A Flood Without Dams

I haven’t written about any games lately, and this is why: I got tired of wading through the immense amount of nonsense in order to find the one or two decent games hiding under the hundreds of tossed-together weekend creations.

And I’m not saying you can’t make a great game in one weekend, but most of what I see is effortless, pointless games that rip off popular games in an attempt to make a ton of money overnight.

I believe there are a ton of sincere, passionate developers out there. They’re just hard to find. 

So I’m going back to writing about apps, but with a new sense of disillusionment. If you’re a genuinely passionate developer, and your apps mean more to you than a get-rich-quick scheme, please send them to me. I’d love to talk about them.

Thanks, and sorry for the rant.

Why Zedge is the Best Way to Use Special Ringtones

A lot of people simply download mp3 versions of the songs they want to use for ringtones or notification sounds.

The same is true for wallpapers.

But Zedge makes the process a whole lot easier, and if you aren’t using it, you should start.

First, you don’t need to bother with your settings. You simply pick the sounds or wallpapers that you’d like to use, and Zedge instantly sets them to the right settings for you.

But the best part is that you don’t have to scour the whoel internet to find what you’re looking for. Instead, you can search in Zedge, and they’ll give you the results for every category of your search.

For example, I can search for Megaman and see that there are 485 ringtones and 18 wallpapers for it. No live wallpapers, but maybe someone will fix that….

 

Anyway, I find it to be very convenient, and when I decide to change my phone from Megaman to Metal Gear Solid, I can change everything fairly quickly.

So stop using your downloaded mp3’s and your settings like an old person. Get Zedge already.

$50 Prize for a Gaming Contest

As I said in an earlier post, Ferro: Robot on the Run is very addicting, and the game comes with plenty of reasons to play.

But now the makers (Ludobit) are giving us yet another reason to play: a $50 grand prize for the first person who can beat the 1,000 m score on Medium mode.

The fact that they aren’t even asking you to do it in Hard mode shows that this challenge is really worth the $50 they’re offering, but my guess is that competitive go-getter gamers will jump all over this.

The one condition is that you have to provide video evidence (probably because of game-playing bots).

I will definitely be spending my free time on this challenge, but I doubt I’ll get there. So far my high score is around 350.

But, if I do somehow manage to win, that money is probably going toward the new Super Smash Bros. (I call Megaman.)

Hero Academy: Accessibility in Smartphone Gaming

Hero Academy is one of the best smartphone strategy games around, and I want to go through some of the things that make is to great (so that we as indie developers can learn from it).

Out-of-the-Way Advertising 

A lot of free-to-play games end up ruining the experience with the advertisements.

The creators of Hero Academy were smart about advertising, and limited their placement to the opponent’s turn. This way, the gameplay is never interrupted by the advertisements, yet we get full-screen ads.

Drag-and-Drop Simplicity

As I’ve complained about elsewhere, I don’t like games that are too big and ambitious for the smartphone platform.

Hero Academy keeps it simple: you drag and drop your units and spells on the board. The strategy is mainly focused on placement.

Beauty

If nothing else, Hero Academy looks great. The graphics are kept simple enough to make sense on a small screen, and the sprites are very well done. The large head-to-body ratio is great: that chibi style works great for smartphone-sized graphics.

Jupiter Jump is My New Jam

I recently fell in love with yet another new game: Jupiter Jump.

It’s similar to a lot of the games that are coming out these days because:

• It’s a continuous side-scroller.
• You touch the screen and control only one function.
• The goal is to avoid obstacles for as long as possible. 

But Jupiter Jump has an original flare to it. Like Ferro: Robot on the Run, you don’t just flap your wings or jump with every touch.

Instead, you bounce continuously. Tapping the screen makes you head for the ground faster. It’s a small tweak, but it makes a big difference.

As you can see in the gameplay trailer, Jupiter Jump is very fast-paced, but because your character and the obstacles are so small, it isn’t unfairly fast. It’s a reasonable challenge, and I appreciate that immensely. 

In addition the great gameplay mechanics, the environment is beautiful and changes frequently. The retro look really adds to the feel of the game, too, whereas too many games are only hurt by their poor attempt to mimic the beauty of SNES pixel art.

Overall, Jupiter Jump is one of the best games I’ve played this summer and definitely one of my top picks.

Why Dubstep Hero is All Too Real

Dubstep Hero is basically what it sounds like: a Guitar-Hero type game where you make dubstep music.

Of course, dubstep is widely criticized for being overly based in computers and having little to do with musical talent, therefore lacking variation as a genre.

If you like dubstep, and you like Guitar-Hero type games, then Dubstep Hero is an obvious choice.

