Entry tags:
Humble Mobile Bundle: Crescent Moon 2
Maze Lord - Puzzle game based on roguelike elements, generally involving moving through a cramped dungeon space by collecting tools and fighting monsters in the correct order. The levels are distinct and sequential, and you can collect treasures that give you “cheat” items (extra coins, potions, etc) that you can use to get through a level you can't figure out.
2-bit Cowboy Rides Again - A deceptively and distressingly hard platformer with a Game Boy style. I really want to like it, but the lack of real buttons (and tactile feedback) combined with the long stages and easy instant death from pits (which mean you have to re-do that stage's subquests and you lose all your coins) make this unpleasant to play.
Almightree: The Last Dreamer - The saplings of the Almightree are the only things that can stop the world from crumbling. Find them! A 3D run-and-climb puzzle-platformer with a cute aesthetic but not much else. Cute concept, mostly moving blocks in a 3D environment via teleportation, but it didn't hold my interest.
The Deer God - A human hunter is cursed by the Deer God to live as a deer, collecting magical powers by solving puzzles and fighting enemies. Cool concept, but the art style is a hard-to-decipher pixelated mess similar to Superbrothers, and the controls are awfully wiggly for precision platforming.
Atomic Super Lander - Maneuver your lander ship onto an asteroid, then manually set a bomb and flee before it detonates. Very cute art style, goofy plot, extremely hard to maneuver ship, especially within a time limit. The physics are “realistic”, by which we mean, “unpleasant”.
Legend of the Skyfish – I actually bought the bundle because I was curious about this, as it appeared 2D Zelda-like. And in terms of controls and some of the puzzles, it is—it's a standard ¾ view with block-pushing and a lot of hookshot puzzles. But each area is self-contained, there's no real exploration, and the sliding control pad is as irritating as always.
Aralon: Forge and Flame - I'd go far as to call this unplayable, at least on my Galaxy Tab 4. The graphics are jumpy and the dialogue jumps around the screen, alternating slow and unbearably fast. It's a 3D rpg, a genre I'm never really a fan of, but then it tries to use touchscreen controls and they have no useful sensitivity, so actually maneuvering is painful.
EXILES: Far Colony uses a similar system, only going for sci-fi instead of fantasy and managing the graphics a bit better. Two-stick shooters and 3D first-person games are not good tablet games. (Ravensword: Shadowlands is more of that, and I have lost patience for trying to make these controls work.)
Stellar Wanderer - A spaceflight sim with a heavy emphasis on pay-to-win. You can take on missions (many of which are available from the outset but not actually possible to complete at that point) and upgrade your ship as you travel around the galaxy, but really, no aspect of this is my cup of tea.
The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost refused to install on my tablet. I did a test run on KOPlayer just to see what it was like, and the answer is a first-person dungeon crawl game with troublesome controls.
Overall: The theme here seems to be “cool concepts, lousy execution”. The controls were a primary complaint on many of the games, as they tried to mimic things you really a need a controller for on a touchscreen, and it never really worked. Ah, well.
2-bit Cowboy Rides Again - A deceptively and distressingly hard platformer with a Game Boy style. I really want to like it, but the lack of real buttons (and tactile feedback) combined with the long stages and easy instant death from pits (which mean you have to re-do that stage's subquests and you lose all your coins) make this unpleasant to play.
Almightree: The Last Dreamer - The saplings of the Almightree are the only things that can stop the world from crumbling. Find them! A 3D run-and-climb puzzle-platformer with a cute aesthetic but not much else. Cute concept, mostly moving blocks in a 3D environment via teleportation, but it didn't hold my interest.
The Deer God - A human hunter is cursed by the Deer God to live as a deer, collecting magical powers by solving puzzles and fighting enemies. Cool concept, but the art style is a hard-to-decipher pixelated mess similar to Superbrothers, and the controls are awfully wiggly for precision platforming.
Atomic Super Lander - Maneuver your lander ship onto an asteroid, then manually set a bomb and flee before it detonates. Very cute art style, goofy plot, extremely hard to maneuver ship, especially within a time limit. The physics are “realistic”, by which we mean, “unpleasant”.
Legend of the Skyfish – I actually bought the bundle because I was curious about this, as it appeared 2D Zelda-like. And in terms of controls and some of the puzzles, it is—it's a standard ¾ view with block-pushing and a lot of hookshot puzzles. But each area is self-contained, there's no real exploration, and the sliding control pad is as irritating as always.
Aralon: Forge and Flame - I'd go far as to call this unplayable, at least on my Galaxy Tab 4. The graphics are jumpy and the dialogue jumps around the screen, alternating slow and unbearably fast. It's a 3D rpg, a genre I'm never really a fan of, but then it tries to use touchscreen controls and they have no useful sensitivity, so actually maneuvering is painful.
EXILES: Far Colony uses a similar system, only going for sci-fi instead of fantasy and managing the graphics a bit better. Two-stick shooters and 3D first-person games are not good tablet games. (Ravensword: Shadowlands is more of that, and I have lost patience for trying to make these controls work.)
Stellar Wanderer - A spaceflight sim with a heavy emphasis on pay-to-win. You can take on missions (many of which are available from the outset but not actually possible to complete at that point) and upgrade your ship as you travel around the galaxy, but really, no aspect of this is my cup of tea.
The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost refused to install on my tablet. I did a test run on KOPlayer just to see what it was like, and the answer is a first-person dungeon crawl game with troublesome controls.
Overall: The theme here seems to be “cool concepts, lousy execution”. The controls were a primary complaint on many of the games, as they tried to mimic things you really a need a controller for on a touchscreen, and it never really worked. Ah, well.