Dots: A game about connecting by Playdots Inc

 There are many dots games, but this is the best and the most imitated, and the most challenging. There is a reason why it has a cult-following -- once you start playing you will understand why. 

This is a simple colourful puzzle game, clean and sleek, customisable and fun. You will find yourself totally addicted to it. The game is easy  to play, without locked levels to pass. What you have to achieve is to get a high score, get to 500+, which is something very difficult. That requires focus, strategy and also a bit of luck and knowing how the system works to undermine it a bit in your favour. Getting 100 or 150 points might be relatively easy, but getting 200+  is far from easy and I am stuck in the 300+ benchmark right now in the Moves Mode and about 200+ in the Timed Mode, and, honestly, it is difficult!

What do you have to do? Connect dots of the same colour and score high. The aim of the game is to make as many squares as possible, as one square gets you 10 points not 4, and squares beget more squares, which start to appear more often the more you make.

There are four playing modes. The Timed Mode (60 seconds) which is the most difficult; the Moves Mode (30 moves to finish, that is the one I recommend to learn and find your way without the pressure of time); the Endless Mode (which you have to pay for) and the Blind Competition with other gamers. To help you with the scoring. you are given three tools to improve your changes. They are called runners-up. One is the time-stop (the clock stops counting for 5 seconds), the shrinkers (you press one and it eliminates the dot you press from the screen) and the expanders (it eliminates all the dots of the same colour from the screen).

The game is free but not cheap, if you know what I mean. It is pleasing to the eye, customisable, scores are kept safe for next time you play, and your best score on each mode is recorded without you having to do anything. So, there is no need to access Facebook or Google+ to save anything or play with other gamers. There are several free themes and colour schemes. I tend to use the purple one a lot, and the original white. The other ones are not as good to me.

 

You get extra bonus points for playing certain number of matches, at certain times of the day, with certain themes, for benchmark points, for using the runners ups, for number of dots eliminated by one move and so on. Each time you get one of those bonus it will show at the end of your match by small red characters with a description. 

The game gives you plenty of points that you can exchange for any of the runners up, if you want, for free, without the need of purchasing anything.  

 

The best way to score high is to make as many squares as you can. It sound easy but it is not. Sometimes the  initial dots panel is set in a way that makes difficult to make any square at all, no matter how good you are. You cannot do anything about it. But you can restart the game and start it up again with a new dots panel. I do that until I see I have some workable changes to start with and I am not doomed from the start. 

I have played the game in my tablet and phone, and for whatever reason I find playing with the pone is easier, probably because there is a bigger distance between the eyes and the screen and one can spot shapes better. 

 

EXTRA KUDOS

+ I find the game easy to find on buses, planes and in moments when you don't have much time. Lunch break or bus commuting for example. 

+ It occupies little memory and runs smoothly.  

+ It saves your scoring and piles up on it automatically.

+ Unisex game.

+ All ages game. 

+ Colour blind mode.
+ Play matches with other players without the need of registration or interacting directly with them.
+ Free exchange of points for runner-up dots.
+ No annoying ads or promotional interruptions.

TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR (MY) SCORING

> Start with the Moves Mode to practise your focus and strategy without the pressure of time.

> Use your shrinkers and expanders wisely. Unless you are getting a high score and want to improve it, you are wasting them.

> Set the theme that best suits your sight and you feel most comfortable with. I personally found the original and the purple the ones that work best for me. I cannot resist purple anything
.> Restart the game if you see that the initial dots panel is setting you for a low scoring.

> Avoid the temptation of linking many dots in a long line. By making a square and linking four dots you are getting 10 points, which is more of what you get with long lines most of the time. 

> Focus, focus, focus. Patience, Patience, Patience.

> Don't rush. I have seem that a mechanical impulse of my fingers has just destroyed a square that I saw a millisecond after my fingers had touched the screen. 
>  If you are playing the Time Mode and need a few seconds, instead of using your time-pause runner up, press the time/moves on the left top of the screen and the game is suspended automatically. Then, you can press the green button and return to the game as you left it, or you can restart by pressing the red button.
>  The use of shrinkers and expanders is very useful, but it is worthless if you are scoring low and waste them in this occasion. Use them when you are scoring high to score higher and get more squares! The shrinkers are specially convenient as they are very cheap to exchange for your gathered points.

