Sleepy Jack

Sleepy Jack was part of the Android Market's $.10 sale at the beginning of the month which is the primary reason I purchased it. At $.10 I pretty much gobbled down anything that looked remotely interesting and even splurged on the Christmas wallpaper which I wouldn't normally do. I just don't like the extra power consumption that goes along with fancy wallpaper not to mention running extra, unnecessary software that might have bugs or other issues. But, back to Sleepy Jack...

The premise of the game is simple. Every night Jack dreams of his favorite toys. The actual game play, however, involves Jack floating through a tunnel like system (his dream?) and being able to rotate along the perimeter of this tunnel. Along the way he's got to collect his Z's and also has other objectives which might range from collecting (aka running over) toys to blasting them depending on the level. I feel like I'm leaving something out, but no... that's pretty much the game: rotate around while collecting, avoiding, or blasting stuff.

Audio-visually this game is gorgeous. My two year old has taken a sudden liking to video games which is interesting given what little interest my older one had. Even morning it's "wanna pway Angwy Boyds". She was really quite entranced by the music on Sleepy Jack especially on the second level where you had to run over the notes to keep going otherwise things ground to a snail's pace. Control wise the game provides for the usual on screen buttons, accelerometer controls, or (my preference) sliding my finger horizontally along the screen to move Jack and tapping elsewhere to fire (if the level needs that as not all levels are based on violence).

Sleepy Jack is a pretty fast paced arcade game. It reminds me of old arcade games like Tempest or Gyruss and yet really doesn't share anything with them aside from the rotational control style. The game's charm and AV quality is what keeps things interesting as the premise itself isn't really that exciting. Actually that reminds me a lot of Angwy Boyds... I mean Angry Birds... in that there are games that are similar, but just don't get it done whereas the big AB shows how extra polish can move a game from mediocre to good/great. As for Sleepy Jack... it's a good and simple little game and gets 4/5 stars.