Freaking Math! (Game Review)

Here's a fast-paced game from Hungary that will force you to wake up!

This is one of the simplest games I've seen in the Marketplace, but it is very satisfying and forces you to react quickly. The premise of the game is explained when you start:

You are shown a simple math expression and you must decide is the answer right or wrong.

Well, is 1 + 1 = 3 or not? If you think about it, of course it is wrong. But can you react in one-and-a-half seconds to click on the X button?

Maybe, and maybe not. I seem to remember that the human reaction time in general is 2.2 seconds, but if you are hyper-alert, you can do it faster. But how long ago did you learn your math tables?

If you get the right answer, you must instantly do another one, and another, until you wait too long. Each time you fail, you'll get a score.

You can see that my high score is two right answers but my last score was only one! But keep at it. With a little practice, I did get better.

The game creator is Adam Balogh of Hungary and he has a newer version of the game that does division and multiplication. Unfortunately I can't buy it!

I'm fresh out of forints anyway.

But this is a fun little game

Cost: Free

Genre: Puzzle
Score: 4 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open C
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace
Developer:  Adam Balogh
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/freakingmath/

Announcement One - Thomas Palef has written a book!

Thomas Palef has been amazing us all by writing one game a week. You can read about it at http://www.lessmilk.com/.  Part of his secret (aside from being just brilliant) is that he uses an HTML5 library called Phaser. You can read all about Phaser at http://phaser.io/.  But Phaser is a little hard to grasp how the pieces fit together, even though it seems like it will help you write HTML5 games more efficiently.

Well, up steps Thomas Palef, who will shortly be publishing not only a book, but will include complete games with the source code. You can read about it at http://www.lessmilk.com/phaser-book/ but he sent out an email to his subscribers with more data.

"The book will focus on building a full featured game from scratch that works on desktop and mobile devices. You will control a little guy in a blue world, trying to collect coins while avoiding enemies.

"Here are some of the things we will cover while building the game step by step: sprites, labels, groups, states, animations, particles, arcade physics, local storage, tilemaps, game scaling, touch inputs, and more.

"With all this new knowledge you will be able to create your own 2D games in HTML5.

"What You Will Get

"I created 3 types of content to help you learn the Phaser framework:

"- The book. The step-by-step guide to Phaser. It's 125 page-long, DRM-free, and available in 3 formats: pdf, epub, mobi.

"- Code. Some resources to help you build your own games faster: the source code of every chapters of the book, a Phaser cheat sheet, an empty game template, and other things. 

"- Games. I built 3 full featured games with comments that you can learn from: a space shooter, a match-3, and an infinite runner."

I'm definitely buying this even if I have to go without lunch for a few weeks!

Andrzej Mazur (Enclave Games) has written several games in Phaser that run well in Firefox OS, so I think that Phaser might be very useful to Firefox OS folk. I'll investigate it when I get back.

Announcement Two - I'm Going on Vacation

Yes, I know I'm on a permanent vacation, but I'm taking time off from this blog to travel around the country and visit some old friends, and I won't be online, and even when I am, I won't be typing!. So I won't be blogging most of the summer. But I'll be back and I'm sure there will be fabulous things to write about. I have a big list of topics, but they will have to wait. 

So come back in September and until then, stay tuned, but not iTuned!

Maze Climber (Game Review)

Some games are simple and some are complex. Simple works well on a phone, and Maze Climber is such a game. The premise is simple. You're in a maze and you must climb.

Why must you climb? Well, something bad will happen to you if you don't! At first you won't know that. You start out in a side view of a maze like Lode Runner or early Mario. But you might notice that there is a pool of red stuff at the bottom. What can that be?

You are that little white character near the middle, and you see red ladders and blue bricks. You can climb the ladders but not walk through the bricks.

Oh, no! The red stuff is rising and it is shooting out little fireballs. I bet it's lava, but I'm not going to sit around to find out what it is. I'm going to climb!

But if I don't climb fast enough, the lava will get me. It is very close. I'm hidden behind some fireballs near the edge of the lava, slightly to the left. You can see my head peeking out.

They got me. You can see me on the left, flying through the air. Owwww!

And I died!

But I can do this again and again. Here are some scores, showing the data, time, and how many meters I climbed.

Here's the home page in case you want more games from Short2Games!

And from the website, here's how to play!

Dig? What's this about dig?

If you touch a nearby brick wall to your left or right, a magic ray shoots out of you and blasts away at the wall. Hadn't noticed it! Makes it a little easier to get to ladders that go up!

By the way, the top right has a pause button. If you touch it, you get these choices.

I like the choices. Give up, play another game, or go back! Let's go back!

 

Now watch carefully. I'm going to drill a hole in the wall to my right.

I drilled through the wall on my right and climbed up the ladder. But the lava is coming up fast!

In case you are curious, here's a little bit more about the creator of this fun little perfect-for-the-phone game.

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that he lists lots of programming languages, and even my all-time favorite, Forth! It's nice to see that someone still uses it (actually there was some Forth programming in the One Laptop Per Child OS) but it was very popular in the early 80's when BASIC was king and C was barely known.

By the way, there are sound effects for the rising lava and a cool whistle when you die! No music, but the lava noise would drown it out anyway.

Cost: Free

Genre: Arcade
Score: 4 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open C
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace
Developer:  Short2Games
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/mazeclimber

LittleMan (Game Review)

I am fascinated by the varieties of games in the Firefox OS Marketplace and take it as a sign of genuine interest by game creators world wide. Today's game is from somewhere by Bruno Eduardo da Cunha. There's no web site or Twitter, just an email. A casual trip through Google doesn't get me any more. Most of the time I can find out more about a game developer, but not this time. If anyone knows Bruno Eduardo da Cunha, let me know. I'll send him an email!

And it doesn't matter. A game speaks for itself, whatever person or country it comes from. The game under the microscope is called LittleMan and it's about a ... little man!

One of the things I noticed right away was that the clouds are moving in the background of the title screen. I like that attention to detail.

The screen also has some nice little details: the broken column, the greenery at the top, and the cracked tiles. The title screen also lets you mute the sound and start over.

And the game has music! A happy chip-tune inspired music that you won't want to turn off!

By the way, the game loads over the Internet and takes a while, but when you see the art and realize how many screens there are, you'll understand.

Once you start the game, you'll get to pick a level to play.

And this game has a lot. Assuming you get through the first 15 levels, there are another 15 levels.

Note again that this second level screen is a sunset view and helps you to see that it is different.

Each level is different and each level is difficult. That's the most important thing to say about this game. It isn't easy, but each level makes you solve different puzzles as you attempt to get through the level.

Clicking the first level takes you to the first screen:

 

You are that little man, standing in the doorway on the left. The top left shows you the level number and the top right, "Menu", takes you back to the level select menu.

The game controls are simple. The two blue arrows move you left or right, and the A button makes you jump. That's all you need to know. 

Here is the little man moving from the door to the middle. No dangers yet!

 And the clouds move here, too! The point of the game is to move and jump, but avoid deadly traps. Here is the little man after he's jumped up on the single block just to the left of the center pillar. He can go past the pillar, but he can't jump over the three vertical blocks.

But maybe he can jump from where he is to the top of the three vertical blocks?

Yes! He did it. A combination of pressing the right arrow and the "A" key does it. But you have to time it just right. But now he must be careful. If he hops off the block, he's in danger of falling onto the deadly spikes. He must hop to the two horizontal blocks and then off again.

This is just the beginning. That was easy. After avoiding the spikes, he keeps moving and sees more of the level.

The gray block with a face is moving up and down. What to do? That tower on the right is full of spikes. But he can't get there!

Well, yes he can. But it is tricky. You can't just jump up to where you see the little man above directly. You must jump onto the block under the moving gray block while the block is moving up and then quickly jump up to the left block before the moving block comes back down. Then you can jump up to the higher block on the other side of the moving block, but don't let that gray moving block touch you or you die! From there you can jump to the top of the tower and then down to the other side and the exit door.

And that's just the first level. Whew!

Here's the second level.

This level is more difficult because you must make a series of jumps right away and get very high up to grab a key that you can see in the upper left corner. 

And so on and so on! More puzzles await you involving both logic and dexterity!

I like this game a lot and it promises several hours of fun, trying to solve the puzzles and not dying. However, if you do die, you only go back to the start of the level you are in and there isn't any scoring. I give extra points to the art and the music because they create a mood. Go, little man, go!

Cost: Free

Genre: Platformer
Score: 5 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open and Geeksphone Peak
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/littleman

PS: one of the reviewers on the Marketplace said it didn't work on the ZTE Open, but it does work on my ZTE Open. Because you load the game over the Internet, that might cause problems, and the download is long because 30 screens is a lot!

Drag the Dots (Game Review)

The amount and variation of games I find in the marketplace continues to amaze me and encourage me to keep doing game reviews for Firefox OS! Things are about to get interesting with the advent of the Firefox OS tablet. I will be getting one soon and I'm getting eager to start learning how to make a game that can be played well on all sizes of Firefox OS devices from tiny ZTE Open to the big 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixels sized tablet! Maybe someday there will even be a Firefox OS watch!

Anyway, today's game is called Drag the Dots and is lovingly crafted by Anders Fisher (@atleastimtrying on Twitter). This game looks pretty simple at first, but quickly becomes difficult enough to play and involves both logic and quick thinking. And it looks pretty, also!

When you start the game, you see a menu of different dot patterns.

By the way, this is a screenshot on my ZTE Open and is captured using the wonderful App Manager. Without that, my fingers would be sore from pushing the Power and Home buttons simultaneously (and missing a few times). This menu actually scrolls down to provide more choices:

The Help for this game is in the options screen but you won't need it. The game is very intuitive. So let's start with the first game at the very top, called grid.

Here's what grid looks like.

All you have to do is drag the dots on top of each other. Drag the "1" dot on top of the other "1" dot. Very nice. But do it quickly because the clock is ticking!

Once the first "1" covers the second "1", it changes to a "2" and the screen and dots change color. I really like this because it keeps the game cool to look at and even adds a bit of magical misdirections so the game isn't too easy.

Now you must drag one "2" on top of the other "2".

The "2" dots are gone but now there are two "3" dots. And again, the colors have changed!

After a few more drags, there's only two dots left.

Cover one with the other and the round is over!

By the way, my user name is "box" because I hit the "x" button instead of "b" so I don't even know how to spell my own name! And the time is very long because I was taking screenshots. This would be cool if that's all you got. But there's more!

You can play more kinds of dot dragging. How about Grid+? Instead of 9 dots, you get 16.

Same rules, but more dots to confuse your eye.

If that's not enough, how about Tiny? Little dots!

Here's what the tiny dots look like:

You might notice one of the few errors above. The tiny grid of dots is overlapped by the semi-transparent "quit" button and the time display. Even if I remove the little Firefox globe at the bottom, the grid is overlapping. I wonder how this would look on my Geekphone Peak, which on loan at the moment. I'll check and add a note later. Responsive web design!

You've seen grids, now it's time for random layouts.

 

Ten dots. Here they are:

This introduces a new issue. Overlapping dots. You can see the two "1" dots but there is a "9" dot you can't quite see under the "10" dot. But you can quickly figure things out and move dots around to find the one you need.

Next on the list are moving dots!

Twelve dots. But after each match, the dots move around! Here are the twelve.

But after you match the first two "1" dots, the layout changes:

How cool is that? But the complexity keeps changing. The next game will really tax your brain. The dots are in a circle and each dot is spinning.

Here's the dots in a circle:

And here they are again, a short time later. Eleven seconds later, to be exact!

Drag the dots and finish the round. Next comes the maze!

This time you have to avoid the walls of the maze and every time you make a match, the walls slightly move.

Here's a shot of how the maze looks with only one match to go.

Just when you thought it couldn't get crazier, along comes the next game, Moving+.

 

Hey, these dots are moving!

And they keep moving!

And even after you've cleared a few, they're still moving.

Until only two are left!

Any time you want to quit a game, just tap quit or menu and you'll go to the game menu, which scrolls down to display scores for each individual game. You can see my three scores for Grid.

An options screen is offered as well, near the bottom of the main opening screen.

You can choose whether to display a background color different from the dot color, whether to display the numbers or not! or put everything in grayscale if you don't like colors.

You can also get a short tutorial on how to play.

 

For some reason the how to play is always in that gray on gray color scheme, which is hard to read. But you don't need it anyway. Next you are told:

Well, at least the dot is in color. I can't stand anything not in color!

Two dots. There can only be one. Except that you never see one dot. The minute the penultimate dot covers the ultimate dot, they both disappear! Go figure....

And do it fast!

That's it! You can see your stats on how well you've done overall:

Hits and misses? I guess if I drag and don't drop exactly on the right dot, I've missed. By the way, the button to clear the scores doesn't clear the stats, but it does clear the scores which you also see when you hit menu or quit. I guess your stats live with you forever.

All in all, this is a very entertaining game with lots of cool options. In particular, the color choices are really good and I feel that they aren't random choices, but follow some kind of color theory, or at least follow a particular color palette.

And there's no sounds or music. Bummer.

But because this game is so delightful, I'm giving it a 5 out of 5. It would get a 6 if the options screens were in color and a 7 if there was sound and music. But the game is just about perfect and is the kind of quick, entertaining game that belongs on a phone, with a lot of variations on game lay.

Cost: Free

Genre: Arcade
Score: 5 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/drag-the-dots