Mobile games

James Pinnell reviews the latest games for android & iOS smartphones & tablets.

Project Cars Go PROJECT: FAILED.

Free with IAP

Project Cars as a franchise has certainly had its fair share of ups and downs. One of the closest competitors to the Forza and Gran Turismo powerhouses of Xbox and PlayStation, Slightly Mad Studios has made high fidelity, true handling, dynamic surface and weather environments an obsession. As a result, even the original version of the software that came out in 2015 still looks and runs exceptionally on PC and is considered best-in-class as far as simulators go.

So, it’s somewhat of a shock that a game that focused so heavily on realism would choose to emulate one of the other recent disappointments in mobile racing – Forza Street – which also took a franchise focused on control and pace and removed all sense of excitement and complexity. Project Cars Go, like Forza, requires only a single finger to control, thus removing steering, acceleration and breaking strategy. Instead, races focus on timing button presses at checkpoints to control all of these aspects.

The reasoning for this is fairly clear, since it’s much easier to monetise a vehicle that doesn’t require skill to control. The speed and navigation of the car against others is on rails, and upgrading the intrinsic components (wheels, engine, breaks etc) just bumps up the access to certain races. At its core, I don’t really have a problem with the game as it stands – it runs well enough, looks good – but there is nothing to it. Other mobile racers, such as Asphalt 9, CSR2 or Rebel Racing, all ensure players have full control over their vehicles, with a mess of control schemes and controller support, showing it’s more than possible on mobile.

In 2021, with the vast majority of phones capable of running graphically intensive games with real controls, physics and a host of other features – titles like this feel lazy and exploitative. Right now, you can play Forza Motorsport on your Android device (and by time of print, iOS) via Cloud Streaming – so why bother with this? If you are looking for a decent racer, look elsewhere.

Dadish 2 MY FAVOURITE PATERNAL RADISH.

Ad-supported ($3.49 Full Unlock)

I have a soft spot in my heart for a radish dad. Especially a caring radish dad. In this sequel to the insanely popular original, our favourite sentient root vegetable took his kids to work and they all managed to get lost across 50 levels of platforming adventure. Standard troubles, eh? On the way there’s bosses, giant hamburgers, silly dialogue and lots of weird little surprises. Dadish 2 is really the perfect mobile game – it’s simple to control and hard to master, it looks and runs wonderfully on almost any device, including tablets. Great soundtrack to boot, with controller support, secret areas and quite an endearing story about fatherhood, which is hard to find in a casual platformer. It’s also made across the ditch in NZ, which is an added bonus.

There are also a bunch of improvements on the original – new mechanics, a much more brutal difficulty curve at the higher levels, physics-based puzzles, and it’s also just a hell of a lot funnier. Really. The dialogue in the game is hilarious and some of the level design is extraordinary – the space station levels were exceptionally good and I could have played the entire game inside of them. While the touch screen controls are simple and responsive, its highly recommended playing Dadish 2 with a controller – it was certainly designed with this in mind. You can play the entire game with ad support, but it’s highly recommended to unlock the full title early with a single $3.49 purchase.

Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery TINY ROOMS, LARGE EXPERIENCES.

Ad-supported ($2.49 Full Unlock)

Tiny Room Stories won a staggering amount of awards on its initial release and there’s good reason why – it’s an exceptional puzzler that makes fantastic use of a touch screen, thanks to the innovative rotation mechanism that allows the game to hide clues and items in plain sight. There’s also a great story built in to boot across its 15 chapters for the bargain price of $2.49 for the full game.

At its core, Tiny Room Stories is a detective game. You are presented with a single screen scenario – which may involve a house or a room you need to access and once inside, there are generally a set of logic-based puzzles to complete in order to proceed in the story and find out what happened to your missing father and the other residents of the town he contacted you from. While difficult, puzzles are rarely silly or focus on some insane sort of process – they are almost entirely mechanical.

Every level is fully 3D and exceptionally detailed, providing a host of challenges to figure out the mysterious reasons why the residents vanished.

While the ads are non-invasive I would highly recommend forking out the small cost early, which certainly heightens the immersive nature of the game, which can be spoiled somewhat by a garish slots advert or similar.

Blast Beats DOOF, DOOF...

Ad-supported ($1.99 Full Unlock)

I love a good rhythm game. There’s something especially enthralling about getting to interact with a great track, and after thoroughly enjoying the Queen mobile experience a few months back, I’ve been on the lookout for another great game to get my thumbs tapping again. Blast Beats is a Rock/EDM focused one-tap “Rhythm Experience” that keeps things fun and simple – just tap to the beat.

There’s not a lot to say about Blast Beats that isn’t already clear from its marketing; there’s 15 arguably great tracks, fun and quirky pixel art graphics, and great responsive controls. There’s even a little video doco series built in that goes into how the developers came up with the ideas and made the game, which - as a journalist - I actually enjoyed more than the game itself. One thing I didn’t like was that there was no haptic feedback for taps, whether successful or not, which made it difficult to tell if you’d made a correct tap or to get into the tempo of the beats. It really detracted from what is largely a fun experience.

The game, like most of the others I’ve reviewed in this issue, is mostly ad-supported but you can unlock it for $1.99, which is a great price. I’ve been impressed with the move away from microtransactions or excessive ad unlock prices of late and it shows a dedication to providing choice outside excessive monetisation for a lot of the indie games especially.

Rusty Lake Hotel UNSETTLING ANIMALS.

$1.99

Rusty Lake Hotel is the second point and click adventure I played this month, and it turned out to be a deep and wonderful experience although with a much more creepy aesthetic, mature themes, exceptional narration, story, and characters. It was also hard almost to the point of frustration, but managed to keep me engaged throughout.

Rusty Lake Hotel begins with a number of guests, each one a different animal in human clothing. There are six rooms and five dinners, each with a host of puzzles and dialogue, all coated in a flowing narration and a wonderful soundtrack. Being a point and click title (or tap in this case), puzzles are single screen related and can get quite intense – especially when the story begins to ramp up.

Animation and animals aside, this is certainly not a children’s game. It can get quite chilling and mature, and some of the events may be shocking for anyone under the age of 14. But the mysteries as they gradually unfold, while shocking, are intense, intimate and engaging for adults. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a more complex and mature game.

For $1.99, it’s a steal. Especially recommended for tablets and a pair of good headphones.