I wanted to write this post a little sooner, but I had a more pressing priority to deal with and writing this wasn’t even an option for procrastination purposes. Therefore, I’m breaking my usual one-game-per-post review and mashing them all into this single post. I’m hoping I won’t forget any games I’ve sampled over the past couple of weeks (another break in my typical one-week trial). On the PC-front, I’ve sampled Osmos and Penumbra. On the iOS-front, I’ve sampled Power of Logic, Tiny Wings, Amazing Breaker, Stay Alight!, Infinity Blade II, Last Temple 2, Mirror’s Edge, and Liquid Sketch.

I had high hopes for Osmos and Penumbra as in my mind they’ve been labeled as “classics” of the indie-genre. Instead, I was sadly disappointed. I played through the tutorial levels of Osmos which were already comfortably challenging, but not hair-ripping-ly so. Venturing out into the “real” levels, I found myself more frustrated than relaxed. The “slow” pace of Osmos felt like an illusion sometimes and the so-called “ambient” label I thought was associated with the game seemed to be unfitting. Yes, the soundtrack is mellow and the gameplay isn’t anything like getting your heart racing, but gritting your teeth in frustration? Yep. Relaxing? Not so much. I could be approaching it wrong, aiming for the destination rather than the journey. I was ready to uninstall the game after several failed attempts over a couple of days, but I took a break for a few days and fired it up again the past couple of days, playing mainly to pass the time, and I found myself enjoying the game a little more. I don’t think I’ll be keeping it for much longer, however.

I didn’t know what to expect with Penumbra, except it was one of those games that had been tossed around a lot in various places I frequent. My procrastination in finally installing it was worth the procrastination time – and perhaps more. In less than a minute, I was already dizzy and, in fact, I felt so dizzy afterward that I didn’t bother trying to continue and instead uninstalled it later the same day. If a game makes me dizzy so quickly with lingering effects, it doesn’t deserve multiple chances. I have made exceptions, such as Guild Wars 2, but in the first couple of areas I managed to get through, Penumbra failed to capture my interest. Looking up reviews on dizziness related to the game, I found the game had mixed reviews. Maybe FPS games still aren’t my thing.

I’ve been picking up free games on the iOS front. After initially being very picky with my games, I’ve been a little looser on my criteria and anything that looks remotely interesting and is free, I’ve grabbed. I blame the App Store’s 5th Anniversary for this change.

Logic reminds me of an old Apple game I used to play in computer class during 1st grade. It was a guess-the-5-letter-word type game and I enjoyed playing it, even though the word I encountered most often was “honey.” Basically, you would type in five letters and the game would respond with which letters you got correct. Then, like hangman but without the sacrificial stick figure, you’d try and figure out what the word was. Logic is similar, but I sometimes wonder if there are bugs. In Logic, you have a number of colored “capacitors” (not sure what else to call them, some places refer to them as “pegs”) and your goal is to get the colors in the right positions in a row using the fewest moves possible. Your only hints are an orange light, which tells you how many colors you have correct but in the wrong position, and a green light, which tells you how many colors in the right positions. I’ve had games where I had green lights that suddenly turn to orange lights when I know they should still be green. It’s like the game switches up what the “code” is supposed to be in the middle of the game. It’s the only frustrating thing about the game, but otherwise I’ve found it to be a nice way to pass the time.

Tiny Wings is one of those “diamonds in the rough” games. I never bought into the Angry Birds series, which is why you won’t see it in my Library even though the Star Wars edition has gone for free a few times now. (I may give in later, but for the moment my library is Angry Birds-free.) But, there’s just something about the procedurally generated levels and cute bird sounds that get to me. Maybe it has something to do with the Owell character (I love his hooting sounds) and my current obsession with owls. Or, maybe it’s the way the deceptively simple-looking game can get my heart racing enough that I know I shouldn’t be playing it right before bed. Whatever it might be, the simple tap-hold-release interaction to dive down hills to gain enough momentum to use uphill slopes in order to “fly” is associated with a simple challenge – are you tapping at the right time – that can make you unsure whether you’ll end up grounding your bird or send him flying further. That is where the heart-racing excitement begins. I intend to keep this game as another way to pass the time.

Amazing Breaker is another Angry Bird-like game. Whereas Tiny Wings has the spirit of ball-like birds, Amazing Breaker has the spirit of the actual slingshot gameplay. The goal is to blow up frozen artwork using a variety of bombs. One type of bomb can split and attach to the artwork, another can literally go through the artwork and when its momentum stops, it explodes, a third works similar to the second but you can leave a trail of bombs that attach to the artwork similar to the first type, and so on. As much as I enjoyed blowing up the artwork, it is also a puzzler that involves a little bit of skill, at least with timing and angling. I had it on my phone for a while, but when I stop playing something for a couple of weeks, I figure it’s time to remove it and so off it went. Nonetheless, it’s another good time-passing game.

