FLAPPY BIRD REVIEW

Can you hear that folks? Is it the beating wings of eternity? The steady rhythm of all existence? No. It's a one-eyed pixel fish with wings flapping its way through an endless slalom of Super Mario pipes. But this isn't a Miyamoto fever-dream, it's Flappy Bird, and it has come to consume your very soul. Or, you know, make you tap your mobile device of choice a bunch for two minutes before deleting it. It certainly scratches the itch for exacting, skill-based achievement thoroughly, but its staggering lack of ambition or creativity put a pretty low ceiling on how high it can soar.

It will take longer for you to read this explanation of how Flappy Bird works than it would for you to download it (for free) on your iOS or Android device and see absolutely everything it does first hand. Your bird flies slowly and steadily to the right, through an obstacle course of rather familiar-looking pipes. Every set you pass gets you a “ding” and a point. Just tap to flap. But for as simple as it sounds, it usually only takes milliseconds to get your first infuriating taste of defeat. See, our little pixelated hero isn't a very good flier. He doesn't so much glide as he awkwardly bops like a cast-iron fishing lure being tugged against the current. He's also afflicted with a most rare and unfortunately fatal allergy to green pipes - dropping dead from even the most fleeting contact with them. If this doesn't sound very fun, it's because it isn't… not in the traditional sense of the word anyway.

Despite being so needlessly cruel, Flappy Bird is also extraordinarily fair and exacting. You won't find any randomly inescapable patterns, or run-ending collision detection issues here. Whatever the number is on the screen when your randomly colored bird's flight inevitably ends, it's a badge – an immutable quantification of your skill and focus. It is in this regard that Flappy Bird finds its one true success. There is no pretense, no story, and no reason but your own limitations why the number on screen can't get bigger. Maybe that doesn't speak to you, but it did to me, and once I had vowed to walk its walk, Flappy Bird took me to an embarrassingly addictive place in my brain.

The inevitability of failure for the slightest mistakes creates a tension that's difficult to put words to. For a while, I felt accomplished when I hit double digits, struggling from pipe one to keep my bird from crashing. It felt like playing a Mario game for the first time as a child and leaning from side to side, as if I could will my way through. Not long after that though, the rhythm clicked, and getting into the 20s and 30s was easy. But around 40 I'd notice I hadn't blinked, which got me thinking about blinking and then WHACK. When I crossed triple digits, staying mentally dialed in became the real challenge, and during my high-score run of 138 there were times where I realized I had actually forgotten to breathe. I suddenly found myself trying to inhale as carefully as I could so as not to disrupt the rhythm of my finger. That's quite a psychological trick for a game to pull off, but it comes at an expense.

Flappy Bird is entirely artless, and completely uninterested in giving us an experience outside of mechanical mastery. There's no variation, and the one mechanic never evolves or even attempts to apply itself in interesting ways. The number on your screen is the only indicator of progress, and the only thing that differentiates pipe number four from pipe number 400. Without it, Flappy Bird could never have held my attention for more than a minute or two. Emphasizing skill shouldn't have to come at the expense of creative possibility. In that sense, all Flappy Bird really is, is a proof of concept; a skeleton with only the barest bit of flesh hanging from it.

The Verdict

Flappy Bird isn't a good video game. It's arguably not even a fun one. But its no-frills approach and exacting, relentlessly repetitious gameplay make it an addictive short-term distraction for the skill and score-obsessed. It's a bird that sings only one note, and though it sings it well, it does so while flying needlessly low to the ground.http://agreview.net/review

Piano Tiles review: watch the tiles

Introduction

We've got an app that combines fabulous piano music with some challenging gaming action. The Piano Tiles app can be played on your iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone and involves you being sure not to tap on the white tiles. The game is incredibly addictive and there are over 20 game modes to choose from. It’s more than just the gameplay though, as you’ll be able to enjoy music while you’re at it; in fact, you can create your own playlist.

Not So Easy to Master

The Piano Tiles app is one of those games that seems really easy in theory but is incredibly challenging to master, which of course makes it all the more addictive. As mentioned you've got over 20 different game modes so you'll never feel bored or that the game is repetitive. The app supports Leaderboards so you can see how you're doing next to your friends on Twitter and Facebook. The customizable playlist and piano soundtracks help to set the atmosphere and the gameplay itself is very polished. You can even customize the look of the game thanks to the variety of color options and themes.

