Darwinism (Game Review)

From those great people at TrueToken comes another great game for the Firefox OS Phone. This time it is Darwinism, and is all about evolving creatures into other creatures. True Token is a really cool game company in Kiev (or Kyiv), Ukraine. I really loved one of their games I reviewed earlier, Steel Story. This game reminds me a little of Boom Town, an HTML5 game that AppMobi created to demonstrate that you could make one HTML5 game and port it to every possible form factor. Darwinism is similar to Boom Town, only in that it uses a clever way to adapt a match-three game to something else besides falling jewels.

So here's how Darwinism starts:

Colorful, good art, gets right to the point of things. The splash screen lets you Play the game, get some hints on what evolves to what, gives you Help, and allows you to turn off the music (but the music is really great).

If you press the question mark for Help, here is what you get:

 

You see the game board and learn fire burns and that you need to match three of a kind to create a new species. That is the essence of the game, but there's more.

If you go back to the main menu and choose Evolution, you'll get a little taste of how the game works.

Right here at the start, you can see that the Amoeba is the lowest animal (one-celled) and that they then can turn into a Jellyfish. How? By combining them! Just get three Amoebae and you've got yourself a nice purple Jellyfish. And then ... get three Jellyfish and you can turn them into a Fish.

But before you start, Darwinism gives you something that most games don't, but should. You can choose between Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert, and Ultimate. I really like this kind of thing because I can learn the game on the Easy setting and then work my way up to Ultimate. I also really like the extra touch that True Token takes by making the choices look like carvings. A lot of work went into this game and it adds up to a great experience.

You can only choose Easy at first anyway, but the point is that this game has a lot of replay value. So when you start out Easy, you are given a mission: create a lizard!

By following the pictures, you can see that you need to use Amoebae to make Jellyfish, and then on to Fish, and finally onto ... Lizards. Seems logical to me. Fish can become Lizards. So now you're ready to start evolving.

The game even walks you through the steps the first time. You have a 5 by 5 grid that you play in. The piece you play is above the grid on the left. You simply tap where you want to put the piece. Put the Amoeba next to another Amoeba.

Working up your way on the evolutionary ladder, eventually you'll combine three Fish and make a red Lizard.You've finished the first round! You also have a score of 3000, reflecting how long it took you to get there.

 

When you play, the last of the three creatures that you play determines where the new creature will appear. So if you play Jellyfish - Jellyfish - Jellyfish, the new Fish will appear where the last Jellyfish was placed, and the other two disappear.

But there's three more twists that give this game extra strategy.

1. If you don't want to play the creature that is next up (on the left), you can tap it and the creature will jump over to right and wait. You can then play the next creature up instead. If later you want to use the creature you set aside, just tap the one that's ready to go and it will trade places with the one you saved.
2. When you start out, there are a few ice squares. Every once in a while, an ice square will appear and eventually you need to play it. If the board fills up with ice squares, the round is lost.
3. But every so often you'll get a fire tile. This can be used to melt ice squares (or other creatures) to get them out of the way. Part of the strategy is to place tiles so that you can get three of a kind next to each other, and then they can form a new grouping to evolve again.

So all this fits together neatly to make a game that you can play for a few minutes at a time, and do some thinking while you do it. And the music is fun to listen to, nice percussion music that evokes the primitive world.

I really enjoyed this game and I'm looking forward to more fun from the boys in Kyiv. One of the things that is cool about Firefox OS is that people are contributing to the success of the project from all around the world. I'm going to start a side project to keep track of all the games I review and see what countries they come from. If you know of a game from a country I haven't covered, let me know!

Also, thanks to Christian Heilmann (@codepo8) who mentioned this game earlier today on Twitter. Requests are always welcome!

Cost: Free

Genre: Match Three
Score: 6 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open (Firefox OS)
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace

Jumping Marcelo (Game Review)

This is a cool game done by cool people. There, my review is done, you can go home now.

Actually this game really is flawless and beyond what I would expect. But it's not exactly a surprise, because this game is from Double Duck, who already has done something cool with Age of Barbarians. Marcello is a jumping monkey, but he jumps in a fascinating way. And the graphics and all the navigation is just flawless and fun.

Even the opening is fun. When you start out, the first thing you see is the Double Duck logo, very nice:

Having a classy logo helps, and what could be better than a rubber duck riding on a real duck?

Next you see a banana!

A monkey is holding a banana. But the camera pulls back and ...

There is the moon, in the shape of the banana. What is the monkey thinking?

He's looking up a the moon and thinking bananas. This sets a feeling like a movie. You now have some identification with the monkey and you are wondering what the monkey is going to do. The screen says Tap to Play.

The next screen gives you several choices. You can mute the sound, get Help with the game, or go to the store. Or Play!

Here's what the Help screen looks like:

It tells you everything you need to know. Climb up by tapping.  And there's that moon again. I think the monkey wants to go there. Maybe he thinks it is a banana! My last post made a sly reference to the bunny in the moon, and now we have banana in the moon (or rather, the banana is the moon).'

Let's play!

The play is very simple, but works. You tap on the screen and the monkey jumps to the other side of the screen. The screen is constantly scrolling down, forcing the monkey to keep climbing. As he climbs, he can grab bananas.

And those bananas aren't just good to eat. You can spend them in the store. The store lets you buy things with .... bananas. You'll gather them as you climb up. Here's what you can buy:

You can buy a helmet, which give you extra protection. You can buy the ability to get double the bananas. The lightning bolt gives you extra speed, and the jet pack gives you the ability to start the game at a higher elevation (1000 meters). The point of the game is to see how high you can climb, and the higher you climb, the more you'll see.

