Saturday 31 March 2018
Android Games: Sequels and More
Having previously blogged about my favorite Android games to do so again might seem a bit redundant. However, I feel that things have moved on a lot since 2012. I feel like there's now more choice, and yet somehow at the same time more standardisation as biggish games companies have emerged. More often it's the same people behind two of your favorite games. It feels more like an established industry now rather than just people throwing things at a wall to see what sticks.
I'm going to start off with some sequels to established "classics". First Angry Birds Star Wars. I'm not going to lie, when I first heard about this it sounded truly bizarre. But it works! It really really works. They kind of combine story and character elements from Star Wars with game play from the original Angry Birds, with a little of the physics from Angry Birds Space thrown in. There are brand new elements you can use such as "Luke" birds with lightsabers, and somehow it's really good fun. It doesn't feel like just some bizarre money-making merchandising at all. It's great!
Next another sequel, Temple Run 2. Again, this was a game I was a little sceptical about. Temple Run is already perfectly good as it is. What possible reason could you have for making a sequel? Is this basically just going to be a graphics upgrade? But no, the Temple Run people have done it again! While gameplay is essentailly the same, they have genuinely added more elements to the game to make it more fun! As well as walls to run along there are now ropes to swing on, hills to go up and down, rivers to ride down and crazy mine cart rides. There are more obstacles and more special powers. It's great!
The next game is called Jelly Splash. It's pretty similar in format to a lot of the King Saga games (LINK) but made by a different company. You have jelly candies on your screen and you have to draw lines through ones that are the same colour and they all disappear. You amke jellies to achieve different goals, such as clearing the screen of grey slime, freeing trapped jellies and bringing diamonds down to the bottom. Like the King games this one has many different levels to progress through. It's good fun.
Finally, another game that is a variation on Jewels. There seem to be loads (LINK) of these types of games around. This oone is called Zookeeper Battle. You have a grid of different zoo animals, and you have to match lines of three of more of the same animal. When you make a match they vanish. Some of the animals give you attack points, and others give you defense points. You have got a very small amount of time to gain as many points as possible and use the points to battle it out against an opponent. Winning gives you certain rewards you can use to biuld up your Zoo, which allows you to play little side games against a computer opponent. It sounds fairly dull, but it is pretty addictive. You get really into trying to increase your World Ranking against other players.
I'm going to start off with some sequels to established "classics". First Angry Birds Star Wars. I'm not going to lie, when I first heard about this it sounded truly bizarre. But it works! It really really works. They kind of combine story and character elements from Star Wars with game play from the original Angry Birds, with a little of the physics from Angry Birds Space thrown in. There are brand new elements you can use such as "Luke" birds with lightsabers, and somehow it's really good fun. It doesn't feel like just some bizarre money-making merchandising at all. It's great!
Next another sequel, Temple Run 2. Again, this was a game I was a little sceptical about. Temple Run is already perfectly good as it is. What possible reason could you have for making a sequel? Is this basically just going to be a graphics upgrade? But no, the Temple Run people have done it again! While gameplay is essentailly the same, they have genuinely added more elements to the game to make it more fun! As well as walls to run along there are now ropes to swing on, hills to go up and down, rivers to ride down and crazy mine cart rides. There are more obstacles and more special powers. It's great!
The next game is called Jelly Splash. It's pretty similar in format to a lot of the King Saga games (LINK) but made by a different company. You have jelly candies on your screen and you have to draw lines through ones that are the same colour and they all disappear. You amke jellies to achieve different goals, such as clearing the screen of grey slime, freeing trapped jellies and bringing diamonds down to the bottom. Like the King games this one has many different levels to progress through. It's good fun.
Finally, another game that is a variation on Jewels. There seem to be loads (LINK) of these types of games around. This oone is called Zookeeper Battle. You have a grid of different zoo animals, and you have to match lines of three of more of the same animal. When you make a match they vanish. Some of the animals give you attack points, and others give you defense points. You have got a very small amount of time to gain as many points as possible and use the points to battle it out against an opponent. Winning gives you certain rewards you can use to biuld up your Zoo, which allows you to play little side games against a computer opponent. It sounds fairly dull, but it is pretty addictive. You get really into trying to increase your World Ranking against other players.