The game is free to download and play but it is supported by ads which can be removed as a $0.99 in-app purchase. It has just recently been updated with a number of updates and improvements, new modes of play, and additional features. The game currently has 4.5 out of five stars from users. Browsing through the customer comments you'll find that players love the new challenges that have been added, and the fact it really keeps you focused.

The Gameplay Experience

When you launch the Piano Tiles app you will be taken to the menu of game modes. Each one has a different feel and music so it’s fun to try them all out. The gameplay is really quite simple: just tap on the black squares and avoid the white ones. You need to go as fast as possible and you’ll be creating music as you go. If you tap on a white square the game is over for you. I thought the game wouldn’t offer enough of a challenge but that first time you tap on the white square, and it will happen, you find yourself surprised because this game actually is pretty difficult to master.

Unlike some of the users who have left comments I haven't experienced any issues, crashing, or bugs at all with the game.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Plenty of game modes to choose from

The game is very easy to understand and the controls are simple to use

Create music as you play

Your scores can be shared with friends and family

Cons

Some users have experienced glitches with the gameplay

Playlist

Final Words

The Piano Tiles app for your iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone provides users with a smooth, addictive, and challenging game that will have you hooked instantly. The vast variety of game modes will keep you coming back for more.

Hay Day: Farming game

In one way, it's sort of strange that farming - a menial, repetitive task that involves long hours and lots of hard work - has formed the basis for the latest craze in casual simulators.

But in another way it makes perfect sense. Games likeFarmVille are all about managing time and resources in order to create a particular outcome, and farming may be the most clear and direct form of resource-management in the world. Seeds go in, plants come out. Done.

Hay Day is the latest freemium title to try and cash in on the farm craze, and while it isn't particularly original it still manages to get all of the basic elements right.

Green fingers

You start out with little more than a grubby patch of land and and a talkative scarecrow for a helper. After being walked through the basics you're largely left to your own devices as you attempt to build up your business.

With only a couple of crops to choose from, and not very many places to grow them, things begin sedately, but as your farming career blossoms you'll be dealing with animals, tending multiple feeds, and trying to sell your stock to as many people as possible.

Everything grows in its own time, from eggs to carrots, although you can speed things up with the liberal application of diamonds, which you can buy with real-life money from the game's shop.

Factory farming

Every action you perform - whether cutting down trees to make space for your expansion, baking bread in the on site oven, or selling items to the customers who wander in - gives you stars. These are basically XP, and each time you level-up you get new crops, buildings, and products to play with.

There's a social aspect to the game, too, in that you can add Facebook friends in order to trade with them, and visit their farms to see how your competition is doing.

The real draw of gardening is the satisfaction of a job well done, and that's something that Hay Day just about manages to capture. Watching your crops grow and your twee factories spew out products is a quietly pleasing experience.

If you're vehemently opposed to freemium farming sims then this one won't change your mind. But if you fancy spending a relaxing few minutes a day tending the farm then you could do a lot worse than tend this one.

Brain It On!: IQ game for anybody

My initial reaction to Orbital Nine’s physics-based game Brain It On! was that I’m too dumb for it.I nearly gave up after getting stumped just a few levels in. But instead, I decided to stick with it and see what would happen. At some point it just clicked and I was three-starring every level. I was hooked.

Brain It On! has a very minimalistic appearance. Each level starts with an objective written across the screen. It can be as simple as “draw a shape” or as difficult as “place the ball in the orange box” (you’ll see that one a lot). You then use your finger to draw on the screen. Whatever you draw will become a solid object that interacts with its surroundings. So if you draw a circle near the top of the screen, it will drop and likely bounce a bit. If you draw it near the bottom of the screen, it will hardly move. You can’t actually control the shapes after you draw them. The only way you can guide them is by drawing other shapes that might cause some chain reaction to achieve your goal.

The game may require a lot of patience, depending on how good you are at figuring out these types of physics puzzles. I’ve definitely needed a lot of patience. Basically, the way I play is I try drawing something to see what happens. Based on the results, I’ll either tweak it a bit or try something completely different. If I see something is almost working, I’ll just keep changing it a bit, hoping it will eventually work. Surprisingly, this method has proven quite effective, even if it is a bit time-consuming. When I finally solve a level, though, it’s incredibly exciting. Take this level where I was told to flip the cup upside-down. I tried a shape that kept getting it to flip almost all the way, but the wall kept blocking it. I continued trying, though. Eventually, I got this result that you can see in the video below.

It took many attempts to get that to happen, but it was such an amazing result that I must have watched the video a few dozen times right after. This is where the game really shines. It was genius to include Everplay so players can record and show off their solutions to others. It’s also fun to see what solutions other players came up with.

Brain It On! also has a very fair monetization system. The game is 100% free to download and play. Five levels are unlocked at a time. You need to complete four of the five to unlock the next five. Each level also has three stars you can earn. You get one star for solving a level, another for doing it within the time limit, and the third is for using no more than the maximum recommended number of shapes for the level. Attempting three stars is fun for the challenge, but it also provides you with enough stars to unlock every group of twenty levels. If you do so, you never have to spend a penny on the game. If you don’t earn enough stars, you can also buy in-app-purchases (IAP) of $0.99 per section. There are currently eighty levels, so that means if you want to unlock the sixty levels that are locked away initially, it will cost you about $3.

There are also hints that you can access by watching an opt-in video ad. The hints show you which shapes to use for one possible solution. I do wish the hints would remain visible once you watch an ad for it, though. But these are currently the only ads in the game at the moment. So if you’re skilled enough, you can play the game without spending any money or seeing any ads .There are zero timers or limits on how many times you can try to solve a level. Restarting is also quick, especially on my iPad Air 2. So there’s no time wasted when attempting a puzzle over and over.

The developer is also planning to add a one-time IAP to unlock all the levels and all hints for $3.99. So if you like the game but want to have access to all the levels from the very beginning, you’ll be able to do so for a one-time payment. I’m very vocally against consumable IAPs, but I think a system like this is more than fair.

As you progress, you’ll be introduced to new elements such as red zones where you can’t draw anything. I’ve been able to three-star every level I’ve completed so far, so it is doable. But I’m currently stuck in the mid thirties, because the levels with moving parts have been giving me some trouble. The game can get pretty challenging. I now have three unsolved puzzles available to me at the moment, which all have me stumped. I’ll likely eventually buy the IAP to unlock all the levels so I can have more freedom.

Overall, Brain It On! is a polished, unique physics game that is definitely worth checking out.Since it’s free to download, you have nothing to lose. It might not be for everyone, but if you give it a chance, you might just find yourself hooked, sharing your videos with the world.

Calsh of clans: Game for everyone

This is a freemium game review, in which we usually give our impressions immediately after booting a game up, again after three days, and finally after seven days. However, Clash of Clans has been out for months, and I've been playing for a good long while, so I'm going to be doing things a bit different this time round...

I was introduced to the game by my main man Jon Jordan through the Pocket Gamer Podcast a few months later, after hearing about his love of the game, and the staggering amount of money he'd ploughed into the freemium title.

I've always been interested in freemium games, and I've sunk more than my fair share of time in them. But by the time I played Clash of Clans I'd become frustrated with the failing common to many freemium world-building titles: there's very little skill or strategy involved in success.

One small step for barbarian man

To me, Clash of Clans represents a tentative but significant step towards changing this, though it's a step that few take the time to recognise. See,Clash of Clans asks you to be good at the game as well as patient, and for that it deserves recognition.

Clans asks you to build a village and populate it with everything the warring tribe you're leading might need. A town hall for leadership, a gold mine for money, an army camp to hold your warriors, an Elixir collector to gather up this additional resource from the ether - pretty soon you've got plenty of architectural work to be getting on with.

As you build and expand your small camp into a burgeoning fortress you unlock more building types, but never enough to weigh you down with choices. Hit a high enough level and you can take over the Clan Castle, allowing you to forge allegiances with other players, upgrade your barracks, and create different types of unit.

There are more than enough types of unit to unlock, but not enough for any of them to seem perfunctory on the battlefield.

