21 Dice – oddly addictive for something so simple!

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

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

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

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

FuzzBalls – fluffy family friendly fun for phones!

Hey Guys! Welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

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

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

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

Vagante – roguelike hack’n’slash with a bite

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com

‘Roguelike’ games are in vogue at the moment it seems, with many developers taking up this procedural level generation as a method of keeping their game playthroughs fresh and interesting. Today’s game from developers Nuke Nine Games is a roguelike known as Vagante. A dungeon delving dip in to the old school of adventure games, Vagante has a lovely soundtrack, fantastic art style and excellent level generation. I have to say, the intro scene you’ll see above, just after the warning about the current alpha state of the game, was one of my favourite bits, just for the music, and just how nice it was. It reminded me of many older style games I had on my old amiga (which I’m probably now going to dig out of my loft).

Gameplay is standard hack and slash style, jumping around the dungeon killing everything that moves and so on. You earn experience and level up along the way, earning new abilities and so on, rpg style. It’s permadeath as well, so if you die… time to start right back from the beginning. So don’t die!

The only issues I found were a slight difficult in turning around, but I am currently of the opinion this was an error with myself rather than the game, and I found the game quite hard, but again, this was me being useless rather than the game difficult. Seriously. Just watch the video above, I’m pretty terrible. Hopefully it’ll show off enough of the game for you to decide for yourself what you think of it though.

If you want to try it out (and I recommend you do if you’re a fan of the old amiga/snes era games which had this style of gameplay) you can get hold of 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

Ceres – have I talked about spaceships enough yet?

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

I might as well change my name to SPACESHIPS MCSPACESHIPSGUY. I’ve got another space based game for you because spaceships shooting lasers and rockets and cannons and things is my kind of heaven. I have a weird religion.

Ceres is the game today, by developers Jötunn Games. Similar to old favourites of the space strategy/tactical combat games such as Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, Ceres gives you control of one or more spaceships which you can outfit in a variety of manners (cannons, lasers, missiles, drones, artificial intelligence which hacks enemy ships and defends your own) and flings you in to a open space style of game similar to Star Wolves and its like.

“The demo available at the moment shows of this wonderful campaign screen”

The demo available at the moment shows off this wonderful campaign screen, which rotates as your ship moves and even demonstrates actual orbit predictions, with your ship moving to where the destination planet/cloud/etc. will be by the time you arrive. Little touches like this make a HUGE difference to how much I enjoy a game.

The graphics at the moment are promising in the menu and campaign screen and whilst not being amazing in the actual game screen they’re pretty good considering that the game is no where near release. I enjoyed the spaceships designs and watching simple things like my drones collecting loot and so on, and the combat mechanics were impressive as well, with having to balance energy levels to different sections of my ship, make sure my ship wasn’t hacked and shut down, deflecting missiles by timing by point defence lasers, firing back by timing my aggressive stance button, managing my drones, and manoeuvring in a wholly complex but completely enjoyable way.

“LASERS”

There are many things currently not great, for example it can be unwieldy and difficult to control at times, and once my ship got stuck to another ship and they both circled round each other in some rather peculiar lumbering ballet, which was awesome, but slowed down the mission significantly. Over all though, these things can be over looked due to its development status.

This game has a lot of promise and I for one will definitely be checking up on it regularly. If you too enjoy all things spacey and would like to try this one out, check it out 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

Kill The Bad Guy – Justice is served… with a piano?

Hey guys! Welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

I’ve got another video demo today for you guys, a game called Kill The Bad Guy by Exkee.  

A puzzle solving game in which you have to remove criminal individuals by executing them in a variety of different brutal ways, this game has a simple premise, but has potential for tremendously difficult puzzles, as you have to solve them in a time limit to hit goals and complete secondary objectives along the way.

Artistically as you can see it’s very focussed on what you can interact with in order to complete the current mission, which stops things getting too complicated.

I like this style of game, I find them very easy to just play when needing to relax or just pass time at work or something, and this game is no exception.  It’s a well thought out offering, with excellent design and a nice sense of humour which make this game stand out for me.

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

We first heard about this over at Alpha Beta Gamer.

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

Boogey Boy – addictive platforming at its finest!

Hey guys! Welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

Old school platform games never quite lose their charm, do they? Boogey Boy from developers Goon Studios is a fantastic offering to this genre, with some high quality graphics and very well thought out gameplay. As you’ll see from the video above it’s got a brilliant 8 bit style sound track as well which I absolutely love.

The gameplay is your standard move-permanently-right-and-dodge-the-bad-things gameplay, but you’re being permanently chased by a giant… thing… which kills you if it gets you, and you have to collect stars which increase your speed, and power-ups to help you on your way. If you get hit, you lose your stars like Sonic with his rings.

It’s an infinite scroller as well, so don’t actually win, you just do a little better each time, which gives it a wildly addictive strength, as all I want to do is go back in and get further than my last score.

Update: having played it with my friend this weekend, each taking it in turns to beat each others score, we’ve discovered that you actually CAN complete the stage by collecting three batteries!

If you want to have a go yourself, you can get hold of 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