Stay Alight! is another sling-shot-like game. I tried the first couple of levels, so I haven’t gotten far in it yet, but as far as I can tell, the goal is to remove pests either by hitting them directly with balls of light or knocking over crates and boxes onto them. I’m still on the fence in regards to whether I “like” it or not as I didn’t spend a lot of time with it.

Infinity Blade II captured my attention for a while, but after dying once and having to start all over again, my interest rapidly faded. The game is in 3D and I felt is 90% about combat, 8% about video cutscenes, and another 2% divided among looking around for treasure boxes and determining which path you want to take. Most of the development work went into the combat, which is real-time, to an extent, and definitely has a different take from what is “traditional” from the arcade/console-era. Combat heavily relies on your ability to block, dodge, and parry your enemy’s attacks. Successfully doing one of these three things eventually creates an opening for you to deal a few slashes of your own before going back to being on the defense. What is most impressive, if you are using a sword, is the angle of the slash will follow your swipe, rather than being a stock of typical angles. This was fun for a little bit, but I found it got a little too repetitive and boring, which has led me to not want to load up the game. Not even my exploration-spirit has wanted to explore the various paths through a ruinous castle keep because each time you choose a path, you watch your character walk down that path using a cutscene, then you have to fight a monster or two in order to continue down another path. Not to mention, the monsters scale up to match your level so you’re guaranteed a challenge after each resurrection. From an implementation standpoint, it is akin to Myst or Doom, both pioneers of 3D games for the PC by cutting out certain types of otherwise resource-hogging activities – Myst was able to keep its resolution by using largely stock environment scenes with smaller, animated images to add “life” to otherwise static images, where as Doom lowered the resolution and quality of graphics to allow for real-time user-interaction with the environment (see Making the Water Move by Andrew Hutchison for more details; My grad school days didn’t go waste, I swear..). I don’t see myself loading it up again to try to finish, but it was an interesting game to play.

Last Temple 2 is a match-3 type game using a hexagonal grid. I was playing Candy Crush on Facebook for a while because a large group of my friends have been playing it until I hit a wall and needed 3 friends to help me out, but no one was willing to give me train tickets so I quit. Candy Crush is a square grid and actually relies on switching adjacent objects to make matches of 3, where as Last Temple 2 is a drag-to-match game. I was intrigued by the hexagonal grid and realized it made more sense for this kind of match-3 game and felt quite geeky about it. (I actually have a few articles on hexagonal grids I should get around to reading and studying when I have the time..) I had a lot of fun until it started insisting I use power ups to complete levels. So, it can be a bit mind-numbing matching tiles in a row just to get that one last tile flipped to finish the level, but the variety of power ups and effects when you match-3+ with a special tile makes it a bit interesting. However, I did find that special tiles can also impede your progress if you’re not careful. I’ve reached the point where it feels almost, but not quite, impossible to pass a level without having power ups. I intend to keep playing for a bit, but I’m on the fence on whether I’ll keep it as a permanent member of an on-device game in the library.

Mirror’s Edge is a game I wanted to play on the PC, but have settled for the iOS version for now. It’s a runner-type game with various gestures to support different types of movements such as sliding, wall running, and of course jumping. I found the gestures sometimes didn’t register, especially during wall runs which can get frustrating. It was interesting while I was playing it on a long road trip, but I haven’t found the desire to load it up again – or finish, for that matter.

Liquid Sketch is a game that uses liquid physics combined with the device’s gyroscope to control the liquid’s movement. I enjoyed this puzzler-like game with its colorful graphics and variety of challenges. I never got extremely frustrated that I had to shut it off and take a break, which is a good thing in my mind. I could see myself playing it again on another road trip and maybe even while at at my desk when needing to take a short break. There’s just something relaxing about watching the movement of colored water following the physics you’d expect from watching water sloshing around confined spaces.
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I’ve covered a lot of games in this post. I don’t have a spreadsheet for the iOS games as I wasn’t expecting to be gathering a lot of them in such a short period of time, or sampling so many in a similarly short period of time for that matter, so I felt I should write up a quick post of my thoughts on each of the games I’ve played so far without going into a full one-week review as I’ve done with my indie games. I have another batch of iOS games loaded for the next Roundup, whenever that may be, so perhaps this will turn into a series like my one-week reviews in the future.