy, a Rubik's Cube is a toy. INKS is a toy. It’s pinball; paint-ball with pretty colours, but there is not enough directed play, - challenges - to keep me engaged. It’s nice, but it’s not for me.
10101010 It’s a nicely made example of "fill the grid" games that most people have encountered in one form or another, the bridging step between the postbox game played as a child, and Tetris. Uninspiring name aside, it's solidly made and straightforward to play, with a decent range of customisation options regarding colours and shapes if, for some reason, you have a overwhelming preference for swirly circles or hexagons over squares. Throughout, the word that comes to mind is "competent." It’s nicely done, and that in itself should be commendable, but the play experience is noticeably lacking in spark.
Pktball
I don't like pktball. And I'm embarrassed about that, because I dislike it for one very particular and not very noble reason. Because it makes me feel old. To play pktball, you need to have faster reflexes than a weasel on speed, and I do not have those reflexes any more. It's not even fair to say I lose a lot at pktball, or that I am merely very bad at playing it. I am entirely too slow of mind and hand and wit. I am not cut out, in any way, to play pktball.
Phoenix 2
Phoenix 2 is a spacey bullet-hell shooter, where you power your dinky spaceship through dense waves of enemies and try to survive as long as possible. It's a well trodden path, but Phoenix 2 does just enough to keep things interesting, utilising online community features to encourage players to compete against each other for high scores, and offering 40 unique ships, so players can find a vehicle that suits their play-style.
Hop The Ketchapp business model is kinda fascinating to me. It looks to an outside viewer like the most laser-focussed, some might say aggressive, interpretation of LEAN you can think of, where a single mechanic game is released into the market to fly, or die. If it meets some mysterious unknowable criteria - though one would hazard a guess that DAU, MAU and Install numbers are on the list - it gets support and development. Otherwise, it is permitted to sink into the murky soup of the App Store. Hop is no different; it’s a bouncy ball game with one small twist, the ball follows your finger, so your movements need to be super precise to hit the platforms and stay alive. If it grabs your attention, and/or you’re playing against a friend, it will probably be a pleasant time waster. If, however, the initial premise doesn't thrill you, then you're almost certainly going to delete it about five minutes later and move on to something else. I thought it was fun, but I preferred Stack.