It's in the battles that you first appreciate the necessity for skill. The first few battles with the AI are easy-peasy. Simply build enough Barbarians to overrun the Goblin hideout, and watch them take it apart.

Then you're given access to archer units, and you're thinking, "well, this is easy, I'm storming through these."

Brick by brick

Then you run up against an enemy barricade with a few cannons and a big chunky wall, and you're done for. Your hand-to-hand units can't tear the wall down fast enough, and your archers are too busy plundering resources to notice that they're being fired on by cannons.

So you upgrade your Barracks and after a while you have Giants and Wall Breakers. Now you can smash through those same walls with a well-placed bomb, and your Giants are dismantling cannons with ease.

The game builds like this, requiring more and more sophisticated units, asking you to strategise and really think about which elements you should focus on building within your camp.

Next you'll find that having overwhelming numbers just isn't going to cut it - you'll need to specifically think where and when you'll deploy troops, and how they're going to interact with the enemy camps.

Lots of cannons guarding an entrance? You'll want an aerial unit to rain fire from above. Bomb traps lying in wait around the back? Go through the walls at the side.

There's even narrative justification for these systems of play, should you need it. You're wrangling a riotous clan, of course you don't have complete control over all your troops, but you can give general orders as their chief.

This, of course, is all training for when you first get raided by another real-life player. The first time you see your base wiped out, you'll watch the replay to see how it happened, rebuild, and perhaps shore up certain areas of your base. Then it's time to train troops and go show them who's boss.

Coming home

The pressure to continue formulating better defences or more deadly forms of attack keeps you coming back, and the well-calibrated match-making system ensure you'll never grow too frustrated or bored.

It's not a perfect game, of course - hence the Gold Award and not the Platinum. But the issues are few and far between.

Occasionally, the game will mistake you scrolling across your camp as you wanting to move a building, which can be a pain. And it's quick to boot, but seems to reset the loading process whenever you return to the iPhone's home screen and then jump back in.

It was never the best-looking game. It's not ugly by any means, but the presentation is all isometric 2D and the number of frames of animation could have been a little higher.

And perhaps it takes slightly longer than desirable to buildings to go up. It's not excessive, and it gives you time to walk away and think about how you want to move forward, but when you just want to get on and execute on your strategies it can be a pain.

But these are minor gripes. Clash of Clans is a superb game, freemium or otherwise, with more nuance than most give it credit for. That's why it's passed the test of time since its launch and still has an active community devotedly constructing elaborate fortresses in the hope of becoming invincible.

So go and grab it. It's free, it's easy to get into, and it's a superb example of how freemium should work.

That's our experience of the game, what's yours been? Let us and the rest of the Pocket Gamer Community know by leaving us a comment in the box below.

Boom Beach review: Brother of Clash of Clans

Take a gander at the top grossing games on iOS and one game that’s been there for an incredibly long time is Supercell’sClash of Clans [Free]. Combining freemium elements with base building and combat, Supercell managed to create a compelling system to encourage players to come back (and spend some money). Now, the freemium powerhouse has returned with the worldwide launch of Boom Beach [Free], the spiritual successor to Clash. Offering a similar experience in a different setting with just enough tweaks to make it unique, Boom Beach isn’t going to offer a radically different experience, but that might not be a bad thing in terms of approachability.

If you’ve played Clash of Clans, then Boom Beach is going to look pretty familiar to you. Players start out with a simple island base with the goal being to explore the surrounding areas and free the surrounding island natives from villainous servitude. You’ll free them by building and upgrading ships, namely a gunship and landing boats, that you’ll use to deploy landing parties and take out opposing headquarters. Freeing islands rewards both immediate and long term resources. In addition, islands are constantly being taken back, affording players an opportunity to retake and earn additional supplies. Eventually, the retaken islands become player islands which, provide even more resources along with medals, which are the primary measure of success.

Sounds simple, but you’d expect from Supercell there’s a bit of strategy involved. Landing boats can be outfitted with a wide variety of different units, each having pros and cons in terms of health, strength and weapons. Gunship weapons, as well as each of the landing units, can be upgraded as well as the ships themselves. Meanwhile, base buildings include the standard defensive mechanisms, as well as resource gatherers, structures that allow the aforementioned upgrades, and so on. Of course, all the building and upgrading is buttressed by a freemium timer system that applies to all facets of the game.