Saturday 24 March 2018
Android Games: King Saga Games
Ok, so King are a terrible company. They take other people's ideas for games, drag them out into 400 levels and make money off their customers by asking you to pay for things every five minutes or so. Having said that, their games are actually quite good, if unoriginal.
Their most famous work is Candy Crush Saga. It's basically Jewels. You have a board of different coloured candies and when you match three or more in a row of the same colour, they vanish. You move them round by swapping one with a neighbour, and you can only move them to make a group of three or more. Sounds simple enough. But they've come up with all sorts of ways to keep things interesting, like having different goals, different combinations doing different things and different obstacles. So far I'm almost 200 levels in and not bored yet. Annoyingly though, the game is a battery eater, constantly asks you for money or to connect to facebook and you only get five lives and then you have to wait (or pay) for them to refill. It does also have the same irritating music for every level and and sickly sweet graphics. I'm still playing though. So are most other people.
Candy Crush Saga has an even more fun successor called Candy Crush Soda. The basic principle is the same, but this one has added fun elements. There are soda bottles to break open which gives the game the added complicaton of a liquid level. Sometimes you have to raise the level of the liquid to beat the level. Other times there are objects hidden behind the grid. The music is also less annoying.
Next up, Farm Heroes Saga. Another almost identical game to Jewels. It involves matching three of more of the same type of fruit or vegetable. Its biggest achievement is that despite being based on the same principle as Candy Crush Saga, it manages to feel like a very different game. Quite astounding. The goals of the game are more based on what you match, rather than matching things to achieve a different goal. There are more static objects on the grid and more ways of generating the fruits/veg you need. And again, the music is less annoying.
Next Diamond Digger Saga. It's similar to, well, I can't specifically think of a named game, but any of those games where if you touch a group of similar coloured blocks they disappear. I actually really enjoy this one. There's a fair amount of stratgy to it. You have a fixed number of moves to tap groups of blocks to clear a path for water to flow through. You can't afford to waste a single move. It's not all played on one grid either. You need to work your way through a series of underground rooms. This one too gives you different goals to reach. You might have to free trapped creatures, collect prizes or simply gain a high score to beat it. Good times.
Next Bubble Witch Saga. This is based on various other bubble popping games, but again it has added extras to keep it interesting. The main difference is the scoring system. You have a series of pots at the bottom to catch your falling bubbles. Each is worth a certain score. There are also spiders hanging just above the pots. Bouncing falling bubbles on your spiders gives you a higher score. Every time you perform a successful move a spider appears and every time a move fails you lose two spiders. What's frustrating is that fairly frequently you meet the game's objectives but still fail because your score isn't high enough. You've buggered up too often to have enough spiders to give you a decent score. What surpirsed me when I started playing it is that you are given a line to show where you're aiming. I thought this would make the game too easy, but it really doesn't help all that much. The game is far more about strategy than aim. There are also lots of trick bubbles to keep the game interesting, such as bubbles full of poison that kill your spiders if you pop them, green infected bubbles that spread their infection to the rest if you don't get rid of them fast enough and bombs bubbles that explode if you don't get rid of them in time. It's a good game. I know there is a Bubble Witch 2 out as well though I havent played it much and can't compare the two. One thing I have noticed though is that in 2 the witch is a lot more sexed up. Sigh. So unnecessary.
Lastly Papa Pear Saga. This one is basically Peggle. You have a pear (a round one, obviously) and you have to fire it down the screen to achieve various objectives. It bounces a LOT, making the world's most annoying Doing! sound as it does. The more it bounces the more points you get. Different levels give you a different number of pears to use. Objectives include getting pears into every single bucket at the bottom, knocking fruits into the baskets at the bottom and bouncing on certain numbers of objects to make them disappear. Like Bubble Witch, as well as meeting the level's objectives you need a sufficiently high score to win the level, though this is easier to do in Papa Pear. There are also things you can bounce on to get certain bonuses, such as a higher score, extra pears appearing, pears becoming giant etc. It's pretty good fun!
Their most famous work is Candy Crush Saga. It's basically Jewels. You have a board of different coloured candies and when you match three or more in a row of the same colour, they vanish. You move them round by swapping one with a neighbour, and you can only move them to make a group of three or more. Sounds simple enough. But they've come up with all sorts of ways to keep things interesting, like having different goals, different combinations doing different things and different obstacles. So far I'm almost 200 levels in and not bored yet. Annoyingly though, the game is a battery eater, constantly asks you for money or to connect to facebook and you only get five lives and then you have to wait (or pay) for them to refill. It does also have the same irritating music for every level and and sickly sweet graphics. I'm still playing though. So are most other people.
Candy Crush Saga has an even more fun successor called Candy Crush Soda. The basic principle is the same, but this one has added fun elements. There are soda bottles to break open which gives the game the added complicaton of a liquid level. Sometimes you have to raise the level of the liquid to beat the level. Other times there are objects hidden behind the grid. The music is also less annoying.
Next up, Farm Heroes Saga. Another almost identical game to Jewels. It involves matching three of more of the same type of fruit or vegetable. Its biggest achievement is that despite being based on the same principle as Candy Crush Saga, it manages to feel like a very different game. Quite astounding. The goals of the game are more based on what you match, rather than matching things to achieve a different goal. There are more static objects on the grid and more ways of generating the fruits/veg you need. And again, the music is less annoying.
Next Diamond Digger Saga. It's similar to, well, I can't specifically think of a named game, but any of those games where if you touch a group of similar coloured blocks they disappear. I actually really enjoy this one. There's a fair amount of stratgy to it. You have a fixed number of moves to tap groups of blocks to clear a path for water to flow through. You can't afford to waste a single move. It's not all played on one grid either. You need to work your way through a series of underground rooms. This one too gives you different goals to reach. You might have to free trapped creatures, collect prizes or simply gain a high score to beat it. Good times.
Next Bubble Witch Saga. This is based on various other bubble popping games, but again it has added extras to keep it interesting. The main difference is the scoring system. You have a series of pots at the bottom to catch your falling bubbles. Each is worth a certain score. There are also spiders hanging just above the pots. Bouncing falling bubbles on your spiders gives you a higher score. Every time you perform a successful move a spider appears and every time a move fails you lose two spiders. What's frustrating is that fairly frequently you meet the game's objectives but still fail because your score isn't high enough. You've buggered up too often to have enough spiders to give you a decent score. What surpirsed me when I started playing it is that you are given a line to show where you're aiming. I thought this would make the game too easy, but it really doesn't help all that much. The game is far more about strategy than aim. There are also lots of trick bubbles to keep the game interesting, such as bubbles full of poison that kill your spiders if you pop them, green infected bubbles that spread their infection to the rest if you don't get rid of them fast enough and bombs bubbles that explode if you don't get rid of them in time. It's a good game. I know there is a Bubble Witch 2 out as well though I havent played it much and can't compare the two. One thing I have noticed though is that in 2 the witch is a lot more sexed up. Sigh. So unnecessary.
Lastly Papa Pear Saga. This one is basically Peggle. You have a pear (a round one, obviously) and you have to fire it down the screen to achieve various objectives. It bounces a LOT, making the world's most annoying Doing! sound as it does. The more it bounces the more points you get. Different levels give you a different number of pears to use. Objectives include getting pears into every single bucket at the bottom, knocking fruits into the baskets at the bottom and bouncing on certain numbers of objects to make them disappear. Like Bubble Witch, as well as meeting the level's objectives you need a sufficiently high score to win the level, though this is easier to do in Papa Pear. There are also things you can bounce on to get certain bonuses, such as a higher score, extra pears appearing, pears becoming giant etc. It's pretty good fun!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)