1179: Open for Browsing

A few days ago, the app AppGratis was pulled from the App Store for specific reasons unknown, but many conjectured it was due to the service that the company provided for developers — specifically in promotion of their apps. AppGratis, it was claimed, was gaming the system and manipulating the charts of the App Store so that they didn’t really accurately reflect reality. I don’t know whether or not that’s actually true, but it’s plausible given the shadiness of some parts of the mobile sector.

What I do know, however, is that the App Store charts are useless anyway, largely due to the huge amounts of miscategorisation (is that a word? It is now) going on, making it absolutely impossible to browse and find something you’re looking for.

But is it really that bad? I decided to do a little experiment to see how accurate the descriptors in the Games category — the only App Store category to have subdivisions — actually are. Let’s take a look at the Top 10 in a selection of these categories and see if the games therein actually belong in those groupings, shall we? Wait, where are you going…?

Huh. Sod those guys, we didn’t like them anyway, right? Here we go, then.

Adventure Games (Paid)

Wikipedia’s definition of adventure games:

An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical (e.g. reflexes) challenge.^[1] The genre‘s focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Nearly all adventure games (text and graphic) are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult.^[2]

1. Temple Run Oz – not an adventure game, it’s an action/arcade game
   
2. Minecraft – not an adventure game, it’s a… Minecraft
3. Badland – not an adventure game, it’s a platform game
4. Doodle Jump – not an adventure game, it’s a platform/arcade game
5. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – not an adventure game, it’s an action game
6. Temple Run Brave – see No. 1
7. Dead Crossing – not an adventure game, it’s a shooter/driving game
8. Eden – not an adventure game, it’s a Minecraft-alike
9. Clear Vision – not an adventure game, it’s a sniper-centric shooting game
10. Blue Toad Murder Files – HOLY SHIT AN ADVENTURE GAME

One out of ten is correctly categorised. So that’s not all that good, really, is it? Let’s look at the free adventure games.

Adventure Games (Free)

1. Gangster Granny – shooter
   
2. Temple Run 2 – See No. 1 in the Paid category
3. The Simpsons: Tapped Out – citybuilder
4. The Sims: FreePlay – It’s The Sims, but more boring
5. The Croods – citybuilder/farming game
6. Frontline Commando: D-Day – shooter
7. Minecraft Lite – Minecraft
8. Jail Break Now – vaguely adventure-ish
9. Tap Paradise Cove – citybuilder/farming
10. Nimble Quest – Snake with a twist

Nope. Nope. Nope. One out of ten, and that might not even count as it’s more of a stealth game. Let’s look at a favourite genre: role-playing games.

Role-Playing Games (Paid)

Wikipedia again:

A role-playing game (RPG and sometimes roleplaying game^[1][2]) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making or character development.^[3] Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.^[4]

1. Slayin – arcade game with RPG elements
   
2. Gemini Rue – THIS IS AN ADVENTURE GAME WHAT THE FUCK IS IT DOING IN THE RPG SECTION
3. Mighty Dungeons – old-school dungeon-crawler. It counts.
4. Skylanders Battlegrounds – Sort of RPG-ish, but more action game than anything
5. Dentist Surgery Game – NO. Not even a little bit.
6. Minecraft Explorer Pro – Not even a game; this should be in the Reference section.
7. World Explorer – Made for Minecraft – Crap Minecraft clone. Not an RPG.
8. Monster Wars – Strategy game
9. Surviving High School – Visual novel/adventure game, not RPG
10. Minecraft Papercraft Studio – Not a game at all

Hmm. Slightly better. Still not great. And the presence of Gemini Rue in there just feels like the App Store is mocking me for writing this. Let’s look at the freebies.

Role-Playing Games (Free)

1. Beauty Dentist – NO. (Also what the fuck is up with all the dentist games?)
   
2. Tekken Card Tournament – Vaguely RPG-ish, but no. It’s a card game. There is a card game section.
3. Mighty Monsters – Pokémon ripoff. Crap, but could accurately be described as an RPG.
4. Come on, Zombie! – More of an RTS than an action RPG, but I’ll allow it.
5. Campus Life – Poor-quality The Sims knockoff.
6. Campus Crush – Visual novel/dating sim, not RPG
7. Dungeon Hunter 4 – Yes!
8. My Beauty Spa – No!
9. Epoch – shooter
10. Crime City – Citybuilder wanting to be edgy, actually just crap. Not RPG.

Oh dear. (And seriously, people, why all the virtual dentistry?)

What about board games? I like board games, and there are some good adaptations on the App Store, I know that for a fact. So what do the charts look like?

Board Games (Paid)

1. Monopoly – Yep
   
2. Scrabble – Yep
3. Words With Friends – Yep
4. Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition – Yep
5. Trivial Pursuit – Yep
6. The Game of Life – Yep
7. MahJong – Please learn the difference between “Mahjong” and “Mahjong Solitaire”, but yep
8. Pentix: warning! this developer likes to put stupidly long titles in things in the hopes of making their game look better! – Nope
9. Doodle God – Nope
10. Risk – Yep

Much better. Not perfect, but better. Shame all the top-selling ones are crap board games, though. Seriously, people, two different varieties of Monopoly? I don’t mean to sound like a board game snob (actually, I do) but there are far better games out there. But at least it’s actually in the right fucking category.

Board Games (Free)

1. 6 Numbers – Countdown ripoff. More of a puzzle game.
   
2. Lazors – Again, more of a puzzle game, but there is a board game a bit like this.
3. Bingo – Nope. To the Casino section with you! Away, filth!
4. Four In A Row 2013 – (Spoiler: it’s the same as Four in a Row has always been) Yep
5. Words With Friends Free – Yep
6. Monopoly Hotels – NOPE. This is a shitty Monopoly-themed building game, not a board game. Sadly, there isn’t a “shitty building game” category, but it would better belong elsewhere.
7. Sudoku – Puzzle, not board game.
8. Ruzzle – Yet another Boggle ripoff, but yep
9. Chess Free – Yes!
10. Friendle — Live Board Games with Friends and Family – The clue’s in the name!

Again, better. But again, crap that has nothing to do with board games (except the name in Monopoly Hotels’ case) is in the board games category.

So the situation varies a bit from category to category. But it should hopefully be clear from that that there are some significant problems there. Imagine you really want to play an adventure game on your iPhone or iPad — something like the excellent Gemini Rue or Broken Sword. Browse through the adventure game category and you may well have trouble finding things that are actually adventure games. That’s a problem.

Sadly, without a complete wipe of the App Store’s catalogue and recategorisation of everything, I think we’re too late to really do anything about this. Developers deliberately submit their titles to the wrong categories to get greater visibility, and this effect spreads as more and more people do it — and in the meantime, Apple don’t appear to care all that much when things are incorrectly categorised. The whole situations is a big ol’ mess, and I’m not surprised independent developers working on genuinely great games are enormously frustrated that it’s impossible to get their stuff seen amid all the other shite.

