Mobile game reviews
TECHLIFE’S TEAM REVIEWS THE LATEST GAMES FOR ANDROID & iOS SMARTPHONES & TABLETS.
Her Majesty’s SPIFFING FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY, BOYO. $5.99 | billygoat.tv
DISCLAIMER: YOUR HUMBLE reviewer is a massive British comedy fan. Now we’ve got that out of the way, we can explain why that doesn’t help us to enjoy this game much. The Queen has decided to expand the British Empire after the fallout from an unsuccessful Brexit, but since the Earth isn’t really an option anymore, her attention has turned to the stars. So was created SPIFFING (Special Planetary Investigative Force For Inhabiting New Galaxies). You control Captain Frank Lee English, a fat, bald gentleman with an impressive painter’s brush moustache. His flight lieutenant, South Welshman Aled Jones, is your quest giver, sending you around the cramped interior of the HMSS Imperialise, looking for parts after your mission inevitably goes awry.
We played this game on the iPhone SE, meaning there was less screen real estate than perhaps the developers were banking on, so while we were navigating each area, our hand frequently obscured the entire screen. There are two ways to move Captain English around the ship — pressing and holding on the screen and then dragging your finger around like you’re using a joystick, or to tap the location on the screen. The latter option can’t be used all the time, however.
Puzzles are fairly simple but knowing what you’re supposed to do is sometimes vague. For the most part, we pressed on everything that looked important and hoped for the best — a tactic the game itself actually pokes fun at. It’s full of fourth-wall-breaking moments, even going so far as to mention ‘the audience’ and the characters’ scripts.
But for all its humour, we simply didn’t have much fun playing this game. We encountered a couple of glitches while playing: one righted itself, but the other halted our progress entirely. We had to return to a previous save to fix it.
This game lasts somewhere between two and three hours, depending on how much backtracking you do to find clues, and therein lies one of our main gripes. It is a pretty game, but we’re not sure it’s worth the asking price. [ CARMEL SEALEY ]
Cosmic Express PREPARE FOR A MENTAL PUMMELLING. $7.99 | cosmicexpressgame.com
ADORABLE YET ROCK-HARD puzzle game Cosmic Express is made by a man called Alan Hazelden, alongside the team from similarly tricky puzzle game A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build and Tyu from arty French game collective Klondike. Alan makes puzzle games, and he’s very good at them. However, precisely because he is very good at them, they’re all incredibly difficult.
You’re tasked with drawing a tiny railway to pick up and drop off alien passengers, whose houses correspond to their colours. They will not go to each others’ houses, and some of them refuse to even get inside a train carriage that another alien has been in. Other puzzle concepts, such as black holes that transport you across a level and trains with multiple carriages, offer new challenges.
It’s deceptively adorable, with pastel pinks and purples, and cute little noises every time you squish one of the aliens. But it’s the kind of game that will wring out your brain. Is that a good thing? Well, do you like puzzles? Are you thrilled by the idea of a game that leaves you stumped for days until you suddenly realize how to solve it while taking a bath? Are you, in fact, Alan Hazelden? Then yes. Cosmic Express will punch you in the brain, and you will probably love it, like people who love eating chillies that make them cry.
There are also many levels, which is a lovely surprise for an iOS game, but a potentially daunting feature for anyone who throws their phone at the wall in frustration every time they can’t complete a seemingly simple challenge.
This game’s difficulty level could count against it, but it feels like a nice feature. This isn’t the kind of game that you can blast through on one bus journey; each level takes thought, planning, and a whole lot of trial and error. And you’ll feel like a genius when you get it. Surely, that’s worth the $5 alone, no? There’s a difficulty curve to it like a steep cliff, but Cosmic Express is adorable, enjoyable and brain-tingly. [ KATE GRAY]
Tap My Katamari JUST ROLL WITH IT. Free | www.tapmykatamari.com
BEAR WITH US. Based on the niche home video game series, you play as the Prince, an underling to the King of the Cosmos who’s destroyed all of the stars in the universe. It’s up to you to roll up anything and everything in your path, then launch your ball of paper clips, chess pieces, stuffed animals, furniture, houses and so on into the sky, bringing joy back to the world. In practice, this means tapping your phone screen, non-stop, while the Prince scuttles from left to right across the screen.
At first, it’s about as tactical as picking your nose, but as you amass more, uh, mass... and acquire coins that inexplicably tumble out of your everyday objects, you gain more power, speed and options for recruiting your other cousins who bolster the rewards you earn. Soon, it’s two hours later and you have a weird creaking sensation in your knuckles. Addictive? Oh, yes. It helps that the graphics are the equivalent of syrup-coated marshmallows, and the music will leave earworms nestling in your skull for days. Of course, it’s completely pointless and about as memorable as that movie you saw last summer, or maybe the year before but ideal for filling in moments between moments. Watch out for the microtransactions, as while they’re inoffensively unobtrusive, they are anything but micro. [ PAUL TAYLOR ]
Robot Unicorn Attack 3 A SEQUEL TOO FAR. Free with IAP | adultswim.com/games
ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK 3 is the third installment in Adult Swim’s unicorn-themed infinite runner which, you’ll be pleased to know, takes itself about as seriously as the title warrants. The core mechanic of the series is guiding a mechanised unicorn through a realm of rainbows, platforms, monsters and endless voids. The controls are simple — tap the left side of the screen to jump, and the right to dash through enemies and obstacles alike. As you progress further, the collectibles grow more dense and the pace quickens.
This is all carried over from the past title and this third iteration has more or less retained its stupidly addictive charm, albeit with game-breaking stutters in performance on some less-capable phones courtesy of the new 3D rendering. If your phone can handle it, RUA3’ s core gameplay is fine and the newly rendered environment is enticing if not occasionally distracting, but the added in-game currency elements are addictive in the worst kind of way. You spend your various forms of currency to ‘forge’ new unicorns and upgrades, each with their own advantages. You can even send your unicorns on ‘raids’, waiting hours, even days, for their return — an unnecessary attempt at idle ‘gameplay’. If you happen to enjoy all this frilly, capitalist nonsense and also love infinite runners, then this game is for you. [ HARRY DOMANSKI ]
OK Golf IT’S GOLF, AND IT’S... YOU KNOW, NOT BAD. $4.49 | okidokico.com
GOLF GAMES ON iOS range from the weird to the silly with a bunch of serious, in-depth golf games in between. OK Golf is a very simple version of golf, and far more casual than most. It’s got an appealing low-poly style that pares down the golfing experience to its core components: sand, rough, water, green. Avoid the bad bits, stay in the good bits, make sure the ball goes in the hole. Simple, but effective.
There’s just one thing to do in each level: stay at or under par. You have to line up your shot and fire, though each level has a hidden hole to find and there are ‘power shots’ that can carry your ball a little further at the expense of accuracy.
There are also several modes. The regular mode is your standard ‘do as well as possible’ mode, in which your score translates to stars, which unlock more levels. Championship mode tallies up your score across nine courses, and time trial mode has you completing the nine courses as quickly as possible — an interesting new challenge in a familiar context.
It’s a pretty satisfying, if basic, golf game that caters quite nicely to the kind of attention span that mobile games tend to attract. It won’t blow you away, but it’s a decent challenge for those who like a bit of golf on the go.
It’s no Tiger Woods, but it’s a good take on golf for Apple’s mobile platform. [ KATE GRAY ]