Ramble: mobile games of 2018...

There are probably quite a few of you who do the majority of your gaming on a phone or tablet.  Following the rollercoaster ride that Lemmings has recently presented me with, I thought I'd do a quick ramble about some mobile games that we've enjoyed this year.  (And some that we haven't enjoyed so much...)  After all, if you get a new tablet for Christmas you might want a few games to put on it!

Christmas Lemmings - from back when Lemmings was good!

To start with, then, three games that cost money but can go into your Google family account (so you can all play them on all your devices whilst only paying once).  All of these are great fun.

First off, there's Bloons TD 6 (PEGI-3), which is currently on sale on the Play Store (for £1.89).  This is the latest instalment of Bloons Tower Defence and it's just as fun whilst offering a few new things like tech trees.  The basic premise is there's a track along which evil balloons travel, and you have to pop them with various warrior monkeys to prevent them getting to the end of the track.  There are plenty of tower defence games out there, but this is cute, fun and really well made.  It does have in-app purchases, despite being a game you pay for, but you don't need to buy these to play the game.  Unlike free to play games you're not going to hit a wall; it works perfectly well without paying out any more money.  I should probably also mention that a free to play Adventure Time version also came out this year, which is worth a look if you're a massive Adventure Time fan...

Secondly, I'd like to mention something very, very different - Gorogoa (PEGI-3), which is currently £3.79 on the Play Store.  This game is really hard to explain.  I finished it in a couple of hours but I still don't completely understand what happened.  Not that I say this to put you off - it's a strange and beguiling puzzle adventure.  You have to look at different pictures in various ways, zooming into them, moving them around, joining them up, to move the protagonist along in the story.  I really can't think of a good way to explain it.  You ought to just spend £3.79 on it (face it, that's not a lot of money for a proper game) and try it yourself.  It's beautiful, in more ways than one.

Gorogoa: it's beautiful!

Thirdly there's a game I've talked about before (Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 (PEGI-12), so I won't bore you with that again.  But if you like motorsport, you won't regret spending £3.99 on it.  Honest.

Time to move onto the more depressing end of the mobile gaming spectrum, then.  One of the games in this section is, sadly, the surprise new version of Lemmings that came out a few days ago.  Now I will always have a place in my heart for Lemmings, and Lemmings 2: The Tribes.  I had an Amiga and I loved Lemmings.  My PSN avatar is a Lemming.  After playing this game, however, I'm severely tempted to change it...  Lemmings (PEGI-7) asks you to rescue a bunch of lemmings by getting them to an exit portal.  You can order them to do things like build bridges, stop other lemmings, or use an umbrella to land safely.  But the mechanics are simplified from the 'proper' games, and you can do whatever you like as long as you have enough energy.  You can wait to get more energy or spend your real world cash.  Then there's other free-to-play horrors in it, too.  The most expensive in-app purchase is £90.99.  I really am coming to hate free-to-play games.  I just didn't find this game fun, and I really wanted to like it.

The second disappointment of the year for me is Assassin's Creed Rebellion (PEGI-12).  I'm a big Assassin's Creed fan, so I was hoping this would be fun.  And for a few days I did play it fairly obsessively.  But then I hit a wall.  I couldn't progress without my assassins being higher level, and the only way was to grind or pay real world cash.  And I'm never going to pay real world money.  Grr.  You have a base, you discover new assassin DNA and fill the base with assassins, you send them on missions (which are kind of fun), train them, make them gear, etc, etc...  But that wall is the problem.  I don't appreciate being funnelled into a trap that's designed to make me spend my cash.  I'd rather just pay an up-front amount and get a proper game.  And if you were wondering what the most expensive in-app purchase is in the game, it's £99.99.  Imagine what sort of a game you could get for that - WHO ON EARTH IS SPENDING THEIR CASH ON IN-APP PURCHASES AND ENCOURAGING DEVELOPERS TO DO THIS STUFF!?!?

I knew I was a bit cross about these free-to-play games, but writing about them has made me far angrier about it all.  Perhaps I should just think about the good stuff from this year.  Like Gorogoa.

Please, please, spend your money on encouraging the developers of interesting, original games.  People who actually want to make a game that's fun.  Not someone who's just making a 'game' in order to make you give them more and more money.  These things are NOT games.

Drat, went downbeat again.  And this is supposed to be a fun Christmas post!  Ah well.

Hope you have a good Christmas day, and get all the gaming delights you've asked Santa for.

Ho ho ho!