Android Games #6: I haven’t forgotten.

I haven’t written an article in this series for quite a while. Once, I even thought about cancelling it. But hey, I think that won’t be such a smart idea. This blog is about my experiences with the games I play. And sometimes, I play games on my phone when I’m waiting on the train or when I’m waiting in the doctor’s office. So, let’s take a look at the Android games I’m currently playing. I’m not going to talk about them in depth, since there isn’t that much to write about when you compare it to for example a 3DS game. Enough stalling, let’s get tapping on that phone! And as usual in every one of my articles, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content and/or games in this article. 

Wedding Escape

This game is what I look for in my match-3 games. Something special, something unique that hasn’t been done over and over again.

In this game, you have to turn over tiles to match 3 or more of the same. When you flip a silver coin, it becomes a gold coin. When you flip a diamond, it becomes a purple one. And this works the other way too.

The game gets pretty challenging after a few levels, but you get four pretty nice power-ups. Thank you FireBird Games to not make these microtransactions power-ups. You earn an use of the power-ups by matching a certain gem. Silver coins give you a bomb, gold coins give you a mine, purple gems give you a magnet and blue gems give you a “flip everything of this gem/coin”.

The characters you can unlock in this game are quite nice. The visuals and music are good as well.

This game is polished and pretty well designed. Apart from the extreme harsh difficulty in the later levels (in my opinion), a better way to select the character you want to play as, the colorbind mode that only changes one gem and the strange way a gem/coin becomes usable to use power-ups on, this game is nearly a perfect casual game!

Score: 4/5

Vlogger Go Viral

Honestly, I brought this Android games series back because I wanted to talk about this game. This game is the perfect game when you are waiting for a few minutes to board your train or when you are waiting on your turn at the doctor’s office.

But this is directly also it’s main issue. This is a clicker game, where you can speed up the waiting by tapping. Apart from that, it’s a bit lacking.

This game has so much unused potential in v1.1 (Released on 21 december 2015), it’s a shame. It would be fun if the audience of your vlog channel gets tired if you make too much videos about one topic or you loose viewers that came to your channel for a certain topic.

The money to earn and spend on upgrades are in my eyes rather useless. Apart from some visual changes to the studio, I don’t see how it influences anything in the game. When I compare it to a similar game I honestly like, Bitcoin Millionaire, it feels less fleshed out.

Also, the animation is something I have some minor issues with. For researching, recording, writing and editing a video … The game uses the same animation.

This game can get boring quick. This game needs to have some more things to do when you are waiting for a video to finish. Or maybe I’m too harsh on this game. Since it’s the game I play when I have nothing to do for a few minutes.

The presentation is rather cute and stylish. And the whole idea behind the game is what got me interested in the first place. I just wished it had some more gameplay elements to make it more fun. Oh, and the microtransaction part seriously needs to less intrusive. Like in Bitcoin Billionaire.

Score: 3,5/5

Brain Dots

This game can be rather cruel at times by some puzzles. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In this game you play the role of a pencil that has to draw a line to connect two balls together.

You win the level as soon as the two circles touch each other. Even when they would fall to their doom a second later, when they touch, you win.

This game has a very interesting social feature. You can share your solution over social networks. When you solve a level, it takes a screenshot of the game that you can share.

The game design in this game is really good for an Android game. It teaches you the mechanic first before the actual puzzles with that mechanic are going to challenge you. Another good system is the hint system. It makes the game really forgiving when you don’t find the solution.

The only negative I have is that your lines don’t always properly draw. If you move your finger a bit too much down or up, the game gets confused. But it’s a minor annoyance, since the recent updates, I’m not getting it as much.

Score: 4/5

Wrapping up

So, that are three games I’m currently playing on my phone while I’m waiting for my train to go to work. Lately, I’m playing less and less on my phone since I … well, burned out on them.

That’s one of the main reasons I didn’t write an Android article for over almost a year. In any case, I hope you enjoyed my look into these games as much as I enjoyed writing this article. Also, feel free to leave your suggestions of Android games I should try out in the comments. I’m looking for games you can play on the side. It needs to be fun and keep you from boredom while waiting on … a train to go to work. The fewer microtransactions, the better.