DOWNSIDES

# Initial explanation about what the function of shrinkers and expanders is missing from the game unless you press on them and you see what the text says. The game starts with a simple exemplification of how the game works, why not doing the same with the runners up?  

# You cannot adjust the sizing of the dots to your liking.
# If you want to change the colour palette and customise it, you have to pay for it.
# You can buy double scoring dots. This being the case, any gamer who is using those has way more chances of scoring high that you will ever have even if you have the same skills and create the same number of squares. Unfair!

I tend to download heaps of free games and they have a very short life in my gadgets for several reasons. Basically they don't give me what I am looking for. Dots is difficult but gives me what I am looking for. It is here to stay!

Read More

"World of Goo" by 2D BOY

Addictive, simple, not that easy video game, that will make you love balls :D.

Well, there is a story, yes, for sure, but that one did not glue me to my tablet's screen. The story is a bit pathetic, call it odd for the sake of fairness.

What glued me to the screen was the Goos, the myriad types of super-lovely super-annoying super-nasty super-sticky Goos you find along, and the different levels of difficulty of the frizzy crazy puzzly puzzles you find. This is a game thought to make you enjoy playing without getting you stuck. There is not a hierarchic order of the episodes within every chapter to be played beyond the first and second ones. You go back and forth at will. You don't need to finish all the episodes either, just most of them and the final one in each chapter to move on to the next chapter. All of this makes the game very enjoyable and dynamic and rarely frustrating.

Generally speaking, there is a progression in the difficulty of the puzzles from chapter to chapter, with new challenges and new types of Goos in each one, but there are different levels of difficulty within each episode as well.

You can and must always go back and forth because 1/ you want to finish the game properly out of pure pride and 2/ you want to get as many extra balls as possible to have them ready to build the tallest Goo tower ever. I found the building of the tower, despite its apparent simplicity, really thrilling and entertaining, and not that easy!

Graphics are quite simple, nothing to brag about to your video-games obsessed friends. Still, the windy contaminated planet of the Goos is populated by simple lines, bright colours and surreal funny characters. There is a visual harmony in the game. Mind, that harmony could not match your visual harmony, so I can only say, well, change lenses.

I love the cute sounds that the Goos make when go up, and also the overall frenetic pace of the background music.

I have finished the game, but some of the episodes are still there for me to finish. Some of them I have figured out what to do but I haven't been able to do it, those are the most frustrating ones. Others, I have tried different things and failed miserably, so they are challenging and I also like that. 

Confession - The notice board character got me pissed a bit. Yes, of course, it usually gives clues, but, it is annoying and somewhat out of place. Why not using a special Goo informer to do that?

Confession 2 - The flies with reverse powers are the most considerate thing done for video-gamers ever. Ever  meaning in the year or so I have been playing video-games. What-ever.

Plenty of challenges and fun, plenty of hours of entertainment are guaranteed in the Goo World both for children and adults. And the price is ridiculous!

And, by the way, this is a perfect game for a tablet.

Read More

The Room 2 by Fireproof Games

The Room Two is an amazing 3-D puzzle game at an amazing price. The Room2, like The Room, is an awesome realistic 3-D game set in the 19th century, a world with esoteric Tesla-inspired absent characters, Tesla-like machinery, and utterly absorbing and mesmerising puzzles and atmosphere.

If you have played The Room, you will find the game quite easy to follow and to play at the beginning, especially the first two chapters. I thought they were a bit too easy... ha! That was a teaser, because things get very tricky again from chapter 3 and the wheels of your brain will be rolling in all directions. 
  
Visually speaking, the game has developed into a more complex and visually-enthralling game, with multi-layered rooms. plenty of devices and spots to investigate in each room, all interconnected among themselves.This being the case, the game is even more entertaining than the original. Chapter 3 offers a sort of time travel switch, which I loved, and chapter 5 is another brain electrifying knock for your mind!

