Zenonia 3 is now available in the Android Market

As much as the Apple AppStore still dominates on the gaming front, it's great to see that there are now PLENTY of great Android games to the point that I just don't think it matters, from a gaming perspective, which platform one gets.

Today we see the launch of Zenonia 3 from GAMEVIL as another Android freebie! And I still haven't even had time to play Zenonia 2...

Burn the Rope

Edit: Burn the Rope is the second of a block of three puzzle games we are reviewing (the others being Nano Panda and Cut the Rope).

Burn the Rope is a puzzle game that involves setting rope on fire and who doesn't like setting stuff on fire? Ok, so now that I've revealed my inner pyromaniac that reminds me of a story. Back when I was younger my brother and I broke the long, green, plastic handle of a brush my Mom used for cleaning. Naturally we didn't want to get in trouble so we had to fix it. We didn't have any super glue, but we DID have a gas stove with which to work so we decided that it would be best to fuse it back together with the help of an open flame. We carefully held the two pieces together over the flame and watched in horror as instead of smoothly melting the plastic back together it quickly turned the plastic from green to a dark black. Next stop... the trash can. And of course Mom found it and we had some explaining to do that probably would have gone better if the plastic hadn't been black. So, the moral of this is that if you have to set stuff on fire do it on your phone or tablet computer and not in the real world. Back to the game...

Burn the Rope features a series of puzzles in which your goal is to burn as much of the rope as possible. You are graded on the Qix (old arcade game) scale by completing a percentage of the rope and have to meet a minimum in order to pass on to the next level. For some reason the flame in this game only burns upwards although no explanation for this is provided. Because it only burns upwards you'll be twisting and turning your phone around in circles and it'll be very easy for your boss to tell that you're not working on a spreadsheet. However, all this twisting does make the game more interesting. I was able to quickly rotate my tablet back and forth to keep flames going in both directions, but that was a pain and really isn't the idea. The first puzzle features something that is kind of star shaped and you'll be spinning your phone around to consume all of the rope with ease. Subsequent puzzles require directional shifts and some planning in terms of where to start the flame. Shortly thereafter, little colored ants crawl around the rope and buring them is worth bonus points and also changes the color of the flame. See where that's going? Yes, next you've got different colored ropes that can only be consumed by a flame of the same color. And, of course, more stuff is added as the game progresses such as a light's out mode in which the screen goes dark and you have to remember where your spark needs to travel in order to burn the rope.

Burn the Rope's graphics are, once again, good enough for a puzzler. It's got a nice sizzlin' sound for the rope burning and plays smoothly. I didn't have any issues with starting my flame via touching a part of the rope and the rotation of my device gave me a different puzzle experience than I've had with other puzzle games. And as for the puzzles, I have found them to be of reasonable complexity with a good, smooth increase in difficulty as I continue to play. My initial feeling was that there wasn't much here, but as the game progressed I realized that there is far more to it than meets the eye including a heavy timing element in later levels. However, with all of the flipping my phone around, I'd have to rate this as more of a combination puzzler and dexterity game than just a puzzler.

Burn the Rope is available as ad supported direct from the Android Market and can be upgraded to remove the ads (I think that's what the upgrade does??) via an in app purchase. I'd have to say that Burn the Rope isn't quite as puzzling as Nano Pandas as I was never really stumped on any of the puzzles that I've tried for longer than about 5 seconds (and I've gotten pretty deep into the game). It does add the dexterity element, though, which makes for an interesting experience that only time will tell if it's pure novelty. It also adds a Puzzle of the Day feature which is interesting in addition to the basic 'campaign' and a 'coming soon' campaign. Do I like it? Yes. It's very good for now, but I suspect that will drop to a good as the dexterity element becomes old hat. 4/5 stars.

Nano Panda

Edit: The next three reviews will cover Nano Panda, Burn the Rope, and Cut the Rope (all recently release puzzle games that hit the same part of the brain). The first two are currently available in the Android Market and Cut the Rope is set for imminent release on the Android Market and can be obtained from getjar.com until then.

Nano Panda is another entry into the crowded genre of cute puzzle games. The premise is simple... you launch the tiny nano pandas and try to get them to touch (and destroy) the angry faces (aka evil atoms). The game tries to cash in on the cute puzzler genre with cute little pandas being tossed about instead of red dots, but it really doesn't hit the same level of cuteness as Angry Birds (I'm convinced cuteness is at least 50% of the reason that title is so successful) or Cut the Rope (he looks so sad when he doesn't get his candy!).

Now if all you had to do was launch pandas then that wouldn't be too interesting so let's add that when multiple pandas are in play they attract one another. It's easier to understand when you see it, but the attraction is basically like gravity. If the pandas are close they attract and swing around in a small ball, but if they were far away they zip towards and right by one another covering a much larger area. It's this swinging and chaining of panda that allows you to get them to knock off all of the bad guys. Add that the screen also contains spiked areas that kill off your pandas upon contact and you've got yourself a game.

