Only a couple of games this time, because I have a bit longer thought on each one:

Flow Free
Flow is a new-to-me game that has a simple mechanic. Connect each source to its sink by laying pipe, which cannot overlap, to win; and if you can fill the entire x-by-x grid with pipe then you get a perfect. The beginner levels are easy because the grid is small and the solutions are obvious, but when the grid gets larger (say 8×8) and there aren’t enough sources/sinks to fill the grid, it starts getting tricky to get perfect. It feels like a Sudoku-type logic puzzle but has the benefit that it doesn’t take as long as a Sudoku game.

Catan Dice Game
This is a port of the single player Catan dice game to Android. I downloaded it originally because of the Catan relationship, but aside from using similar terms (such as the resources), it doesn’t share much with the Settlers experience. First, since it’s a single player game, you compete against yourself to get the highest score; which is not nearly as fun. To increase your score, you build roads, settlements, and cities from resources; and like Settlers, you get resources by rolling a pair of dice. There’s no trading involved so this game ends up being heavily luck based. I like the fact that this game is open source and built by hobbyists, but the game design just isn’t good so it’s not that fun!

Happy Street
I started playing this game because I was looking for a game similar to Animal Crossing on Android. Unforunately, Happy Street is really only similar to Animal Crossing on the surface (cartoony characters and building a village). But it is a well designed mobile game that is pretty fun. There is a lot of resource management (i.e., farming) to craft items and then you use those items to build a better a bigger town. The quick influx of rewards at the beginning keeps you playing, and the frequency of play starts to die down after a few days – which is great because it’s not super addicting. There is a long tail of play though, provided you want to build up your town, as you can spend 5 minutes every couple of hours to resupply your town and build new things. I think a model like that fits well with what I want out of a mobile game, so I’m enjoying Happy Street (plus it’s free).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: android, games