I’m curious for the suggestion. Anyways, I’m rambling on now. Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your day! Game on, friends! Game on!

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Android Games you should try #5: Requests.

I love getting requests by people who actually develop games. I feel honored and I actually like doing them. It’s the reason why I put a contact page on my blog. Anyway, it has been quite some time since I actually wrote about Android games. That has a reason, I didn’t play a lot of Android games I wanted to talk about in the past few months. Yet, there are a few that slipped under my radar, so I will correct that mistake. It’s time to talk about some Android games. I write a short review or talk about why you should play that game and give a score of 5! And as usual, feel free to leave a comment on this article with your thoughts on the games, content and or the games I should take a look at in the future!

Special guest: “Bubbliminate“

The developer of this game told me that this game is released rather recently, and he was looking for some feedback and some exposure. So, when I booted it up, I didn’t know what to expect. The screenshots on the store page didn’t explain what this game is about.

That’s one of the issues I had with the game. I didn’t really understand the game. After a bit of trail and error, I think I got the hang of it. You play against another player or CPU. Each one starts out with one bubble. You can do one of three moves. Split, grow or move your bubble. It’s your goal to get rid of the other guy (or girl)’s bubble.

The suggestion I would give to the developer of this game is that he adds a sort of introduction area. A sort of optional tutorial that teaches the basics to beat a CPU on easy mode with ease. On the store page he says that it’s interesting to young children. I’m sorry, but I put this to the test and the children, who were aged in the rage of 5 – 12, didn’t enjoy the game.

Before I talk about the other games, apart from what I mentioned above, the game is quite nice for a first game. Decent and responsive controls, amazing menu work, great music and pleasant visuals.

In conclusion, this game has potential, it just needs a bit more polish to make the entry level and the learning curve a bit less harsh.

Score: 3/5.

Bitcoin Billionaire

I tried various games that tried to emulate cookie clicker. Since that game was released, I wanted to try it out as well. But I quickly lost interested. But when I saw this game in the Google Play Store, I was interested. A Cookie Clicker clone that’s IT-themed? Yes please!

It didn’t take long before I got myself hooked on the game and I spend various hours on it. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen this coming since I actually tweeted a few interesting news items of this game. The humor in this game is just amazing!

This game also needs to get an award. This is an incredible example of how microtransactions should work. You can buy special red gems, but you can get 25 of them free each day. The catch here is that you get them rather easily. Also, when you connect to Wi-Fi, you get the option to enable ads for a few seconds for in game rewards. That’s just impressive!

The only negative of this game is that sometimes the prices are a bit unbalanced, but hey, how else they make getting the next level rewarding?

Score: 5/5.

Buttons And Scissors

I didn’t see this one coming. This puzzle game is one of the most simple games I played in a while. I don’t mean this in a bad way! When you press any button, the game shows you the possible moves. And thanks to that, I was able to figure out how the game works in no time.

Your goal is to cut all the buttons from the piece of fabric. You can only cut the buttons from the same color away, as long as there are no other buttons in between them. Since you can also cut diagonally, this game offers quite a big challenge. This game is nice to play in short bursts.

The only flaw in this game is that they don’t offer a mode for people who are colorblind. Since the contrast mode isn’t really that helpful if you are colorblind.

Score: 4,5/5.

1010!

I discovered this one only rather recently. At the start of this week, actually. So, I can’t say that I had much fun with it since, yeah. I barely started getting into it. But it’s that good that it deserves a spot in this list.

It’s a puzzle game where you get various shapes that you need to fit in a grid. As soon as you put a whole line full of blocks, they disappear. Your goal is that you can keep placing the blocks that the game gives you.

The only negative I have with this game is that you only get new blocks if you placed all blocks from the bottom. A nitpick I have is that the ads when you lose are too much in your face. It’s something I don’t like at all.

Score: 4/5

Final words

Alright, I think I’m going to wrap up this article here. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. Hopefully you found out about some new Android games that you could play in the waiting room or on the bus.

If you ever find new interesting Android games, feel free to send them to me. I might cover them on my blog if I like them or if I dislike them. I love user feedback.

In the meantime, I will be on the lookout for new Android games myself. I actually want to write this kind of articles more often. Since this way I can give more than one game some time to shine. Anyway, take care and I hope to see you in another article!