1173: Am I Missing Something?

Yesterday, game-centric social network Raptr reported that in the month of March, its members played more of King’s Candy Crush Saga than StarCraft II, World of Tanks and Halo: Reach (all historically very popular games) combined.

This is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it shows that Raptr is getting some pretty wide usage by more casual gamers as well as those who care about achievements, hour counts and whatnot — demonstrating (arguably) that a lot of people playing Candy Crush Saga are “serious” enough about their gaming to sign up for a game-centric social network and tracking service.

Secondly, it shows something we all know: the vast numbers of people playing Facebook and mobile games far outstrips those who have perhaps grown up with the industry and who play what one might call “traditional” video games — players whom mobile and social gaming companies euphemistically refer to as “core” gamers.

The second point isn’t all that surprising; how many people do you know who don’t have a Facebook account? While we’re not yet in a world where every single person is permanently jacked in to the social network via a transmitter in their spinal column, I’m willing to bet that regardless of your age, there’s probably a large proportion of the people you know who have Facebook accounts, and of those people most of them have probably tried playing some games at least once. The exact same situation is true when we consider smartphone ownership these days — of those who have acquired a new mobile phone recently, it’s highly likely that it was one of the two most well-supported platforms out there: iOS and Android. And of those who haven’t acquired a new mobile phone recently, a lot of people are investigating tablets as a home computer solution — pretty much all of which run, you guessed it, iOS and Android.

It’s the first point that surprises me, though. Raptr is the sort of service that is historically only of interest to those “core” gamers we mentioned earlier, as your average soccer mom who only plays games on Facebook has no real need or desire to keep up with industry happenings or the latest stupid thing that a Microsoft employee has said on social media — let alone how their number of hours played stacks up against their friends. So what does it mean when the number of hours racked up on Candy Crush Saga outstrips some of Raptr’s most heavily-tracked, popular titles?

Well, it could mean one of a couple of things. Firstly, it could mean that Facebook and/or mobile gamers are more serious about tracking their playtime and achievements in the games they play than most people thought. I find this rather difficult to believe, to be honest, as the sort of people who only play Facebook and mobile games are typically playing them as a means to fill a spare few minutes rather than as an engaging form of entertainment that they feel particularly passionate about.

Secondly, it could mean that those “core” gamers out there are playing Facebook and mobile games as well as (apparently, more than) “traditional” computer and console games that are aimed specifically at them? Judging by the notifications that pop up on the Raptr client that runs on my PC, this is much more likely; there are several people on my friends list whom I would describe as “core” gamers by that definition, but who are regularly seen playing everything from FarmVille to Marvel Avengers Alliance and Candy Crush Saga.

One question, though: why?

No, seriously, why?

If you’re a “core” gamer by the popular definition, you’re serious about your interactive entertainment. You might play games instead of (or as much as) watching movies and TV shows. Your exact reasons for playing may vary — those who enjoy Call of Duty play it much like a competitive team sport, while people like me prefer narrative-centric experiences that stimulate similar parts of the brain to movies and TV shows — but the fact is, you’re highly likely to make time for your gaming rather than indulge in it as an idle diversion. You’ll sit down, you’ll play a game for a not-inconsiderable amount of time, then you’ll switch off and do something else. Or pass out with the controller in your sweaty mitts.

So if you’re investing time and probably money into what is, after all, a hobby rather than a mindless pastime, why, dear “core” gamers, aren’t you playing anything better? Don’t get me wrong, Candy Crush Saga has performed so well because it’s a polished product that is pretty accessible even to those who haven’t played many games before, but 1) it’s a Bejeweled ripoff, and Bejeweled 3 (or just Bejeweled as it is called on mobile) is a better game with more variety; 2) it’s rammed to the gills with obnoxious enforced “social” features that don’t actually promote social interaction at all (ask for lives! ask friends to unlock levels! brag about your score!); 3) it’s rammed to its other gills with obnoxious monetization — aside from the fact that every so often you’ll run into a wall where it literally just stops you from playing unless you either wait for several hours or pay money, there’s one powerup in the game that costs £35 and can be used once per level. Thirty-five pounds. Bejeweled 3, which, as previously mentioned, is an infinitely superior game that doesn’t bug you every five fucking seconds to insert coins or invite friends, costs £14.99 — less than half the price of that one powerup in Candy Crush Saga – on Steam (and is regularly reduced in price in sales), and sixty-nine pence on mobile phones.

“But Candy Crush Saga is free to download!” I hear you cry. “Surely people aren’t dimwitted enough to repeatedly spend money on this when they could just buy a copy of Bejeweled outright and then never have to pay again!” Wrong. Candy Crush Saga is, as I write this, the number 1 Top Grossing app on the App Store. Note: “app” not “game”. (It is also the number 1 Top Grossing game, but that shouldn’t be surprising given its other position.)

Let me reiterate that. Candy Crush Saga, which is free to download, is making more money than apps that cost money. By a significant margin. It is making more money than high-quality productivity apps for professionals, which typically carry a relatively hefty price tag. It is making more money than high-quality “pay once, play forever” games. It is making more money than Bejeweled, which is basically the same fucking game for the price of a packet of Chewits. It is making more money than anything else on the App Store.

It is at this point I throw my hands up and say I absolutely do not understand why this is the case. It absolutely boggles my mind, because I can see why I wouldn’t want to repeatedly and indefinitely churn money into a game that isn’t noticeably better than another game I’ve already paid for once (Bejeweled), so why can’t these hundreds, thousands, millions of other people? It does not make any sense whatsoever. And this isn’t even considering the question above of why on Earth “core” gamers are apparently playing this game so much when there is so much other good stuff out there – too much for one games enthusiast to ever hope to fit into one lifetime, even if they became hikikomori in order to try and do so.

I am so, so torn about this sort of thing, and have been for a while now. On the one hand, it’s great that more and more people are embracing video games as a pastime, form of entertainment or even hobby. On the other, the swathes of people who are coming to gaming as a result of free-to-play mobile and social games are perpetuating a business model that, while immensely profitable, is not particularly friendly to the consumer and is actually quite unsafe to people who don’t keep a tight rein on their finances. More people playing games? Good. Sending the message that charging £35 for one powerup is okay? Very, very bad.

1155: The Tablet Revolution

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a dusty old bastard who is set in his ways like an old man. That or everyone else is just plain wrong. Or perhaps a combination of the two.

I’m specifically referring to the “tablet revolution” — that futuristic gubbins that supposes everyone is going to replace their computer/console/handheld/everything with a tablet such as an iPad or whateverthefuck the bajillion Android tablets are called these days. I even read an article earlier where someone from Zynga said that tablets are “becoming the ultimate game platform”.

I must respectfully disagree — at least for my needs and wants, anyway.

