Game Reviews: Still More Android Games

A few more of my favourite Android games. To start off, Disney Magic Kingdoms. This is a game where you build your own version of Disneyland. You get rides and characters based on Disney films. You send your characters on missions to collect tokens and when you have enough you can welcome new characters or upgrade old ones. As you progress through the game you unlock new films with their characters and rides, and also new areas of land to build on. They also have events where certain films' characters and rides are only available for a limited time. I downloaded it because the description made it sound a bit like rollercoaster tycoon, but it's quite different really. It's much more about the collecting tokens than the building. It's quite fun for a Disney nerd like me, and beautifully animated. It is quite time consuming though, it takes ages to start up, and it's also a but clunky and slow to respond.

Seaport. This is a little like Boom Beach, only without the fighting. You have a home port and send your ships on missions to explore new areas and gather resources that you then use to improve your port. To keep it intersting the game continually has a different events running, so that the look of the game and missions are always different. The theme is always to do with famous boats or stories about boats. Themes since I've started playing have included the Titanic, the Mississippi, Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, Odysseus and, for Hallowe'en, Dracula.

Next Word Cookies. You get given letters and blank spaces for words. You need to find all the words you can make out of the letters to fill the blank spaces and progress to the next level. It's a fun game, though I do get annoyed by it sometimes when it omits obvious words and uses obscure ones instead. The ads are quite instrusive too.

Now Machinarium. This is a game that's been around for a while. I first became aware of it as a PC game, but didn't play it until I came across it for Android. It's a really special game. You play an adorable little robot who has to solve puzzles and find objects to get through a city to find your robot girlfriend and rescue her. There's no dialogue at all, so all nationalities can play it. Each one of the puzzles is new and different and some of them are genuinely really hard. Some took me a day or more to work out. The artwork really sets it apart too. It's so quirky and detailed and beautiful. It's not really a game you can play over and over again, but it's certainly worth it.

Finally, Monument Valley 1 and 2. This is another really special game. Again you play a little character who has to make her way through a world by solving puzzles, but a lot of the puzzles are based on optical illusions! It's totally mind blowing to spin the platform you're standing on and find yourself a storey above where you were before. It's so clever and well done, and both the art and music are beautiful. Some of the puzzles are really difficult too. Monument Valley 2 is more of the same except that now you have a daughter and you both have to make your way through a confusing world, sometimes alone and sometimes together. It's not as difficult as the first game though. My criticism for both these games though is that they're both pretty short, and also pretty expensive for a game that, again, you can't really play more than once.