The quality of the image, design, colours, textures and lighting is superb. The inventive is amazing, as well. The atmosphere is gorgeous.

I also liked the fact that the texts by AS, the absent character, and other texts and notes you find in the different rooms have clues embedded to solve the puzzles, so, in a way, they are more integrated with the game and not just a nice atmospheric addition. Still, I would like the story to be developed a bit more, as this would add another layer of enjoyment to a game that is already technically fantastic. 
  
The séance chapter and the one with the electric devices were awesome and I found myself totally there, in the room, excited as a child trying to solve the mystery and open the door to the next room.

My main disappointment with this game is the clue system. I love having clues to use when I am truly stuck, but the ones here are or too obvious to be a clue, or are not a clue but an instruction of what to do. That puts me off! For example, "you've got X see where it can fit" (helloooo, I have already reached that simple conclusion!!), "you should look for a shape like this" (helloooooo Mistahhhh), go there, do this and find this (wawwawaw, not a clue!). The good thing is that you can switch off the clue system in the settings, and problem solved. Still, I would like something a bit more elaborate, more "hintful", not so brutally there, if you know what I mean. 

I bought this game for less than 1 dollar, which is an unbelievable price if you take into consideration the quality of the game and the hours of entertainment you get.

The Room3 is going to be realised in August 2015. I cannot wait!

Read More

The Room by Fireproof Games

I was not into video-games of any sort, but this one changed my mind. And I thought it was time!

The Bafta award, the price of this app (a bit oldie now) and the raving reviews pushed me to push the purchase button. And what a purchase!

The room is an engineering 3-D maze and puzzle with a Tesla feeling to it, very 19th century, and it is very esoteric and intriguing. There are a series of boxes with many doors to open, locks you have to unlock, pieces you have to find and put elsewhere, parts that you have to fix. A bit of mental exercise and ability while you are having fun.

The  images have a great realism, and they are very detailed, crispy clean, with wonderful colours, textures and lighting. A pleasure for your senses. The retro atmosphere and the somewhat familiar music-box music create a wonderful ensemble. The fact that your fingers move around, look around, really makes you to believe that you are touching what you have in front of you, that you are in the room, handling the stuff in front of your eyes.

I would not say that The Room is a difficult game once you get used to the commands, how the game works and what is asking from you. However it is still ingenious and very challenging. If you want it easy, you can follow the clues by pushing the (?) button, but, personally, I avoid them as much as I can. Otherwise, the sense of achievement is less rewarding.  

I loved the Epilogue, especially the piano puzzle, was like playing piano with your own fingers. Also the 3-D spatial puzzles with the viewfinder lenses are cleverly done.

The Room works great in my Google Nexus 7 Tablet, with very neat images, easy movement and digital interaction. The app automatically rotates the screen, and everything works great. My only complaint is that, at least in my device, the touching around sometimes interferes with the three bottom buttons of the device, which self-hide while gaming, and they interrupt the game. Also the zooming in/out is sometimes a bit slow or perhaps not as straightforward and intuitive as I would have like it, but it might be my device. Still, this is one-dollar application game, so perhaps is too much to ask!

Read More

Mind Games Pro by Mindware Consulting

I love this sort of apps, and this one as well.

The brain exercises in the exercises are great, as they mix a series of games to develop different areas of your brain, and favour flexibility, creativity, memory retention, alertness, spatial, verbal, cognitive and numerical skills among other things. The games are not too difficult, but doing them at the correct speed is the biggest challenge many of the times. You will find more difficult those that involve an area of your brain that you need to develop or do not use enough.

I love the scoring system, with your today's results and your best results ever, which helps you to improve and beat yourself; it is great that the final scores always tell you if you are doing normal, below normal, or above normal and in which degree, and also if you are doing better (and percentage) with regards to the people in your age group.

I have a complaint. This is a paid app. This is an app for everybody out there, humans on Planet Earth who speak English, not just Americans. OK, who was the brilliant mind who decided that including questions about American Football was a great way to test MY knowledge skills?

Re the design, the welcome page of the game is very simple but very colourful and pleasant to the eye, and I love the colour scheme used in each game and the big size font used in the descriptions of what the game requires from you.

Beyond that, the visual design of the game looks amateurish. For example, most of the images and shapes you find in the visual games are Google-search-like images and shapes, not neat enough not nice enough not original ones. There are plenty of photo stock websites where to get royalty free images... The list of games page is just visually poor and crowded. And the settings of the game do not allow you to change the size or type of font. This is a paid app. A bit of more care in the design would have been great. I have mind-solving games with amazing graphics and design for 0.99 bucks. Hello Hello Mr designer!

The PRO (paid) version does NOT have adds.

Read More

The Moron Test by DistinctDev

It is official, I am not a moron.

The Moron Test is not only a very cheap puzzle game, it is a great brain teaser and a very cute and engaging game. When you start playing you think that it is too easy, a child game, thinking that is your knowledge what is being tested. It is not your knowledge, it is you way of thinking and reacting!

The good thing is that, no matter how much you FAIL!, you can always restart the game and try again, with the advantage of knowing already the answers to the different pages you have already passed. You will see yourself learning from your mistakes, realising that even though you know the correct answer your reflex act is faster than your discernment, you will see that your brain will read something and be tricked by the contradictory images on the page, you will see that despite you being told to pay attention your will still be distracted, you will see yourself feeling like a moron and saying damn-it, I am "moronesque". This is also enhanced by the fact that part of the replies to some of the queries require you to realise that you have to move physically your device, and think out of the square.

The second phase was the one I found more difficult to pass. I would not say that phase 6 is more difficult than phase 2, it is just that I found this one the most challenging personally. The others could be as difficult, but somewhat after no 2 one figures out what the game is asking you to do, what not to do, and what things we should be focusing on.

The game is also very humorous and cute, with all the characters being drawn in a very small children book sort of way. Some of the sounds are very funny, as well.

I found that when doing the test for second time to get to the place I was stuck, knowing already the answers to the exercises previously passed, the game would say FAIL! repeatedly. This is OK when you know the answer, and you might think it is your device's responsiveness to touch. But if you are doing the exercise for the first time, you will think that you are missing something that you are not. I think that I know why this is happening :)) I think it is not the game being badly designed, it is a wish on the part of the producers to cash in on your mistakes, as a key answer is offered for purchase many times after you fail. If you are not a moron don't buy it. Ha! If you feel stuck any time, you can go and search the Internet. Most of the exercises can be passing by you "thinking" on solving, not focusing on your frustration at not having figured out the answer yet. 

Great fun!

Read More

Monument Valley by Ustwo

Monument Valley is a gorgeous 3-D cartoon-like Escher-inspired puzzle game, with geometric architectural colourful settings, adorable characters, effective sound and animation effects, and a soothing magical music. This is a sleek game regarding design, and where colour, simplicity and fancifulness are perfectly combined.

I find the game good both for children and adults, as the level of difficulty is not high until you get to the last two levels (chapters 9 & 10) or the the last episode of the expansion. However, it is not that easy, either, as this is a 3D puzzle, so optical illusion and perspective play an important role in solving the puzzles. This makes the game very engaging. Eye candy. Mind candy. The level of difficulty steps up, literally, with each chapter and steps up with the new set extension, which is something I love. Episode 8 of the Forgotten Shores was really tricky!

The whole ensemble is mesmerising and absorbing, and unlike other puzzle games or games in general, even if you are stuck in some of the most difficult steps, you won't give up. Because it is kinda relaxing.

The game is based on touch and tap, so anybody, even a small child, can play it, to happily lead our little princess to destination. Most importantly, the game is fully responsive to touch and tap, at least in my tablet, something we cannot take for granted as many games really are not thought for or adapted for tablets and are a pain to play.

There are 10 chapters included in the game, plus 8 more if you want to expand it. You probably will do because, once you immerse yourself in the wondrous world of Monument Valley, you want to stay there for a long time. It is barely $3 AU, and, what the heck, your coffee will cost you more.

Big kudos to the whole team of Ustwo for making a virtue and an amazing game based on pure simplicity, care for the details, and charm. I am going to be buying anything these guys create!

Read More