But my guess is that this game will only further promote the idea that dubstep is as simple as pressing a few buttons on a screen, because in many cases, you actually could play the featured songs on a midi keyboard with as much technical musical skill as is necessary to play the game.

Worse yet, many of the songs were probably made with processors, not real-time instruments, according to presets that the creator of the songs might not have even understood.

But I don’t want to bash an entire genre.

Are there talented, intelligent dubstep songwriters? Sure. But when the barrier to entry is so low, there is bound to be an inordinate amount of crap.  

Ferro: A Robotic Panic Attack

There’s a lot of muck to wade through in the indie game world. Ferro: Robot on the Run is the prize for doing so.

As promised, my droid news ships are slow: the game has already been rated by much larger publications. Ind13.com gave it an 88%, with points off for the sounds. I actually like the sounds, and would give the game an A.

I’ve been in a groove talking about what to learn from different games, so I’ll just go ahead and do that with this one, too.

The Gameplay is Straightforward

This game operates with one function: letting go of the little spinning cars.

And unlike most of the continuous scrolling games that have come out lately, this is not a Flappy Bird clone (or some variation of it). The constant urgency is slightly panic-inducing, but it’s the good kind of panic that I love in a game.

 

The Graphics Are Fun and Fitting

I love the way the game looks. It’s not trying too hard to look realistic or 3D, and it’s easy on the eyes. It also makes it very easy to see what’s going on while you’re playing.

I’ve also been told a secret that they’re going to add new backgrounds soon. (I hope I’m allowed to say that.)

There isn’t much else to say about the game, but that’s not a bad thing. I like simplicity, and Ferro hits the mark. I’ve been playing it a lot since I got it, and I’ll be interested to see the new backgrounds, but the game is solid as-is.

Target’s Brightspot: an Update on My Review

When I first started this blog, I did a quick review on Target’s Brightspot Mobile phone plan (provided by T Mobile).

Since then, I’ve become only more satisfied with it, and I wanted to offer some assurance to anyone who might be on the fence about delving into a suspiciously cheap plan ($35/month for unlimited text and data).

The Real T Mobile

In my experience, Brightspot is up to par with the “real” T Mobile service. I have a friend who has a T Mobile phone, and we both live out in a woodsy area.

Our service is identical.

T Mobile is already the best deal in phone service (as far as I know), but $35/month is an amazing deal.

The only downside, of course, is that you have to buy your phone separately, which means that in order to get a Samsung S4, you’ll need $450 to get started. I got a Samsung Galaxy Light for only $120, and there are some decent phones available at Target for about the same price.

If you’re a frugal phone shopper looking to get away from the $60+ plans, I highly recommend Brightspot. 

(This is an unpaid post. I am not an advertiser, just a weird Target fanatic.)

 

8-Bit Camera: Missing Out on Potential

There’s a cool app called 8-Bit Camera, and as excited as I was to use it, I was a bit disappointed.

The premise is that you can take pictures on your phone which will be pixelated on the spot. While the app does handle that function, it doesn’t work very well for anything else.

There’s no simple menu system, you have to hunt down the pictures on your phone, and the option to send or save pictures doesn’t seem to exist.

Not only that, but I had to exit the program every time I wanted to take a new picture.

This may be a problem that is more device-specific, but because I have a fairly recent Android, I’m inclined to think that the app wasn’t programmed well.

8-Bit Camera has gotten over 100,000 downloads, and with it, a ton of reviews. But many users have had a similarly negative experience that I did.

And with free, online editing programs that can pixelate any picture (not just those on my phone) and do much more with images, why do I need a buggy app to help me do it?

If the functionality was better, I would love to use this app, but for now, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Freaky Dragon: The Title is Spot On

Why not take some time to talk about a not-so-great game? Enter: Freaky Dragon.

I’m not just poking fun here. My goal is to extrapolate from this game so that we can have a slightly better understanding of how good games are made.

First, let me talk about the McDonald’s effect: the game does not look the way it’s advertised. 

But more importantly, the graphics have a quality to them that begs for 3D, yet the game is in 2D, and it’s not done well.

The game allows you to “fly with dragon.”

Rather than blending the dimensions into a game that works in 2D while feeling 3D (like Robot Unicorn Attack, or really any isometric game), the game just seems mismatched.

Second, there’s the controls, which are unresponsive. You have two controls: flapping your wings and shooting. 

For whatever reason, the flying button is on the right, which doesn’t feel very intuitive.

But worse yet, if you try to hit both buttons as once, you do neither, which makes the game fairly unplayable.

The premise of the game isn’t bad, and the graphics are decent (until you see them in action), but this game is falling short on the mechanics. 

I’d much rather play as a large pixel representing a dragon in a game that functions well, than have to look at myself failing in a beautiful interface.