Our house has three tablets — an iPad 2, a Motorola Xoom and a Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 is currently in for repair, but got a fair amount of use by Andie, largely for free-to-play mobile games and Kairosoft titles. The iPad 2 also gets a fair amount of use by Andie for the same reasons. My Xoom gets barely any use, though the fact I have SNES, Mega Drive and various other emulators on there ready to go at a moment’s notice is pretty cool.

But yeah. The fact stands: I hardly use these devices at all. Why? Because for my purposes, they don’t offer a superior experience to other bits of kit. For gaming, I have consoles, dedicated handhelds, a laptop PC and a desktop PC. For work, I have my Mac, the aforementioned laptop PC and the desktop PC at a pinch. For browsing the Internet, I have… you know how this goes by now. For me, all of these devices offer a considerably superior experience to all of the tablets we have in this house.

Oh, sure, tablets can ably perform several of these functions, but they don’t do any of them as well as the pre-existing devices. About all they do offer, really, is the fact that they’re incredibly quick to turn on (assuming they have some charge left in them, which my Xoom in particular rarely does) and are a lot more portable and lightweight than many other devices.

But personally speaking, the fact that, say, the iPad is thin and lightweight isn’t enough to make up for the fact that it’s a lot more difficult to type on than an actual physical keyboard. And yes, I know, you can pay through the nose and get an iPad-compatible wireless keyboard (or a generic one for Android) but not only does that remove one of the main benefits of a tablet — its all-in-one portability — there’s other issues too: the pain in the arse it is to access the file system (on iOS, anyway; this is one area where Android is marginally better), the fact that proprietary iOS and Android apps rarely play nicely with established formats (just try getting a Microsoft Word file with any formatting or layout whatsoever to look even a little bit right in Pages for iOS), the fact that some of the work I do requires the precision of a mouse rather than the cack-handedness of a touchscreen, the fact that some websites I want to use are designed for use on a computer with a keyboard and mouse rather than a touchscreen and a virtual keyboard.

And don’t get me started on the games. “The ultimate gaming platform”? Don’t make me laugh, Zynga. While mobile and tablet games have been enormously successful in getting more and more new people into video games, and that’s a good thing for the industry as a whole, there is no way you can say with any good conscience that tablets are an adequate replacement for more established systems — and better-designed control schemes in particular. Have you ever tried to play a first-person shooter on a touchscreen tablet with no buttons? It is one of the most bewildering experiences you’ll ever encounter: why would anyone want to put themselves through that? There are certain genres that work well, of course: strategy games, board game adaptations, word games and adventure games are all good uses of a touchscreen interface… as are the never-ending throng of isometric-perspective building/farming/dragon-raising games that are little more than vehicles for monetisation. There are very few tablet-based games that hold my attention for more than a couple of minutes, in short — the last was Ghost Trick, which doesn’t really count as it was a conversion of a Nintendo DS game.

I guess that’s sort of the point, though. The main benefit of tablet devices (and smartphones, for that matter) is their immediacy — you turn them on, you tap a button and you’re (almost) straight into a game, and you can be out of it again within a matter of minutes if you just needed to fill an awkward silence or wait for someone to come back from the toilet. And that’s good, in a way; it just doesn’t really fit with how I play games. As I noted in a reply to Anne on yesterday’s post, I play games as my main form of entertainment. I don’t watch much TV, I don’t watch movies, listening to music is something I tend to do while engaged in some other activity, and so games are my main “relaxing time” activity. I want to sit and play something for an hour or two (or more) at a time, and between freemium energy please-insert-credit-card-to-continue bullshit and the “bite-size”, disposable, forgettable nature of most mobile/tablet games, I just don’t get a satisfying experience from them.

Meanwhile, the laptop I bought a short while back is easily my favourite piece of kit in this house. It’s powerful enough to play pretty-looking games like TrackMania, yet portable enough to carry around in a bag. Its battery life is decent (though not a patch on a tablet) and it has a nice screen. It’s a good means of playing visual novels without having to tie up the TV, and it copes well with anything I might want to throw at it while working on the go. In short, it’s an all-in-one device that does absolutely everything I want it to without making any compromises or dumbing the experience down at all. Sure, it takes a bit longer to turn on than the iPad, but it’s also infinitely more useful and fun to me.

Fuck the tablet revolution, basically. Long live the laptop. And the games console. And the desktop PC. And the dedicated handheld. And, you know, sometimes, just a piece of paper.

1152: Gaming on the Go

I play a lot of mobile games for my day job. Some of them are great. Some of them are fucking atrocious. Very few of them hold my attention after I have reviewed them. I’ve been trying to pin down why this is, and it comes down to a variety of factors.

Firstly, and probably most seriously, is that I don’t get any real feeling of “accomplishment” (or perhaps more accurately “fulfilment”) from playing them for the most part. In the vast majority of cases, I find myself drawn to games that have a bit more “structure” to them, usually in the form of a strong narrative. So many mobile games — particularly those with social features, or which purport to be a “mobile MMO” — completely eschew any sort of narrative in favour of a completely open-ended experience with no discernible end and no real “goal” save for the short-term objectives set by the ever-present quest system. If I have nothing to aim for, I have no incentive to play. And no, “reach level 50″ isn’t enough of an incentive for me — I know it is for some people, just not for me.

Secondly is the fact that it’s often difficult to shake the feeling that in many cases, there are plenty of better games I could be playing. I play something like Candy Crush Saga with its obnoxious £35 in-app purchases and just feel that I’d rather be playing Bejeweled 3 on PC; I play something like Infinity Blade and feel that if I wanted to play an extended Quick-Time Event, I could just play Fahrenheit or Heavy Rain and have a decent story to go along with my occasional carefully-timed button pushing; I play a slot machine game and I’d rather slit my wrists.

Thirdly is the frequency with which in-app purchases ruin everything. If they’re not throttling your play sessions (hello, Real Racing 3), they’re unbalancing the gameplay so that you need to pay money to progress — that or grind the same level for three thousand years to earn the money you need for the slightly better gun that is always just out of your reach. I also just get a bad taste in my mouth any time I play a game in which I have the choice between using my skill to progress or simply paying up to bypass anything that might be a bit difficult. Again, I know there are people who are fine with this; I’m just not one of them.

Fourthly is the fact that so many mobile games are so fucking completely clone-tastically identical to each other that I have absolutely no need (let alone desire) to play them in my free time. I have no desire to ever play another bubble shooter, Bejeweled ripoff, slot machine game, text-based “card battle RPG”, isometric-perspective citybuilder or “hardcore” (hah) strategy (hah) game. I wouldn’t mind so much if these developers were ripping off good ideas, but as far as I can tell they rip off the lowest common denominator, “most likely to make idiots pay through the nose in IAP” ideas, flooding the market with complete turds and making the genuinely good games utterly impossible to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

What this leaves me with is a significantly reduced proportion of mobile games that I can actually find enjoyable. If you discount all the directionless free-to-play crap in which the sole purpose of playing is mindless busywork with no long-term goal, there’s significantly less in the way of quality interactive entertainment. But thankfully there are still developers out there who cater to people like me, even though people like me don’t necessarily lead to obscene monthly profits.

