21 Dice – oddly addictive for something so simple!

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I’ve got a very simple yet rewarding game here for you today in 21 Dice by developer BitStern. This game is a very simple idea, reach 21 with a series of random numbers given to you in the form of a dice roll. Once you reach 21 then the stack gains a star, and eventually this stack can reach 21, which is essentially the victory condition, although there are different modes in the game.

Each round begins with three different stacks surrounding the dice roll, and you just swipe the dice into each stack. If you go over 21, the stack is no longer usable and makes it hard to continue. You can swap the dice roll with a back up you’ve saved earlier, which means you can get out of a difficult situation using it, but sometimes you end up completely stuck which can quickly result in a successful seeming round ending rather suddenly, which is endlessly frustrating… although that is part of what actually makes this game so addictive – it’s very quick to start up a new game, so you end up striving to beat your previous score, or last a bit longer and so on. As you know know from previous posts, this is something I always look for in a mobile app as it’s this frustrating addictiveness which can make an app catch on and become a continued source of fun.

I actually quite enjoyed this game, it’s very simple and quick to get going, and whilst it doesn’t have a lot of depth, it’s not aiming for that, it doesn’t need a story behind it or anything like that, it’s just a simple game which you can hop on whilst travelling or commuting or waiting for the doctor and so on.

If you want to give it a go, you can download it here.

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom

Profiteer – trading simulation in space!

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

Things are a little quiet over here at the moment as we’re both embarking upon a project of our own, but stick with us as I’m going to be doing my best to get at least two posts up a week. Turns out one day was a little ambitious, even if we didn’t have anything else going on!

Today’s game is from a genre often considered an old favourite amongst the sci-fi and space sim games – a trading simulator. Whilst many games such as Freelancer and Star Wolves included combat, they could be played as a trading sim once you’d completed the story. It turned out that this was popular with many people, often causing there to be mods made where people could just launch straight into this mode without actually playing through the story. Profiteer from developer Roksoft is a game which is aiming to play on that popularity in an exclusive manner, no combat and very little story, just a fun little trading sim for playing whilst travelling to work, or chilling in your garden and so on.

Starting with a small ship and a huge debt, you have to work your way up through trading for profit, slowly paying of your loan and then eventually starting to make enough money to be able to upgrade and improve your ship, and ultimately win the game by making 1 million credits. A simple enough premise, but one which led to me restarting countless times even on ‘normal’ difficult (the middle one) as I continually found myself creditless and thus planetbound.

Graphically this game is very simple, as it’s all static images are from the brief screen you see when travelling between planets. The artistic style is cartoon like, which is never bad on a simple game, and it lends something to the character of the game with the slightly non serious seeming nature of the art. In terms of gameplay, this is a simple touch based game, there’s very little in the way of controls to learn, you simply press the item you want and press buy, press the planet you want and you go there, etc.

For this reason the gameplay is less about skill of controlling your character and more about choosing the right thing to buy, and selling it at the right place, whilst also making sure you have enough fuel to get around, and can successfully pay of the bank loan. The game itself makes this pretty easy by telling you the range of prices things have, and what they currently are on each planet, meaning you just choose the one which is at the lower end of it’s range and then go to the planet where it’s at the highest end and sell there. It’s still pretty challenging however to work out which is the most profitable, a longer journey with greater fuel costs, or a short journey with less income at the end.

The game itself suffers from only one real flaw I’ve discovered, which is the quality of the English used – this puts people of as evidenced in the reviews post on the games google play page.

I think the game is very well made and well polished apart from the language issues, and I find that I’m intrigued to see how long it’ll take me to have a successful game without being bankrupt after about 5 journeys. I’d recommend you at least give it a try if you like trading simulator games and are looking for something mobile!

If you want to try it out yourself to see how you do, you can find it here.You can also find a free ‘lite’ version.

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom

Shurican – like Flappy Bird… but with ninjas

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I’ve said in my last few reviews that apps which have that instant restart thing, where as soon as you die you’re at the beginning ready to go again, are the easiest to get addicted too. And so I found myself sitting in the sun in my back garden testing out today’s game, and suddenly it was two hours later.

Shurican by developer SnoutUp is one of those apps where you die… a lot. But as soon as you do, you’re straight away at the start and you just tap to start your little ninja jumping along his mission again. Its incredibly addictive gameplay as the game is so hard, as you dodge blades, demons, fireballs, and more blades.

Artistically its quite cartoony, something I find a lot in apps which have this kind of catchy gamplay. I like how they don’t try to be the next big fancy looking game, but go for something which looks ok and works, I find this quite refreshing compared to the PC games I play or test which often strive to have the best graphics going.

Gameplay is just a simple tap to jump, and double tap to throw a ninja star. This made this one of the quickest games to pick up I’ve tried in a while, as it took me no time at all to get the hang of the Flappy Bird style movement up and down. It’s a pretty fun game all told! Definitely give it a go if Flappy Bird is your kind of game.

