Currently Playing: May Mobile-5
Draw Something (Classic) Another party game to which I have arrived fashionably late, Draw Something is not capturing my imagination anything like as much as Words With Friends did. Maybe it's because I'm playing primarily with people I know very well, but there is zero challenge involved! I receive an image, dutifully type out what it is, and send one back. Rinse and repeat. For people who have spent a lot of time together talking and ideating, the drawings are just utterly obvious. It's just a task. It's a cute distraction, but not a hugely engaging one.
It's Full of Sparks
I feel guilty about not liking this. There is nothing wrong with this game. It's cute, and quirky, and the monetisation is honest and upfront. But it bores me; I just have serious genre-fatigue over endless runners. Whether or not you engage positively with a game isn't just entirely down to how good it is. It's down at least in part to how you feel, in general, on topics not even relating to the game - how open you are to it being good. Some days, you're just in a funk, and you don't want to find the fun. Play is not a panacea for all moods.
(re)format Z:
Blingflug Studios need help naming their games. God alone knows the SEO on a game with that much illogical punctuation in it. There are some other issues. The Zurich team were definitely not lacking in ambition, but there is a fairly strong whiff of student project about this. The character's arms are freakishly long, making her move awkwardly, like a spider suffering from serious upper thigh chafing. The textures are inconsistent and the absence of shadows in a stealth game is jarring. It's promising, but there is more work to be done.
Does Not Commute
Another game from the "I can't believe I haven't written about this game before now, it's epic" bucket. If you haven't played Does Not Commute yet, you totally owe it to yourself to give it a try. It's either genuinely unique, or it's just so well polished I was blinded by the quality and failed to notice what was derivative. The player is tasked with overseing the commutes of a group of deeply weird people across a small map, which, due to a disturbance in the space-time continuum, quickly gets really out of hand. Try it. It's great.
KAMI 2
I'm happy Kami 2 exists. Games like this push gameplay boundaries, but in a way that is commercially viable and accessible; often, those three things operate exclusively of one another. And though it may seem conservative, innovation should not be exclusionary when it can be avoided (it sometimes can't.) Kami 2 tries new ways of playing, but presents them in such a way that they are intuitive rather than intimidating. It's attractive, challenging and the perfect game to give to someone who claims they "don't like games."