The graphics of Nano Panda are fine for a puzzle game as is the sound. No glaring deficiencies and nothing earth shattering either. The controls are simple... touch a launcher to release a panda. The key to the game is figuring out the order and timing in which to release them. As you would expect, the game comes with several confidence builder puzzles to show how to launch and then how the pandas attract one another, but soon you'll get to stages that are quite difficult.

Do I like this game? Yes and no. Yes, because it is pretty well executed... works on my phone AND tablet just fine... is pretty simple to play... and was just a dollar (I bought it the day before it was Amazon's free app of the day... aargh). No, because I find myself all too often resorting to trial and error versus thinking to solve the puzzles. This isn't necessarily the game's fault, but rather more a factor of the game's complexity and figuring out the results of the gravitational pull of two of more celestial bodies of equal mass is perhaps a bit too much for me when I'm sitting down for some entertainment. In a nutshell, it's faster for me to do trial and error rather than plotting things out and I suspect most will share that sentiment. I'm sure some are more inclined to processing this kind of puzzle and perhaps want a real challenge... if so then this is for you, but you'll have to resist that trial and error temptation. The bottom line is that I suspect this kind of puzzler will have a more limited appeal than a game like Cut the Rope and it really hasn't been able to hook me. 3.5/5 stars. There are both a full paid version and a free version in the Android Market should you wish to try this game.

Origins 2011

Just a quick post that I'm still alive. The good news is that I've had time to play lots of new Android games. The bad news... I still have to find the time to write them up.

I've actually been at the Origins 2011 Game Fair from Wed-Sun of this past week and while that has little to do with Android gaming it left me with time to do half the work on several upcoming reviews.

Jenga

In the board game community one of the game classifications is "dexterity game". Jenga clearly falls under this class of game. And recently Jenga earned a special place in my heart when it became the first game that requires some thought that I could actually play an intelligent and competitive game of against my 4 year old. So how do we translate a game that requires the infinite precision of touch that our hands and fingers grant us to a digital touch screen device? Well, my first answer is "we don't", but apparently someone felt different about such a response. My second answer is "we shouldn't".

First, whenever I run Jenga I actually have to run it twice. The first time I see a logo from Natural Motion along with some music. I then have to exit back to home screen and run it again and then it somehow works and I make it to the title screen. This behavior has been consistent (on my Eee Transformer tablet). I'm going to guess that it works on some devices just fine and doesn't on others with behavior like that. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the game enough to try it on my Android phone. However, given the touch screen interface that the game employs I just don't see how my phone's screen would be big enough to derive enjoyment out of this title, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The game features a couple of play modes... traditional Jenga in a solo mode, an arcade (time based) mode, and pass and play. When playing you can do one of two things: 1) tap a block to see if it's loose or 2) hold and drag a block to remove it. Now, my harshness of a review against this title is primarily because IT'S NOTHING LIKE REAL JENGA! It shouldn't be called Jenga. How this is racking up an average 4 star review in the market place is either beyond me or it's because people that have never played real Jenga love it (for whatever the reason). In real Jenga a good part of the thrill is in taking advantage of physical differences of the blocks that create imbalances where there's no pressure on some blocks aloiwing them to be easily slid out. In the computer adaptation such blocks are few and far between and it seems that almost every block has at least a small effect on the tower. Perhaps the game's physics is too perfect? In real Jenga after enough blocks have been removed the tower will lean ever so slightly. I never experienced that with the digital version. In other words, trying to digitize an experience that relies on imperfections of the blocks along with my incredibly sensitive hands and then taking that and converting it to two actions is missing something and perhaps everything. Ok, enough about this not being Jenga... let's pretend they didn't call it Jenga and instead called it j3n64 (I didn't make that up... they did) to continue the review.

The graphics are good enough and accomplish what they are supposed to. You can easily navigate up and down the tower as well as flip it around to gain access to both sides of each block. The touch interface basically works although I did have minor inaccuracies when I would touch and the game would disagree with me as to which block I had selected, but the game highlights the selected block to ensure that I don't actually proceed with a mistake. Given how the instructions say the touch interface is supposed to work it is spot on and works pretty well.

Dexterity games are tough to pull off on a digital platform. For what it's worth I find the various attempts at Skee Ball clones to be dull (although my four year old seems to enjoy them). That said, Jenga for me is a big miss. If I had to rate it for being Jenga like then it would be a 1 star game, but I'll try and normalize it and give it 2.5 stars. I just think there are far better games to play such as some of the block balancing games that are in a similar genre and X Construction (another physics building game) also comes to mind. And I'm a bit stunned to make the connection that this is from the same company that did the excellent Backbreaker Football. All I can say is buy that instead. 2.5 stars.