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Doctor Who: An Unlikely Heist (iPad): COMPLETED!

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This is a bad game. Do not play.

You want more? Sigh. Fine. Doctor Who: An Unlikely Heist, which was renamed in an update to “Doctor Who: Hidden Mysteries” presumably because there was no unlikely heist in the game, is a hidden object game. I’ve no beef with hidden object games. They can be fun but they are very shallow, and usually, that’s fine. However, it’s not just a hidden object game because there’s a tenuous Doctor Who story here too, about some magical cloud which is turning things into the wrong things from another time period and The Doctor (the 13th one) and Yaz have to sort it out. How? By you finding a list of objects in various scenes to earn canisters of magic dust that you can then use to unlock the next bit of story.

See the map on the right? The big thing with the plans on it? That’s not the map.

Which, limited in scope as it sounds, in itself is OK, right? Nothing fancy, a bit of Who fan service (with trips to locations from the TV show, appearances from various aliens and even – for no discernible reason – the 10th Doctor), and finding stuff. The problem is, it goes on. And on. And on and on and on and on. Each tiny bit of story progression requires you to complete several levels to get the required number of canisters, with that number generally increasing as the game goes on. After 30 hours, probably more, I reached level 1023, only to discover that beyond that point the levels went into “endless” mode and no longer gave you magic dust, and there was still story to unlock. The game was broken.

Apparently he was in the show. I don’t remember him.

Thankfully, they updated it (and that’s when they changed the name), so I could finish it off, but it was so, so tedious getting there and certainly not worth it for the plot. Over 1000 levels to slog through, when they’re mostly the same thing. Sure, they mix in a few rule variations – they flip the scene horizontally, or have it so you have to find two of the same item at once, but it’s not hard (you have powerups to help you find objects – I never used them, never failed a level, never got close to running out of time) and it’s certainly not fun. It also doesn’t help that there’s no naming consistency (a bin is sometimes a trash can, or a rubbish bin, or in one case, a battery) and there’s US naming some of the time and others there isn’t. And this, this one really got me annoyed: A chess set is an “outlet”?!

So yes, bad game, do not play. I did so you don’t have to.

Kimono Cats (iPhone): COMPLETED!

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Kimono Cats is a very bad game.

That’s it. That’s the post.

Oh, you want a reason? Tch. Don’t you trust me? Ridiculous. Fine. Reasoning:

You know those terrible mobile telephone games where you can only progress if you grind the same repetitive tasks over and over again, for no real reward, unless you pay for in-game currency with real-world money? Well, this is one of those games, only without any of the real-world money purchases, because it’s on Apple Arcade. It still has the grind though. And the repetitive tasks. But cats, so it’s great, right? No.

My first issue is with the name of the game. It’s called Kimono Cats because there are two cats on a date at a natsu-matsuri festival wearing kimono because NO WAIT! You wear yukata to a natsu-matsuri festival. Already I’m annoyed.

Then there’s the date itself. You see, you’re the boy cat and you’re trying to impress the girl cat by walking seventy squillion billion miles along the world’s longest row of festival stalls, cramming food in her face and playing stupid games, hoping for a kiss and a cuddle as you build up a Heart Meter and a Money Meter. Let’s just skip over the fact you’re buying affection here and so either your boy cat is is predatory or your girl cat is toxic, and go straight to the WHY THE HELL IS IT SO LONG. There are 15 levels of walking and each takes longer than the last to fill the money meter up with something like 20-odd hours required in total.

And finally (of the things I’m going to mention because I’ve already written too much), it’s so. Damn. Boring. You throw darts up at moving balloons, each one containing something to entertain, feed, or disrespect your girl cat with. You have a limited number of darts, but you can get more by tediously metal detecting or playing daily to get bonus ones, or by visiting the sticker-book-like villages of other players to hopefully get them to send you more darts. You have your own village which you fill with buildings and objects you unlock from the games, shop and other tasks, but the main purpose of the games is to fill the meters. Burst the right balloon and you can play a game where you “throw” balls at a target. Or try to “catch” some goldfish. Or stab apples. Or other things which are no fun to play even once, let along the hundred and hundreds of times you have to in order to progress.

For once, I think I’d have preferred a version of the game WITH in-app purchases. Or, you know, I should have stopped playing?

Squiggle Drop (iPad): COMPLETED!

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Squiggle Drop is a simple idea but done in such a way to make you feel monumentally stupid.

The idea is that you draw a shape, which then (usually) drops down onto some objects and, hopefully, completes a task. So you might have a button that needs pressing, so you draw a brick and drop it on. Or there’s a chasm for a car to cross, so you draw a bridge. Things are somewhat more complicated when you need to draw shapes that move in a certain way once they land, or that perform two or more separate actions in order – but you can only draw one, unbroken, squiggly line.

Some real headscratchers were the one where you had to knock a cow out of a UFO tractor beam, only the cow is under the UFO, the object you draw is above it, and the UFO can’t be moved. Also, one where you have to pull a nail from a board but nail is vertically upright and the shape is, again, above.

It was enjoyable, but drawing with a finger wasn’t precise enough for some of the levels and so drawing seemingly the exact same shape on consecutive attempts caused wildly different outcomes due to the very tiny variations. Even with the hints (which show you the sort of shape you should draw) on, it’s near impossible to be exact, and so a few levels were unnecessarily frustrating. Still, physics games tend to be a bit random, and it wasn’t enough to prevent me from completing it. Well, complete until they decide to add some more levels, anyway.

Garden Tails (iPad): COMPLETED!

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Yes, it’s the same damn game as Zoo Keeper World and Simon’s Cat and Puppy Blast and 50% of the games on the App Store, but it’s polished and cute and as it’s on Apple Arcade has no IAPs or wait times or other nonsense that gets in the way of, you know, just matching three things and clearing the board of whatever it is that needs clearing.

And sometimes, that’s all you want. Simple, pretty, puzzle fun.

Zookeeper World (iPad): COMPLETED!

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The original Zookeeper was the subject of one of my very first posts on this here gaming diary over 16 years ago. Well, not quite the original game as that was a Japan-only GBA release called Zooo or something, but the DS version I played was pretty much the same game. Anyway, forward time on a bit and the world of match-3 puzzlers has changed a bit so you can’t just re-release Zookeeper and expect it to fit in.

So they’ve aped the likes of Simon’s Cat and Puppy Blast and added loads of gimmicks to the formula. Now instead of (or as well as) removing a number of each animal, you also have to deal with revealing panels behind them to remove, or have them in bottles that you have to match two or three times before they disappear. Or there are flowers you can’t directly match to remove, crates you have to break, or beehives where removing animals next to them releases bees. There are fruit bombs that blow animals away, conveyor belts that move things round, and crowns you can only get rid of by dropping them off the bottom of the screen, as well as power-ups to employ.

On top of that, progress through the levels unlocks money and items for your real actual zoo which you can fill, Theme Park style, with attractions and animal displays. This is not the same Zookeeper I remember.

But, it is at least as addictive and it’s a lot of fun. Some of the levels are incredibly tricky, and a few may only be clearable with luck, but I loved working through all 200 of them and it’s one of the more polished and solid games of its genre around. Plus, as it’s Apple Arcade, there’s no in-app purchases like all the other games have, and no adverts.