Today I reviewed a title from an indie studio called Vlambeer. The game was called Ridiculous Fishing and has been in development for two and a half years, which is an incredibly long time for a mobile game. The reason for its incredibly long gestation period is that shortly after the team started development, they discovered that a large mobile game publisher called Gamenauts had completely ripped off their game idea (from an earlier Web-based version of what would later become Ridiculous Fishing) and released their own iOS game before Vlambeer could even officially announce their own offering. Understandably demoralised, they put the project on the backburner and almost cancelled it, but this week it finally hit the App Store and has been doing very well. It’s a $2.99 paid app with no in-app purchases whatsoever. I bought it immediately without hesitation; I like the developer, and I was sorry to see how bummed they were when their game was cloned. I also want to support the survival of the “pay once, play forever” business model, because it’s a dying breed in the mobile sector.

Ghost Trick. Chaos Rings. Sword of Fargoal. Anything by Jeff Minter. Anything by Cave. Support these developers and the great work they do, because if you don’t, mobile gaming will become a wasteland even more devoid of creativity than it already is. Fuck it if the price of admission isn’t “free” for these games; “free” doesn’t mean “free” any more. Forgo a latte and a sandwich from your local coffee house and support the hard work of developers who have brought you quality creative entertainment rather than regurgitated clonesville crap.

1112: Freebies

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a mobile game which carries the price tag of “free” must be in want of the contents of your wallet.

There are exceptions, of course, but it’s pretty rare to find something that you can download for free that actually is free these days.

It’s even rarer to find one of these games that doesn’t suck, as the market becomes increasingly-flooded with appalling “card battle” games and gameplay-free tap-fests in which you do little more than log in every few hours for a shower of coins.

The last free-to-play mobile games which really captured the public’s imagination came from Nimblebit. Their game Tiny Tower in particular got an alarming number of people hooked, despite the fact that there really wasn’t actually very much gameplay there at all, and there certainly wasn’t enough strategy to call it a successor to Sim Tower, like some people were. Their follow-up Pocket Planes captured people’s interest for a while, too, but by that point a lot of people were starting to get wise to the fact that these games were little more than fairly mindless diversions rather than anything which required something more than the very minimum of brainpower.

It’s been a while since Pocket Planes, and a whole ton of free-to-play mobile games have come and gone since then, many of them bloody awful. So it’s only fair, then, that I pay a bit of attention to some which aren’t complete crap and which are even actually — hush, now, don’t tell anyone – quite good.

Here they are. They’re free, of course, so you can try them out for yourself and see if they’re worth bothering with for more than a single session.

Pixel People

This new title published by Chillingo has more than a little bit in common with Nimblebit’s games. It’s populated by oddly-endearing pixelated people, there is no real hard “goal” as such and the majority of your time is spent making sure your income stream is as efficient as possible. You don’t have any expenses to worry about — it’s just a matter of how quickly you can make your pixelated town earn the spondulicks required to level up and expand your territory.

The basic gameplay in Pixel People revolves around genetic splicing. You’re building a Utopian colony of clones, you see, and in order for it to run smoothly you need clones in appropriate roles. When clones are delivered to your colony — which will happen regularly so long as you have houses available for them — you are able to pick two “jobs” that you already know and splice them together to hopefully make a new one. The interface gives you feedback as to whether or not the combination you’re trying will make a new job, so you won’t waste clones or time, and there are various ways to unlock hints (including, yes, paying up) as you progress through the game.

The thing I like about Pixel People is that as you play through, you’re constantly discovering new neat little things. You’re never doing much more than picking random combinations of jobs and tapping on buildings to keep them producing money, but every so often you’ll discover that tapping on a certain building performs a special function. Tap on the police station, for example, and you’ll find your achievements list — the game doesn’t even log in to Game Center until you’ve discovered this for yourself — and be able to claim rewards for challenges you’ve already completed. Tap on the observatory, and you can change the background of your colony — and also score yourself an achievement. While none of these things vastly affect the way you play the game and certainly don’t give it any “strategy,” they’re a nice touch that keeps you wanting to play without resorting to the usual Skinner Box tricks of using experience points and showers of gold.

By far the best thing about Pixel People, though, is that it just looks like one of those awesome gigantic pixel art town pictures. Despite the fact that the placement of your buildings and roads doesn’t matter in the slightest — and you can move anything around at will, anyway — I’ve found it oddly compelling to just want to arrange my buildings into an aesthetically-pleasing, vaguely “realistic” arrangement rather than just clustering them all together haphazardly like I did when I first started playing. So now my cloning centre has a road running from it with shops and other facilities down it, running around a corner (on which the L-shaped university building sits), past a large park and into a residential district. Beyond the residential area is some natural forest land, which is where the sheriff and his deputy live, next to the Utopium mine.

I’m overthinking it. It’s not that good, really, but if you liked Tiny Tower you’ll probably enjoy Pixel People – and, like Nimblebit’s titles, you never feel like you need to pay up to make satisfying amounts of progress.

Book of Heroes

I remember trying this for the first time a good few months back, and I remember quite liking it then. Book of Heroes is a role-playing game specifically designed to be played in short, bite-sized instalments on your phone. It’s largely text-based, its interface is designed for touchscreens, and it’s not trying to be World of Warcraft or anything.

Since I last tried it, what I believe used to be a single-player experience has gone full-on MMORPG on your ass. Now you can compare your characters with your friends, chat in real time with other people, join guilds and go on “raids” together in an attempt to prove your own supremacy.

Mobile MMORPGs of this type are often utter garbage, usually falling into the “card battle” category and being completely free of any sort of gameplay or strategy whatsoever. Where Book of Heroes differs is in the fact that it actually demands some interaction from its players; rather than following a linear line of quests, you gradually open up a large number of areas in the game world to “explore” (well, fight a string of battles in) and complete various objectives before returning to town to spend all that hard-earned loot.

Combat is the main area where Book of Heroes differs from its rivals. Rather than taking all control away from the player, as happens frustratingly frequently with this sort of game, Book of Heroes allows the player to control their character’s actions in a quasi-turn based format. Each action takes a set amount of real time to perform — we’re talking seconds here, not “pay up to do this quicker” — and while an action is “charging” the enemies are doing the same thing. It becomes a matter of weighing up whether or not it’s worth using the slow-charging super-powerful attack or whether you should try and get some quick hits in before the enemies have a chance to attack. It’s a fairly simplistic system, but it works well in the context of a mobile game.

____

The thing with both of these titles is that they understand how mobile players treat games — as a diversion to dip into for a few minutes at a time, not a massively compelling experience intended to keep them hunched over staring at their tiny screen for hours. They’re both eminently suitable for toilet play, and they’re both simple to pick up but provide plenty of long-term… I hesitate to say “challenge” because neither of them are difficult in the slightest… umm… content, I guess, for players to check out over time. So, in short, they’re at least worth a look.