As someone that was a bit intimidated by Clash of Clans, I was surprised by how inviting the introductory phases of Boom Beach were. Currency is simplified at the onset with secondary currencies slowly introduced as you upgrade your headquarters. Premium currency, which plays the standard role of speeding up timers, doled out on a regular basis (although still a bit slow for my tastes). Even the game’s combat system is paced really well with a player’s zone of influence (and potential opponents) being small at the onset but gradually expands at whatever pace the player desires.

Of course, as friendly and interesting Boom Beach is, it’s important to note that it’s still a freemium game at its heart. The building, recruiting, upgrading and resource systems are all premised on timers, with the only alternative to patience being to use premium currency to speed up the timers. Also, once you get into mid-game and additional currencies start appearing, Beach has a nasty habit of pushing you to instantly upgrade fundamental buildings for said new currency. Considering the fact that combat only occurs when you explore new regions (which take coins and radar upgrades) or when conquered islands are retaken (which take time), long session players will quickly find that Boom Beach plays best in smaller, more frequent sessions. I won’t get into a theoretically debate about freemium, but all I’ll say is this style of play fits perfectly for my lifestyle, which is why it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Now, I’m a fan of the streamlined gameplay but it does come with some costs. As far as building bases is concerned, there’s some loss in customization. In fact, taking a glance at the top players it also seems like there’s some loss in terms of viable endgame strategies as everyone seems to have the same exact base layout. There’s also very little in social integration currently available, which I thought was a pretty big part of Clash. I’m sure such additions will get updated into Boom Beach eventually, but right now it’s a bit bare.

Regardless, pacing, balance and approachability are important facets to a successful freemium game, and I think Boom Beach succeeds well in both in its other non-base defense aspects. Assuming you aren’t too obsessed with the end-game or social aspects (and you don’t have an irrational hatred for freemium games) Boom Beachcontinues the showing seen in Clash of Clans. Whether it has enough staying power as its spiritual predecessor will depend greatly on the inevitable tweaks to the core gameplay. Meanwhile, it’s worth a shot.

Cut The Rope: Slide and slide

Cut the Rope Review

Cut the Rope is a downright adorable action-puzzle-physics game. It’s also fresh, challenging, gorgeous, and highly entertaining. It has simple rules, intuitive controls, and can be played in short bursts or blitzed through in a marathon gaming session. In short, it’s exactly the type of game most people who own iPhones want to play. And play it they should!

The goal of each level is to feed a piece of candy, suspended by a series of ropes, into the mouth of a cuddly little monster named Om Nom, who is located somewhere on the screen. To do that, you have to cut the ropes in a way that makes the candy swing, jump, or fall into the little guy’s mouth. If you can do that while picking up all of the stars in each level, then you’re golden.

But this is a puzzle game, so you’ll have to put on your thinking cap to figure out which ropes to cut, and in what order. Complicating matters, you’ll encounter movable pegs, spikes and electricity, bubbles that make the candy float, and whoopie cushions that, when tapped, send puffs of air that can blow the candy where you need it to go.

Each level is cleverly designed to make delivering the candy to the monster difficult but not impossible. Solving the levels requires precise timing or delicate precision, or– better yet– both. As you progress through the game’s 100 levels (more are on the way, says the developer), the difficulty mounts steadily, resulting in some real head-scratchers toward the end. Both Crystal and Game Center provide leaderboards and achievements, giving the game a healthy amount of replay value.

The only issues we have with Cut the Rope are some minor control annoyances. For instance, once sliding pegs are introduced, the game will occasionally think you’re trying to move a peg when you mean to cut a rope or vice versa. This can get you into trouble in some levels, but it’s mostly a minor annoyance.

Cut the Rope is a game nearly everyone will enjoy, puzzle enthusiast or not. It packs all the charm, variety, and smart level design you could hope for, while maintaining simplicity of gameplay. In fact, we’d put it right up there with the best casual games on the App Store, like Fragger, Fruit Ninja, and Angry Birds. Be sure to pick this one up.