If you want to try it out, you can download it here.

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom

Shogun Assassin – Ancient Japan never looked better than in 32×32

Hey Guys! Welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

Apologies for being quiet recently, I’m going back to college so I might not be able to post every day but we are getting as much content out as possible for you all. The review I have for you today is of a gamejam product called Shogun Assassin, developed by Big Stompy Robots. The main rule of the jam, #lowrezjam, was that the game must run with a screen resolution of 32×32 pixels. Upon playing the game it seems a rather strange experience where you can’t really see any enemies until they are literally right in your face, and I started off feeling quite negative about that, but in the name of fun and experimentation I trudged through and actually ended up enjoying it, as difficult as it is to play!

You play as an ancient samurai warrior, sprinting through the world and hacking down all whom oppose you. Leaping over and dodging waves of relentless arrows, the game is extremely hard due to the limited vision space, although there are visual warnings on-screen when an event is about to occur giving the player plenty of time to respond. This is an Atari inspired retroscape with plenty of fast paced action and 8-bit gore, although I feel like it may be a ‘marmite experience’ as the low resolution might put some people off. It is strange to get used to but the game is enjoyable nonetheless, and the highest rank I managed to achieved was rank F….a pitiful attempt.

The game is playable in browser so for those of you stuck in work, get yourself in Shogun mode and start causing havoc with your Katana! Keep in mind that the game is a result of a gamejam and is quite basic; for example when the attack animation plays in front of your character, your sword doesn’t actually visually move, but I really don’t think that these small graphical imperfections affect the way the game plays out.

If you want to have a go at beating my awful rank F, you can find the game HERE

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

George

FuzzBalls – fluffy family friendly fun for phones!

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Can you tell I worked hard on the title? Don’t judge me. Titles are hard.

Today’s game is FuzzBalls from developers xdebugx games. It’s a bejewelled-style match up the pairs game, making them disappear and more fall down from off the screen etc, with interesting features such as blocks, and bombs, and a colour matching system.

In terms of gameplay, the game is pretty fun, and requires very little in the way of complicated control knowledge – it’s just tap one colour and then tap another – making the game fantastically pick-up-and-play-able. That’s definitely a real term not one I just hacked together with hashes. You have to mix the primary colours together to make the other colours, and then mix them to make brown or black, and so on to get two or more of the same colour next to each other.

Matching up the different coloured fuzzballs is accompanied by various cute little sounds which will definitely appeal to younger players. The art style is cartoony and cutesy as well which is going to help this. This makes the game a simple and easy to play game which would be completely comfortable on a child’s phone or a family tablet, or a teenagers phone for the journey to school, or even an adult for that commute to work.

If you want to try the game out for yourself you can find it here.

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom

SpellGrid – word play takes on a new meaning!

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Those of you who like word games might have felt that there’s been a lack lately of any new ideas in the list of games out there. Scrabble, Yahtzee, and the countless apps which are based of those ideas are all great fun, but sometimes new blood can freshen the whole thing up, so to speak.

SpellGrid is a game by developer Song San Hong which attempts to do just that. Starting with a single word with no repeating letters (e.g. OUTPLAY, CATEGORY, BIOGRAPHY) you can then drag copies of each letter out of the word, and position it around the place to set up your own words. In this way you can race to complete as many words as possible in 1 minute, or strive to fill up 50 squares. This can be difficult if you can see where a word could go if only that other word wasn’t in the way… and you now have to think of something else. You also get an increased score of you can form multiple words using the same letter square as shown below in the top right.

SpellGrid has its own leaderboards linked through Google Play services, so you can compete with friends and strangers to get the highest score, fastest time, most words per minute and so on. It allows you to challenge yourself to come up with words quicker and to improve your vocabulary and so on. It also shows you which letters you use the most, and various other statistics to monitor your performance.

I enjoyed this game, I found it a good practice for vocabulary, and I even thought that if it became multilingual it would be a fantastic language learning tool – as it is, it’s pretty good for people wanting to get help increase their English vocabulary as you can view an explanation of what a particular word means.

I actually haven’t found anything wrong with this game yet, although I’ll probably be playing it a fair bit so if I spot any I’ll update you guys!

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom

Doppler – bringing the wire loop game up to date!

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

A big thing about mobile gaming these days is how addictive the gameplay actually is – a game which you don’t feel any desire to keep playing will die off, leaving only those who infuriate and challenge players, perhaps even whilst giving them a way to compete with one another. You’ve all seen the like, people posting their ‘Flappy Bird’ scores, talking about what level they got up to in ‘Candy Crush’ and so on. This is what the biggest draw with mobile gaming is, and I always try to keep that in mind when trying out some of the android games I review for Withinthegame.com. 

