Bite-Sized Brilliance
Phone Games That Respect Your Time and Intelligence, Part 2 of (Infinite)
I write a lot about Phone Games
A lot
No really
Like cameras, the best gaming console is the one you have on you. And phones are the “consoles” we have on us the most often. But phone games often-times feel like an addictive candy rush, meant to hook you on something that is supposed to make you tap and click forever, instead of engaging your brain. The golden age of mobile gaming is over. It was killed by King Games.
Not so.
Fun, sharp, and thoughtful mobile games continue to come out, even in the face of just how hard it actually is for independent developers to make money on mobile games. I suspect because the allure is too strong. It is literally the most pervasive console there is!
And four more (mostly?)1 brand new games have come out that are absolutely worth your time:
Stamps
The game stamps is a single player puzzly tile (err, stamp) laying game. You’re trying to match the stamps you play out onto a 3x4 grid against certain patterns set out by the rules. Some say you need to lay out a row in ascending order. (1 to 4, for example). Others say you need to construct a 2x2 grid of stamps that share the same country.
The twist? Every country has its own special ability, which you must follow. And each of the special abilities changes the way you play the game. Some let you draw other stamps, others swap places or shift the grid, others still force you (allow you?) to remove other stamps from the grid. Every turn you’re dealt out three stamps that you have to place before you can draw the next set. Once you match the requisite number of rules, the tiles that satisfy the condition are removed and you move on to the next round, until you’ve completed all of the rounds and win! Or… until you run out of space and lose.
It’s a game that starts cute and becomes shockingly brain burning as you try to map out the sequence of moves that will get you closer to your goal. Stamps and their varying abilities will feel like hinderances until they unlock the perfect move. I, personally, have a love/hate relationship with the Australian stamps. They are so cute, so innocuous. They let you draw an extra stamp! What could go wrong. That is until you have a board full of tiles and what you really need to lift and shift or to remove and there’s a koala staring you in the face saying “best I can do is a new tile”.
The art style is so organized and the finishing touches are beautiful though. I really love the Daily Puzzles this offers.
Is This Seat Taken?
I played this for the first time at a Steam Next Fest Demo, and I was absolutely smitten. It’s a game about trying to organize people with a variety of seating requirements into a space like a Bus or a Theater or a Dance Floor. The puzzle is about trying to make sure the people (really shapes, we’re talking shapes) who want to sit together, sit together, and apart from the people or situations they want to stay away from.
That by itself might be enough to sustain a game, but I suspect it would be a challenge to sustain it for very long. What makes this interesting is a two-fold combo. One, the requirements feel real. Some people want to avoid dirty seats or loud noises. Not blocking people’s line of sight in a movie theater creates challenges. And secondly, each space evolves over time, so a single level will see you rearranging and dealing with the leftover shapes after each successful solve. This makes it feel like you’re both dealing with your own solutions, and also telling a coherent story rather than merely moving logical concepts around.
And the art and UI design is spectacular.
Mindset Go
When Connections first came out I immediately started thinking of ways to iterate on the concept as a small daily game. Rather than relying on the player’s ability to intuit the opinion of a NYT editor, what if they were trying to categorize different groups, like… a Venn Diagram. Lo and behold Mindset Go comes along to answer my prayers, with one smart switch: Instead of being about vague things like “concepts” it focuses on shapes and items with real, verifiable facets. Like being solid or empty. Or having a specific color.
And then it also did another couple of smart things. Firstly it changes up how many items fit on each side of the diagram. Secondly, many (most?) levels give you more shapes than you can fit in the grid, meaning you have to select the right grouping that is both inclusive and also exclusive to the requirements of the Venn. This adds a layer of depth to what otherwise might have been a relatively straightforward experience.
Merge Maestro
And finally… Merge Maestro
What if an auto-battler joined forces with a game like 3s or Triple Town with a sprinkling of Luck Be a Landlord? Well I imagine it looks something very much like this. That and the fact that it’s built on top of emoji is just… chefs kiss.
There’s some level of you might have to be incredibly gamer-brained to even begin to be interested in this experience but the level of interplay here is really spectacular. Each round you’re tasked with playing combining items on the grid in front of you to deal increasing amounts of damage to the enemies in the row above you. If you can’t defeat them in time you lose a heart. Lose all of your hearts and you lose the game. Each round you get the option to replace a basic number (1-8) with a new emoji with new abilities that trigger when they appear or when they’re destroyed. The goal is to build the right set of emojis (and merge to upgrade them) at the right time to deal massive amounts of damage.
I’m quite positive I’ve lost at least half of my reading audience at this point. But if you’re still with me you should absolutely give this game a shot.
The weirdest part of the game is probably the part I adore the most. In the large majority of autobattler or comb style games the game does the comboing for you, turning into this orgy of lights and sounds after every move that rings up gigantic numbers. Merge Maestro does no such thing, instead asking you to operate your own game and make your own decisions, and doing things like letting you merge pieces from the other side of the board. Truly the horror. It’s a numbers go up game except you’re the one operating the crank.
The Game Really Do Exist
Enough time has passed (and the onslaught of Pop Games continues unabated), that I should probably revisit my Top Pop Games list. But beyond that, there really are phone games that come out year over year. Ones that are real, interesting, and that you can still play in 15 minutes or less.
More To Come… Trails
I was hoping to time this came out Trails would have released for mobile, but I’m fairly confident it’s on its way soon so I want to shout it out here.
I just learned about Stamps recently but I’m not actually sure when it got released on mobile.