I also finished Blockwick. Well, the free bit anyway. There’s a bunch of add-on levels I could purchase, and I can’t say I haven’t considered it, so it must be pretty decent.
You know how some games are addictive in that all-consuming, all-encompassing, just-five-more-minutes-unless-I-finish-this-level-and-then-I-get-another-five-minutes sort of way? The sort that you’d consider playing during a meeting if you weren’t on probation, or while driving if it wasn’t illegal and horribly unsafe? Well, Blockwick isn’t like that, but it’s still addictive in a completely different way. It’s addictive like a bag of caramel Snack-a-jacks is addictive. You eat a couple, it’s pretty good, you tie off the bag and put it back in the cupboard. Then, a bit later, you’ve dug out another couple, and tied it off again. By the end of the night, the bag’s empty and you don’t even know how it happened.
Blockwick is a well-designed, relaxing slidey-blocky puzzler for the passive gamer. Nice images, nice sound, nice movement, etc. It’s nice. And I have to tip my hat to them for not awarding stars or medals for minimum number of moves; it’s a difficult enough game to complete, some levels taking upwards of a couple hundred moves, and had they finished each level with “Your score: 438 moves. Best possible: 376 moves” I think I would have hated the futility of the whole thing. But they didn’t, so I didn’t. Like I said: nice.
Next up was Snoticles. This is an enjoyable afternoon of cheeky fun. A bunch of, er, bodily functions teaming up to take on, um, an army of fuzzy black dust mites from another dimension, or something. Yeah.
At least, two of them were bodily secretions – Snot and Zit, who shot snot and zits – but then there was Dread, who threw little grenades, and Spark, who shot fire. Perhaps I missed the obscure medical reference, though having written for Hector I rather think I’m up on all my secretion slang. In keeping with the grossness theme, I kept asking myself why they didn’t turn these last two into guys who shot farts or scabs or exploding turds or something. Not that it affected the gameplay at all, just saying.
All in all it was kind of a slimy green Peggle. And how can that be anything but good? Kept me busy enough anyway. Admittedly, I wasn’t crazy crazy addicted to it, but it filled a hole. Not finished it yet, but I likely will someday.
Finally, I’m sorry to report that Beaver’s Revenge™ was, to use one of my favourite Briticisms, pants. The weird thing is, I can’t even tell you why. Formulaically, it should have been a winner: artwork was cute, sounds were cute, music was cute, cutscenes were cute, lumberjacks do a cute dance when they win, based on the cuteness of Angry Birds… How could it fail? Dunno. Just didn’t hold my interest in the slightest. I couldn’t even muster the enthusiasm to get past Level 5. And I tried. No offence, guys.
So, that was my January. And I didn’t have to pay a nickel! By the way, I realised soon after starting this review that one of the perks of doing this is that you get ALL your stuff for free, even the ones you’d usually have to shell out for. Yee haw! Spoilt for choice in February then.
Until next month, keep it free and keep it real.
-k.
Note: All four of the apps featured in this post were available for FREE on the iOS App Store sometime during the month of January.