“the developers have kept it looking interesting with flashy flares and effects on the line and the circles”

Today’s offering has definitely got this addictive nature down to a tee. Doppler is a game still in development from developers My Go! Studio designed to replicate the age old gameplay of the wire loop game – the one where you have to pass that little wire loop along the weaving other wire, without touching it, and get all the way to the end. It required steady hands, and coordination, so naturally I sucked something terrible at it. Doppler has captured the spirit of this old game perfectly in my opinion, required you to keep two circles touched at all times, and navigate along a winding line, not getting too close, and not getting too far away either. After a time, it speeds up, making it harder.

Artistically, there’s not much you can do with a single white line, but the developers have kept it looking interesting with flashy flares and effects on the line and the circles – it’s not something which adds to the gameplay but it makes it look pretty. The music of the game is perfect as well, an 8-bit style slightly sinister sounding track at first which speeds up as you advance through the game.

“Doppler has the addictiveness mobile games thrive upon down perfectly”

As I mentioned earlier, Doppler has the addictiveness mobile games thrive upon down perfectly – once you lose, it immediately restarts the game with no loading time, just straight back in, a challenge flung straight at the player. Can you beat what you just did? Was that round not quite as good as you know you can do? Want to try again? Right there in front of you is the start. Resist it if you can.

Doppler is currently in development, so it’ll be out on the various app stores in the future – the developers are aiming for end of this month or early next.

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom

ShapeDown – Geometrical simplicity at its finest!

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

I have another browser game for you guys today, it’s going to be a short review for a simple little piece! ShapeDown is a small puzzle game with a furious addictive factor built in. Developed by SundaeMonth, it consists of basically turning a rotating polygon, using the keyboard arrow keys, to catch a monsoon of falling geometrical pieces, implementing colour and shape to identify which side of the polygon to catch them in. It’s not difficult to get the hang of, but once you begin to get into the game, it becomes very difficult to stop playing.

There are 2 different modes; a standard level climbing mode which is prevalent in many 2D puzzle games such as this – the game gets harder as you progress and rack up a higher score, but there is also an arcade mode; a brutal and constant fall of pieces that will really strain and test your mental capacity and hand-eye co-ordination. Once you gain a little skill and surpass a few levels, you will be left dizzy with addiction and rage as you desperately fire away at your keyboard trying to keep up with the pace of this relentless game. It’s quite hard to recover if you do make a slight mistake, but I’m sure that you guys will be able to beat my meager score.

If it was to be moved on as a mobile game, which I believe it 100% deserves, it may be more appealing to see a little bit of development go into the graphical style of the game and to see it evolve slightly in relation to artwork and visuals. Whether or not the devs decide to take this direction remains to be seen as it seems to be a very freshly released title, but time will tell. It’s hard to fault small puzzle games such as this so all I can suggest is that you give it a go and pass up a few hours at work on it like I have been doing.

You can find it available to play in browser for free HERE

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

George

 

Fluff Eaters – if only cleaning my house was this fun…

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

We’ve got an android game here for you today, and similar to our previous demonstrations it’s another one which will easily pass time on a commute, or give you something do to during breaks at work and so on.

Fluff Eaters is a casual puzzle game from developers Fiery Squirrel which as you’ll see from the trailer above, is about cleaning up some fluff balls which have taken over the cat’s bed and made a mess of it. The gameplay brings to mind titles such as Cut The Rope, in that it’s a similar style, using very simple interactions to complete each level, but still having a tremendous depth and fun factor.

“Fluff Eaters has cartoon like appealing graphics”

Fluff Eaters has cartoon like appealing graphics, and with this style of game it doesn’t require much more than that, it’s not one which is about the graphical quality like the latest big title. This type is more about the fun factor and playability, and Fluff Eaters has both in droves. The puzzles can be challenging to work out the best way to do it, as your score is based on completion time and how many collectibles you pick up during the level.

“your score is based on completion time and how many collectibles you pick up during the level”

Over all it’s a very high quality release, and whilst it could potentially grow boring after a while, there’s not many games out there which don’t lose their interest eventually. Fluff Eaters will definitely provide some top enjoyment for anyone who picks it up!

You can get hold of it on the app store soon, the release date is July 14th 2014!

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom

Xenoraptor – cyberdragons and lasers!

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

Here’s another sci-fi game for you, I’m sure you’re all getting sick of them by now so I’m going to try to find something less sci-fi next time…

Xenoraptor is a top down arcade style shooter set in space which has you playing a cyberdragon with various weapons, defending yourself against wave upon wave of flying chainsaws with different variations. It’s massively fun, and I’ve actually been playing it for hours before writing this review. As you’ll see from the video above the graphics are extremely good, and the soundtrack is top notch as well.

You can play with up to 7 other people as well, so grab the demo here – it can connect to any server including those of full game players!

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom