Month: Apr 2019

Why Mobile Games are bad

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If you ask the average gamer to list the consoles on which they play games there is a very, very big chance that they won’t even think of their phone as a legitimate gaming console. The reason? There just are no legitimate games on mobile.

Mobile games are short, pay to play, a waiting game, and wants to know all your contacts or access your camera. Not all games, but most you will find do tick all the above mentioned. There is a constant reminder to ‘invite your friends’ or to log in with facebook to access this feature, or ‘for only £10 you can be the owner of this legendary weapon’. In worst case, ‘let us access your camera to store photos of you, your surroundings, and your friends… maybe even your cat!’.

Gamers are used to a different scene. One that is not necessarily overly social, one that does not push all these notification onto you, and also one that do not ask you to pay more than the initial price to play the whole game. The race for gamers attention, for anyone’s attention, is insane and stressful. Gaming is most of the time a stress relief and mobile gaming is definitely not that.

Why mobile games are bad is not tied to the games themselves not really, it is more tied to how they are executed. The very core of most of these games are just money grabs in fancy costumes or a sneak peak on what might have been a good full game if released on another console which do not promote the same kind of ‘bursts’ of playtime. The players do not blame the games, but the developers execution of them.

The very reason for this blog is to find the good among the forest of the bad. Because there are games, and developers, who have used this platform and created games that suit it without disappointing their players. Those are the ones who are worthy of our time, not the ones who keep asking us to pay another £20 for that cool armour or alert us with a notification every other hour asking if we are still there because no, no we are not, we are playing other games bye bye delete.

Review: Pocket Build

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Developer: MoonBear LTD
Publisher: MoonBear LTD
Genre: Fantasy, Sandbox Builder
Price: £1.99

To create your own fantasy world and fill it with monsters, royalty, and NPCs is something I have always found interesting. When I found Pocket Build for only £1.99 I did not hesitate. It had the charm of a blocky, yet cute, aesthetic and the possibilities that comes with such a style. Daunting at first, the world I created began as a humble island which became the home to a witch, some forest animals, and her apprentice.

To create your own fantasy world and fill it with monsters, royalty, and NPCs is something I have always found interesting. When I found Pocket Build for only £1.99 I did not hesitate. It had the charm of a blocky, yet cute, aesthetic and the possibilities that comes with such a style. Daunting at first, the world I created began as a humble island which became the home to a witch, some forest animals, and her apprentice.

Pocket Build gives you the tools to create your vision of a fantasy village, an orcish den, or a princess’s castle; or why not all of those in one world? You can choose from the starting point of basic squares of land — each with a different biome. You can stack the squares or put them next to each other to fashion an island. The next step would be to make the squares less empty. In the tools menu, the player can choose to put down trees, rocks, plants, houses, fences, market stalls, crops, castle walls, villagers, or dogs. My only complaint is that so far there are no cats.

When done, you can share your world with other players but except for inspecting and surveying the worlds there is little else that can be done.

One progressive element that was added was the food, gold, and lumber counter. Some cool looking buildings or gruesome plants cost food, or lumber, or gold, or maybe a combination of two. You get food and lumber from your NPCs harvesting certain things and gold you receive from harvesting gold piles.

You can make a battle arena by sticking NPCs of a lighter alignment with NPCs of a darker alignment together and wait out the imminent result. It is not a very satisfying thing to watch, but it might provide some contentment to a player’s need to watch things die.

Pocket Build is not a progression game, it is more of a fantasy sandbox builder where the player sets the rules. There are no waiting times for building and the developers rely on player donations. I would advise to donate a small amount should you enjoy the game because Pocket Build receives good additions in patches from time to time, evolving and developing as time goes by instead of slowly turning into ash, like some games.