Grab Pixel People here and Book of Heroes here.

1062: In Defense of Theatrhythm iOS

It’s not often you’ll read me defending a free-to-play title these days, what with their increasingly-obtrusive business models, but Square Enix’s latest release Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for iOS is not a game that people should be attacking.

Why? Because it’s not exploitative at all. You put as much money into it as you want, and then you stop paying and get to keep everything your money has bought. There’s no consumable energy systems, no gambling to get rare cards, no time-limited premium items… but I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to back up and explain what the deal is for those who are not familiar with Theatrhythm and its new iOS incarnation.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy was originally released as a Nintendo 3DS game — specifically, a full-price retail game on cartridge. It includes a variety of songs from all the Final Fantasy games from I-XIII (excluding the spin-off X-2 and XIII-2 titles) plus also offers some additional songs for download for a fee. It is a rhythm-based music game — you tap, swipe and hold the touchscreen in time with various pieces of music to trigger various visual effects inspired by past Final Fantasy games. It’s a simple but fun game, as most rhythm games are.

The game itself has several modes, and an obvious sense of progression. You play through all the songs on the easiest difficulty, then on the harder difficulty, all the while collecting an in-game currency called “Rhythmia”. When you’ve collected 10,000 Rhythmia, you’ve basically “finished” the game, though there’s nothing stopping you going back and trying to beat your scores, taking on the various “Challenge” missions or indeed purchasing the additional content.

Now Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is also an iOS game. Only instead of doing a straight port, Square Enix instead decided to revamp the game completely for mobile play. This is wise, because people play games on their mobile phone very differently to how they play on a dedicated games system, whether it’s a handheld or a TV-connected console.

Instead of the sense of progression, you’re presented with all the songs you have available — two in the basic free download, with others available via in-app purchase. You can play any of the songs you own at any time in a one-off session — good for on the toilet — or you can take on the “Quest” mode, which challenges you to make it through a bunch of songs randomly selected from your collection with a single HP bar. Quest mode rewards you with collectible cards and other goodies, so there’s plenty of replay value — meanwhile, those who have less time to spare can just fire it up for a single song, then quit.

The press surrounding the iOS version of Theatrhythm has been placing undue focus on the amount of downloadable content available for the game and how much it costs if you were to buy all of it. Now, I’ll grant to you that if you were to buy all of the songs available for Theatrhythm right now it will cost you a lot of money, and that figure will only increase as Square Enix adds content. But here’s the thing — no-one is saying that you have to buy all of that content. I have bought one pack of content (a bundle of music from Final Fantasy VIII) and I’m happy with that for now — when I tire of it, I can purchase more or put the game aside. There is no obligation for me to buy all of that content, because that’s not how free-to-play works — or not how it’s supposed to work anyway.

Put it this way — if you played Rock Band or Guitar Hero, did you feel obliged to purchase every single piece of DLC? Probably not; and here with Theatrhythm for iOS you don’t have the cost of entry — you simply pay for what you want. (Granted, both Rock Band and Guitar Hero come with a wide selection of songs, but I know very few people who like all of those)

I’d argue that Theatrhythm is actually one of the least-obnoxious implementations of free-to-play I’ve seen for a long time — as I said earlier, there’s no obligation to keep paying over and over again due to energy systems and consumable items — you simply put in as much money as you would like to spend, if any, and then you get to keep that content. The free version is limited in what it offers, but it’s enough for you to tell whether or not you’d like to spend more time with the game — if you decide you don’t like it, no problem, simply delete the app and you’re not out of pocket; if you decide you do like it, however, you can spread out how much content you choose to purchase over time.

Basically, I think what I’m saying is that we should stop trying to see free-to-play as universally evil. There are good and bad implementations, and Theatrhythm is a good one. Don’t believe me? Go play any of the interminable string of shitty card-battle games on the Mobage and GREE platforms to compare and contrast. Then you’ll see.

1012: Indisputable Measure of Quality

I can tell when an iOS app or game is genuinely good — I keep it on my phone after I’ve finished reviewing it.

For my day job, I spend an awful lot of time trawling through iOS games and apps of various descriptions and quality levels. There are some true gems among them, and there is some complete bollocks, too — and not just in gaming. I’ve lost count of the number of utterly pointless and unnecessary mobile-social networks I’ve come across in just the last few weeks, for example, and you’d be surprised how many Instagram clones there are out there.

On the gaming front, I’ve played too many completely shallow card-battle games to count — so many, in fact, that I’ve actually forgotten the name of most of them as they all blend into one another so much — and far too many isometric-perspective citybuilders that have absolutely no strategy whatsoever. I was also very disappointed to discover that the upcoming My Little Pony mobile game from Gameloft will be — you guessed it — an isometric-perspective citybuilder. Fuck.

But the amount of utter garbage on the App Store makes the titles that are actually good worth celebrating. As such, I’d like to present you with a breakdown of everything that is currently installed on my iPhone. I haven’t necessarily played or used some of these recently, but I like to keep them around because they have either been useful/fun in the past, or simply because I feel “attached” to them. Or in some cases, I’ve just forgotten that they’re on there.

Here we go, then. In no particular order… well, all right, in the order they’re in on my disorganised home screen:

• Google+ — official mobile app for Google’s oft-ridiculed-but-actually-rather-good social network. Beautifully-designed app in my opinion, though said design is a bit divisive.
• Facebook – official mobile app for the world’s most popular social network. The app may be a bit clunky and festooned with obtrusive “sponsored links”, but it’s finally become a reasonably solid experience.
• WordPress – official app for the service this blog is hosted on. The app is reasonably good, but limited compared to the Web interface. It also lacks a word count facility, which annoys me more than I thought it would.
• Skype – not actually sure why I still have this installed. In fact, I’ll delete it right now.
• imo.im – my instant messaging client of choice. Supports most protocols you’d care to think of, including Skype.
• Formspring – I haven’t used Formspring for ages but occasionally it’s fun to answer silly questions. The app makes that easy to do on the go.
• LinkedIn – also not entirely sure why I have this installed, given that I never use LinkedIn. Time to delete!
• Steam – official mobile app for Valve’s digital storefront and social client. Seems to lack push notifications, but otherwise quite useful to get in touch with friends for whom Steam is a reliable point of contact.
• Comic Touch – old app that hasn’t been updated for ages, but features some fun, silly camera effects and the ability to add annotations and speech bubbles. Mobile version of the software I use to create the comic strips on this blog.
• Instagram – still the best pretentious photography app in the world.
• Snapseed – a genuinely excellent and surprisingly powerful photo manipulation app.
• Brushes – best paint program for iPhone, bar none.
• Evernote – probably the most solid “cloud notebook” solution there is, particularly now it is compatible with a bunch of other apps.
• Bump – I never use this any more, but it carries positive associations of a very dear friend with it, so I’ve kept it around.
• Air Sharing – handy little Wi-Fi file sharing app, allowing transfer of files between computer and iPhone easily. Also has built-in image viewer, media player and whatnot.
• iDisk – urgh. FUCK YOU APPLE for removing the most useful thing about MobileMe.
• Red Laser Classic – occasionally useful for price-checking while you’re out and about, though you inevitably don’t have mobile signal when you’re in a Waterstones.
• HippoRemote Lite – an excellent, reliable and free virtual trackpad/keyboard that can be used to control computers.
• Box – I signed up for a Box account when someone tweeted one of those special offer links. I don’t think I’ve used it, but it’s handy to know it’s there if I need it.
• MotionX-Dice – no longer available, but an excellent virtual (six-sided) dice app.
• Night Stand – my favourite app that puts a big clock on your screen. Not sure this version is still available.
• Lloyds TSB – convenient access to mobile banking, though the app itself is a bit shit.
• Primrose – strange and addictive puzzle game by Jason Rohrer of Passage fame.
• WordFu – a game you should not start playing on the toilet.
• Scramble CE – Didn’t realise I still had this installed. Superceded by Scramble with Friends, which I can no longer be bothered to play.
• Bejeweled Blitz – Still a fine toilet game, even with the increasingly-obtrusive monetization.
• Spelltower – a brilliant little word puzzle game.
• Fruit Ninja – probably no introduction needed. Slice fruit, have fun.
• Tilt to Live – one of the best games iOS has ever seen, and certainly a game with one of the best soundtracks of all time. Known as “Try Not to Die” by my friend Woody, who can never remember the name of it.
• DoDonPachi Resurrection – spectacular, wonderful bullet hell shooter with an outstanding soundtrack, gorgeous graphics and a touchscreen control scheme that works really well.
• Mushihimesama Bug Panic – curious top-down action-adventure shooter from the DoDonPachi developers.
• Groove Coaster – one of the best rhythm games ever.
• Gridrunner – fantastic new version of one of Jeff Minter’s classic games.

(Jesus. I didn’t realise I had quite so much crap on here. No wonder I never have any space left. Continuing…)

• RogueTouch – An excellent iOS version of the original Rogue.
• Sword of Fargoal – Fantastic reimagining of a Commodore 64 roguelike classic.
• 100 Rogues – Possibly the best roguelike on the App Store. Apart from Sword of Fargoal and Rogue Touch.
• Frotz – Interpreter for text adventures and interactive fiction. Comes with access to a whole bunch of old and new classics.
• Various board game adaptations: Catan, Blokus, Carcassonne, Ascension, Bohnanza, Ticket to Ride, Elder Sign
• Necronomicon Redux – Fun Cthulhu-themed card game.
• Hard Lines – Geometry Wars meets Snake.
• Bit.Trip BEAT – Pong with rhythm.
• Space Invaders: Infinity Gene – Very little to do with the original. But awesome.
• Shazam – occasionally useful, but one of those apps you inevitably don’t have mobile signal when you actually want to use.
• Apple Remote – occasionally useful when, say, I want to listen to music from my Mac while I’m on the toilet. Somewhat superceded by the use of iTunes Match.
• Spotify – it’s Spotify on my phone.
• Modizer – brilliant chiptune and MOD file player with access to a variety of downloadable selections.
• Instacast – nifty podcast discovery and subscription app.
• NanoStudio – portable music production lab. Should probably play with this more than I have.
• Netflix – it’s Netflix on my phone.
• Co-Pilot GPS – this satnav app has never steered me wrong.
• King of Dragon Pass – terrifyingly complex strategy game that I don’t really understand, but would very much like to someday.
• Starbase Orion – it’s Master of Orion on my phone.
• Game Dev Story – The only Kairosoft game that’s really consistently held my interest.
• Cardinal Quest – Actually, this is one of the best roguelikes on the App Store.
• Pages – Not really sure how practical this is on iPhone, but it’s nice to have it there.
• MyFitnessPal – useful calorie-tracking app that I should probably start using again sometime.
• RunKeeper – best run/cycle/walk-tracking app there is.
• Diptic – got this when it was free, never used it.
• Zookeeper Battle – see this post.
• Super Hexagon – the most irritating game in the world.
• Figure – cool little synth toy thing from the makers of Reason.
• Any.DO – excellent to-do app.
• Neon Blitz – surprisingly addictive, mindless little game.
• Crunchyroll – anime wherever I go!
• Ayakashi: Ghost Guild – for some reason, I am still playing this and attempting to determine why this has appealed to me where other card-battle games have failed. I think it’s the fact it actually has a story, and is presented pretty well. In-app purchases are far too expensive though.
• Rune Gems – excellent Shanghai-meets-match-3 puzzler.
• Rayman Jungle Run – best game on iOS, hands down. I will fight you if you disagree. Unless you cite Tilt to Live as the best game on iOS, in which case I will forgive you.
• YouTube – everyone bitched about the lack of the built-in iOS YouTube app, but Google struck back with a new one that is infinitely better than the previous crap which had barely been updated since iOS 1.0.
• MangaCamera – this is awesome fun. Just try it.
• Skitch – skitchy skitchy skitch!

WHY AM I STILL DOING THIS

• Crazy Taxi – YA YA YA YA YAAAAA
• Carmageddon – GOD DAMN MOTHER FU–
• Sonic Jump – BLING! BLING! BLING!
• Funky Smugglers – FUNK! FUNK! FUNK!

oh, thank God, my battery has died. Oh well. I’ll have to leave that there. Anyway. I hope you have found this list helpful, interesting or just, you know, eh. Whatever. I don’t know. I’m tired. Bugger off. *slumps face-first onto keyboard*

1007: Battle of the Cards

I’ve made my distaste for the growing trend for Japanese “card-battling” mobile-social games well-known on these pages a number of times in the past, but I’ve been growing increasingly conscious of the fact that I must be missing something. After all, these titles consistently show up in the Top Grossing charts on both Android and iOS, so there must be something to them that keeps people playing and, indeed, spending.

The other day, I reviewed a new mobile game from Zynga called Ayakashi: Ghost Guild. Before I go any further, let me explain something about the way Zynga does business for those who have always given their titles a wide berth for whatever reason.

Zynga behave very much like Apple do, in that they’re not trendsetters — or perhaps more accurately, they’re rarely the first to try something, as they’re both often the ones to make something popular. What both companies are inclined to do is hang back, watch and wait to see what early adopters of new technology and systems are doing. What is proving popular? What are users ignoring? What are the potential pitfalls in doing something new, and can they be avoided?

Once they’ve done this, they’ll swoop in with something fundamentally very similar to that which has come before, but polished to a fine sheen. Zynga’s games are rarely, if ever, original, but it’s hard to deny that they often have a significantly higher degree of polish than many other games that may have gotten there first. Similarly, Apple’s work on iOS frequently lags behind Android in terms of features — a frequent criticism in the interminably tedious fanboy wars — but when said features hit, they tend to be implemented very well. (Of course, there are exceptions in both cases, but these patterns are noticeable enough to be worth commenting on.)

Anyway, I digress; Ayakashi: Ghost Guild is a card-battling title from Zynga, and it follows the outline above to the letter. It’s clear that the specific developers behind it have examined what makes early trailblazers tick – many of which, like the inexplicably popular Rage of Bahamut, are very rough around the edges — and then given the whole set of proceedings a pleasing coat of paint. Where Rage of Bahamut is silent throughout, Ayakashi: Ghost Guild has an atmospheric, context-sensitive soundtrack; where Rage of Bahamut’s story is completely throwaway and irrelevant, delivered via blocks of text that most players will ignore completely, Ayakashi: Ghost Guild makes an effort to introduce characters and an unfolding narrative with first-person visual novel-style scenes; where Rage of Bahamut’s interface resembles a Geocities website from the late ’90s… Ayakashi: Ghost Guild’s interface resembles a Geocities website from the late ’90s designed by someone who owns a copy of Photoshop. (You can’t have everything.)

The thing that I’ve found most obnoxious about these games in the past is their seeming total lack of gameplay. But have I been giving them a fair shot? I have delved into Ayakashi in some detail over the past few days in an attempt to try and understand the appeal a little better, and I’m still not quite sure that I’ve made my mind up.

For those who haven’t played one of these games before, allow me to give you a rundown of how play works, with specific regard to Ayakashi. You start by picking a card, usually from one of three different types that have particular strengths and weaknesses. Cards have an attack rating, a defense rating and a “spirit” value. They also generally have some lovely (and usually rather boob-heavy) Japanese-style artwork on them. Ayakashi: Ghost Guild does not disappoint in any of these regards.

Following this, there are two main components to gameplay — the single-player component, referred to in Ayakashi as the “Story” mode; and the multiplayer component, described simply as “Battle” mode.

In Story mode, you’re presented with a series of linear chapters to work through. To work through a chapter in Ayakashi (and, indeed, in all other games of this type) you simply press a button. At this point, several things happen: an animation plays, you lose some health, you gain some experience and you gain some progress in the chapter. Occasionally you will discover an item or a card — each chapter usually has a set number of hidden items which are clearly marked and discovered completely by chance — or run into another player, at which point you can add them to your “crew” if you have enough slots left. If you fill up the chapter’s progress bar, you’re given a story scene and can then move on — or stay behind if you want to try and collect the remaining items — and if you fill up the experience bar, you gain a level, gain some points to spend on your basic stats and refill your health to full. Your first few levels give you more health than is needed to level up a single time; after you reach about level 8 or 9, however, you’ll either have to wait for health to regenerate (at the rate of 1 point per minute) or purchase restorative items using “Gold”, a currency which may only be acquired through in-app purchases. Generally speaking, health is exchanged for experience at a 1:1 ratio; as the story progresses, the health cost and related experience gain for a single press of the “Investigate” button increases.

When levelling up, you have three stats to power up: health, which upgrades the amount in your health pool, allowing you to play Story mode for longer; Attack Spirit, which determines the cards you can hold in your “attack deck” for Battle mode; and Defense Spirit, which determines the cards you can hold in your “defense deck” to protect yourself against attacks from other players when you’re not there.

Battle mode consists of you picking an opponent and then letting your attack deck compete against your opponent’s defense deck. Some cards have special abilities which boost their base attack and/or defense power, and these are triggered at the start of battle. Following this, the winner is automatically determined with no interaction required from the players. This allows battles to unfold without both players having to be present. After a battle, your available Attack Spirit is depleted by the spirit value of the cards you used, meaning at least initially you can only do one battle at most in a single session if you use your most powerful cards — and why wouldn’t you?

There’s a reason to play Battle mode in Ayakashi – the collection of Sealstones. If you collect all of the colours of a particular Sealstone set, you’ll get a rare card that is usually significantly more powerful than the ones you just find naturally in Story mode. Beat another player in Battle mode and you get to steal one of the Sealstones they have — but naturally, others will be trying to do the same thing to you, meaning you’ll have to leave a strong defense deck behind in order to ensure they don’t get nicked while you’re not playing. You can also, you guessed it, buy special items with that in-app purchase currency Gold to protect your Sealstones against being half-inched by randoms.

Despite being a massively-multiplayer game, direct interaction between players in Ayakashi is, like most other games of its type, very limited. You can add a limited number of other players to your “crew”, with the limit increasing as you level up. When you add a new crew member, you get more ability points — more than when you level up, in fact. You then have the option of “poking” or commenting at them once per day, and are rewarded with “Summon Points” for doing so. Collect ten Summon Points and you can get a free, usually shit, card. You can also get two additional free, usually shit, cards per day — one at any time, the other only at lunchtime.

Those free, usually shit, cards have a use, though — fusion. By picking a card to enhance and then choosing up to ten “material” cards to fuse with it, you can level it up, which increases both its attack and defense power and often makes any special abilities it has more effective, too. Some free, usually shit, cards are specifically designed purely for fusion purposes as they are otherwise terrible but provide massive experience point boosts; in other cases, ensuring you fuse cards of the same “type” (ideally identical ones) together nets you the biggest bonuses. Fusion costs in-game money to perform, though it’s the type of money you can earn in the game very easily without having to spend real cash — the game bombards you with it throughout Story mode and you can sell those free, usually shit, cards you’ve been building up over time.

That’s about it. You grind through Story mode, stopping when you run out of health (or until you purchase more if you just can’t wait); you twat another player or two in the face to nick something, then you set the game down for a few hours and come back later. Then you repeat the process.

Is that fun? I’m honestly not sure. There is a certain degree of satisfaction to gradually levelling things up and making them more powerful — progress bars are, as we all know, a powerful motivational tool. The fact that Ayakashi has actually made an effort with its story makes it considerably more interesting than most games in this oversaturated genre, too. But the lack of interaction bugs me somewhat; if I’m supposed to be “investigating” a location, I’d like to be actually doing that investigating, not just tapping an “Investigate” button over and over again. If I’m fighting an opponent, I’d like to do more than simply sit back and let the battle resolve itself.

On the other hand, there’s an argument that all Ayakashi and its numerous competitors are providing is the same experience you’d get from a “proper” MMO, albeit stripped down to its most bare essentials. What do people like to do in MMOs? Level up, so make that easy. What else do people like to do in MMOs? Compete against other players, so make that easy too. What these games are in effect doing is stripping down the conventions of MMOs into something that is a lot more friendly to mobile gamers’ lifestyles — you can pick up Ayakashi for five minutes and “accomplish” something, whereas to do the same in, say, World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 takes a lot longer. But in that longer amount of time, you actually get to do stuff.

As I say, after having spent a bit of time with Ayakashi in particular, I find myself a little conflicted. With Rage of Bahamut, I felt justified in my dislike; it’s a poorly put-together, amateurish effort that actually felt quite insulting to play. With Ayakashi, meanwhile, Zynga has taken the time to do its usual spit-and-polish routine to make something that isn’t outright embarrassing to play from a presentation perspective. I’m just not entirely sure there’s a game worth playing — much less paying for – beneath the glitz.

I will feel even more conflicted when the Persona 4 card-battling game eventually makes it to Western app stores.

#oneaday Day 977: The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Pleasure

If you own an iOS device and haven’t yet purchased a copy of Rayman Jungle Run, congratulations! You are the problem with mobile gaming. I won’t get into why you should play Rayman Jungle Run – you can read my review for that — but I will reassure you that it is a game that you pay for once and then never have to pay anything for ever again. (At the moment, anyway.)

On the surface, it’s easy to see why the freemium/free-to-play sector has exploded quite so much. People casually browsing for things are always going to be immediately more attracted to things that say “Free” on them rather than things that say “$2.99″ on them, regardless of whether or not that “Free” comes with a caveat, which it usually does. But there’s a growing level of discontent and frustration with this fact, particularly among “core” gamers — or, more specifically, people who have been playing games for many years. We’ve reached a stage now where this demographic actually wants to seek out paid games and apps because they know that “Free” tag always comes with a catch — and, sadly, more and more paid games are also coming with “Get More Coins!” buttons and unbalanced gameplay attached in an attempt to squeeze more and more money out of their player base.

I always have a curious sense of hypocrisy over this issue. I mean, my day job is reviewing mobile and social games, after all, and from a critical perspective I have to consider each title from a business perspective as well as that of the player — is the game going to make enough money for the developer for it to have been worthwhile? I can do this with no problem — though I will call out titles that are obviously taking the piss with their monetisation strategies — but it doesn’t stop me from having a sour taste in my mouth whenever I’m “off the clock”, as it were. I’ve dialed back my consumption of iOS games massively since realising that the vast majority of them are little more than time and money sinks designed as not-particularly-subtle attempts to extract players’ money from them. And many developers and publishers don’t even attempt to hide this fact — we’re dealing with an industry that refers to users who spend a lot of money on in-app purchases and DLC as “whales”, after all, which should give you an idea of the sort of people we’re dealing with a lot of the time.

Now, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t make money from their creations. Quite the opposite, in fact — I told you at the start of this post that you should pay money and download Rayman Jungle Run, for example, because it’s great. But herein lies the rub — you should pay money for things that you think are worth money, things that you want to support, not things that are designed to psychologically manipulate you into pressing that “Get More Coins!” button. As soon as you become aware of a game’s business model, it stops being quite so fun — at least, that’s how I feel. Apparently I’m in something of a minority, though.

There’s a problem with the system as it stands right now, which is partly why this situation has arisen. The distorted sense of value that the App Store has brought means that if people see anything that costs more than a dollar, they won’t buy it unless they’re absolutely sure it’s worth the money. (These people are probably the same people who will happily spend four or five dollars on a coffee — yes, I’m aware that I’m English and automatically using dollars as my default currency, but that’s what you get after working for American employers for the last two years — and consequently are quite happy to throw their money at something they will piss out within an hour or two) To exacerbate this fact, there is no requirement for app developers to provide a free trial of their products. Some do anyway, either by offering a free “lite” version of the app or distributing the app for free then unlocking it via in-app purchase, but there are many cases where it is impossible to “try before you buy” — so people end up not buying at all, instead reaching for those ever-tempting “free” apps and their spiderweb of monetisation.

Free trials won’t solve the issue entirely, obviously, but they would be a good start. Personally speaking, I just find it a crying shame that a gaming platform with as much obvious potential as iOS (and, to a lesser extent due to lack of support by many developers, Android) finds itself focusing on shallow, fun-free timesinks rather than truly creative games — of which there are many available that go completely unnoticed. Quality games like Rayman Jungle Run should be celebrated and championed; crap like Tap Campus Life should be ridiculed.

That’s enough for now.

Oh, one final thing. Buy Rayman Jungle Run.

I thenkyaw.

#oneaday Day 965: Geometry Makes the Best Games

Being “in the zone” is a curious experience. On the one hand, it’s enjoyable and satisfying, whatever the context — sports, games, music, writing — but on the other, it can be terrifying. The second you become aware of your own “in the zoneness”, panic strikes. Your pulse races and you worry that you will fall out of said zone any moment. You struggle to maintain your “in the zoneness” but as you become more and more stressed, you get more and more likely to make some sort of critical mistake until, eventually, you give up and go and do something else.

This is the feeling you are constantly battling against while playing Super Hexagon, a new iOS game from Terry “VVVVVV“ Cavanagh.

In Super Hexagon, you play the role of a teeny-tiny triangle attempting to not meet a sticky end against the various walls that are being inexplicably flung at it from outside the screen. Or perhaps it’s attempting to escape a maze without crashing into any walls. Or… well, it doesn’t really matter what it actually is. It’s an abstract, “pure gameplay” game in which the aim is simply to survive as long as possible. In essence, it’s similar to those “endless running” games that are so popular on mobile platforms right now, with the difference being that you’re rotating a shape around a point rather than jumping, ducking and sliding.

In your first couple of games of Super Hexagon, you’re likely to last a matter of seconds — five at most. This brutal level of difficulty will likely be enough to put many people off immediately, and that’s fine. Stick with it, though, and you’ll find yourself increasingly slipping into “the zone” as you survive just a tiny bit longer each time, your skills consistently improving as you learn to spot the various patterns that come your way — and how to deal with them.

Then, of course, you make the mistake of thinking “gosh, I’m doing quite well this time” and plough straight into a wall while 0.05 seconds away from beating your high score. Then, you will immediately tap the screen to try again and be unable to break this cycle for at least half an hour. (Consequently, I do not recommend playing Super Hexagon on the toilet.)

The simple, addictive, abstract nature of the game brings my love affair with Geometry Wars 2 to mind. Both are completely different types of game, of course, but both also have a lot in common. Both tend to have relatively short play sessions, both have an aesthetic so abstract that it stirs the imagination to a surprising degree, and both have a relatively low “penalty” for failure. Mess up and you’re back in the game within a second or two to try again.

This latter quality is one of the most important factors in making a game “addictive”. Super Meat Boy is another game that understands this — fail a level in that and simply by pressing a button, you’re trying again, with no loading breaks, no obtrusive “You Failed” screens or statistical breakdowns, just a tap of the “Retry” button and an immediate response. Geometry Wars 2 did this; Super Hexagon does this. Because it’s so simple and habit-forming to just tap the screen to retry after a failed attempt, you get locked into a compulsive cycle, determined that this time is the one, that this time you’ll be able to progress just a little bit further and hear Jenn Frank’s voice whispering the name of a shape with even more sides at you.

Super Hexagon is out now for just 69p. Grab it from the App Store.