So you can jump from side to side, but watch out for snakes, tree limbs, and who knows what!

The monkey is about to hit a bee hive. If he hits anything, he'll fall down and you start over again. But of course, no monkeys were hurt during the making of this game, because Marcelo grabs a limb on the way down and saves himself. He's back at the start screen and can play again.

By the way, if you look at the screen while you're climbing, you'll see a Pause button at the lower right. Tap that and you go to this screen:

This shows you your current score, the best score, and the number of bananas you've gotten this round. You can resume the game where you left it, retry the climb again, or quit the game.

Everything is neatly laid out, very clear, and let's you focus on the game. I really like the play of jumping from side to side, trying to catch bananas, avoiding snakes, bees, tree limbs, etc., on the way up, in Marcelo's mad climb to get the big banana of the moon. There's even some cool stuff on the way, where you can grab a helmet and temporarily be allowed to smash into an enemy instead of dying.

Way to go, Double Duck. This is a fun game, and original game (as far as I can tell), and lots of fun. It plays very well on the Firefox OS ZTE Open and I love it.

Cost: Free

Genre: Endless Climber
Score: 6 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open (Firefox OS)
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace

TrippyTap (Game Review)

Here's where the spirit of Firefox OS lives. Two students in Serbia made a Firefox OS game as part of the Telenor Firefox Challenge (Telenor is a Norwegian phone company that serves Europe and Asia). This game is original, simple, and ... fast!

Here's the opening screen. Very nice, with four images that you can figure out pretty easily: Play, Scores, How to Play, and Who Are These Guys?

Here's who they are:

I like the back button at the bottom. Next are the instructions:

These guys are great. They actually tell you how to play the game (very rare on a lot of games). And if you've played this before, here is your latest score:

The buttons on the top are: Back, Send, Register, and the one in the middle is Update. I really like the clean way the frame for this game is laid out. Very simple, very clean. Also fits in (as far as I can tell) with Firefox OS UI Guidelines (more about that in another post).

But the game is the thing, and here's the actual game start screen:

Pick one of the four colors. How hard is that?

Then there is a countdown and the game begins:

You have six squares and you have to tap on the squares of your color. And then tap again. I picked green, so I had to tap both green squares quickly in succession. But the screen changes fast and I had more squares to tap.

And then after a bit more tapping, the game is over and you get your score:

Do it again! This game is fast and furious as you try to beat your score. Also a good game to test if you're sober enough to drive or awake enough to get out of bed. Or just any reason to spend a minute while you are standing in line.

I just love the design of the whole UI for this game and would recommend it as a model of simplicity and ease of use. All I can say is that I want to see more games from these guys. And this is a good example of what Firefox OS is all about. A game authored in Serbia for a contest by a Norwegian company. Go world!

Cost: Free

Genre: Arcade
Score: 6 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open (Firefox OS)
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace

I'll try not to do this too often, but this game deserves a 6 out of 5 for being perfect and doing everything right and maybe for being done by beginners.

The Pond (Game Review)

The Pond is an amazing HTML5 game. It looks simple, but there's a deepness to it. When I was a kid, they showed us a drop of pond water under a microscope. It was full of little animals, swimming around. That creeped me out!

And then they showed me a drop of vinegar. Eeeewwww!

 I got used to the idea that there were all these things we couldn't see and we eat them every day. So vegetarians beware!

Fast-forward several years to 2009. Hemisphere Games made a cool game called Osmos that took some of these principles and wowed everyone. The music was cool too!

Then in 2011 (so long ago I can barely remember), Stephen Eisenhauer made an HTML5 version called Browsmos. And now, for Firefox OS, we have a more elaborate and different game called The Pond, from Zolmeister. I'm the creature in the middle, with a blue skin and an orange loop inside.

 

You are a pond creature, swimming around. The point of the game is to eat smaller creatures and avoid the bigger creatures (just like Osmos and ... duh, real life). Since there isn't a set of detailed instructions, all I can tell you so far is that the colors and inner details (loops of white, orange, or blue) determine how well you grow. There's a science to this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that is part of the game, to figure it out. The game is slow and soothing, and I love it.

Here's the start screen:

 

And here's me, the pond scum creature. I've eaten another creature and so I have two blue loops inside me. I'm not bigger but I'm better.

When I eat another creature,I have three blue shapes inside my orange skin. I'm tough!

After another meal, I now am bigger. I've changed some of my inner loops, but I'm still not sure how that works. I'll keep working on it and post a comment when I get the algorithm.

But there are bigger pond creatures and one eats me! And the game is over!

So, how cool is that? Very cool! It might be nice to have a bit more clue on what kinds of smaller creatures you can eat, but I'll keep playing because it is fun. And it might be nice to have soothing music in the background (like Osmos) but at least I get a sound effect when I eat something. And you can turn off the sound effects by hitting that little dual note symbol up at the top right.

But this game is way cooler for one important reason. The author has written an article about how he programmed it. Read all about it here: http://www.zolmeister.com. This program is very advanced, using an interestingly complex game loop, CocoonJS (a game library), and Bezier curves for both performance (instead of sprite sheets) and collisions (detecting exactly how the creatures collide). And best of all, all the code is in github at https://github.com/Zolmeister/pond. And even more insanely great, you can play The Pond on not only the Firefox Marketplace, but also in the Amazon App Store, Google Play, Facebook, Chrome Web Store, clay.io, and something called Pokki. He even recommends a cool code editor called Light Table.

The Zolmeister (Zoli Kahan) lives in San Francisco and is an HTML5 genius. Hire him! We bow down to you, sir!

This game deserves a 6 out of 5!

Cost: Free

Genre: Puzzle
Score: 6 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open (Firefox OS)
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace