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Angry Birds: completed!

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I have a strange sense of déjà vu. Having completed Angry Birds back in 2010, Rovio continued to update the game with new secrets, levels, and abilities, bringing in new birds and themes from other Angry Bird titles. It has always been the case that a sequel would introduce new concepts, but now, with the ability to update old games, those new concepts can feed backwards as well.

Anyway, I digress. Angry Birds – known on the Apple game centre as AB Classic – is actually no longer available to buy or even redownload. I am fortunate that my installation has carried over a couple of phone migrations, and still works. I understand that others have not been so lucky. Rovio has stated that it would require a complete rebuild to bring their older games up to modern standards, and they are committed to doing this, but that was three years ago.

In any case, I’m not affected by that. I have, for the past few months, been playing through a level at a time, getting three stars on each before moving on. There are some levels where the three stars came due to a lucky physics event, or just grinding the same shot over and over until it hit. There are some where it took a single new attempt to upgrade from 1 or 2 stars to 3. There were even some (a very few) levels I hadn’t played before.

There are a load of add-on mechanics that they added to Angry Birds which interfered with the purity of the game – and I’ve not actually used these during my playthrough. I have various exploding birds, catapult accuracy upgrades, and other things across the top of my screen, but I haven’t looked into how I could use them. Instead, I’ve completed every level using the standard birds and no upgrades.

I’ve also found and completed every golden egg. Some of these required the use of a guide.

The biggest difficulty I faced, other than the odd level which required pinpoint accuracy, was that the game really isn’t designed for the aspect ratio of my current phone. On many occasions I simply couldn’t see high enough to accurately aim the birds, or the catapult itself was too close to the top of the screen (hidden among the powerup icons!) to enable exact positioning. This was the reason for the guide use for golden eggs as well; there were a couple which were off screen and no amount of zooming out would reveal them.

The last set of levels were a departure from the standard objective, with the pigs coming to grab an egg using a variety of machines. To get three stars on these levels, it wasn’t a question of beating a certain score; instead you had to protect the egg (one star), pop all the pigs (one star), and use fewer than the target number of birds (one star). Luckily the pigs seemed to favour building their machines around a TNT crate.

So, again, completed. Three stars on every level. All golden eggs found, and their levels completed. I think I’m done for now – the only things left to do are to buy the golden eagle upgrade to play for feathers (which isn’t actually much fun), and play daily in the mighty league. I think I’m Birdsed out.

Two Dots: how to ruin a game

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I have been playing Two Dots for a number of years now; it’s a really well designed puzzle game, ideally suited for mobile and portable use, short levels and touch screen control. The game starts easily, requiring you to clear a certain number of dots of defined colours, then introducing the square move (make a closed area of a certain colour, and all of that colour disappear). Slowly other mechanics are introduced – bugs that change colour each time they are connected until they fly away; fire which consumes a dot each time unless it’s cleared; water and slime which spread around the level; other blocks which cover or obstruct play.

I am now at level 5434 of the game. That is a huge amount of content, however you measure it, but it still feels like new levels have something different to try. It’s a while since new mechanics were introduced, admittedly, though the interplay between existing ones isn’t yet explored fully.

Getting that last coconut slice in the bottom left is a huge pain.

I’m not sure it will be. Unfortunately Two Dots, as an ongoing game, has been sold to Take 2, and they seem to see it as a cash cow. Increasingly levels are becoming difficult to pass without using boosters or other power ups, and these are in short supply unless you buy them with real money. In the past I’ve willingly paid for access to different modes, since that felt like additional content. This now just feels like cynical money grabbing, and according to others I’m not even up to the really impossible levels yet.

Apparently the concerns over increased difficulty have been heard via the game’s social media channels, and adjustments were made. It doesn’t seem to have changed much.

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?

Game Dev Story+ (iPhone): COMPLETED!

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Many, many moons ago, I bought the original version of this on my iPhone. It was great. In fact, I still have it and my development company (Ubisocks) is still going and is on year 300 or something.

Recently, a modified version was released on Apple Arcade as Game Dev Story+. I’m not sure what is actually modified, aside from a different coloured icon, but it doesn’t matter because it meant I could restart the game without losing my more-than-a-decade-long save file.

It’s easier than I remember. Certainly, the early stages anyway. Once you have All The Money and can get a game that scores 40/40 regardless of how hard you actually try during development or which genre combo you choose then it’s a walkover, but I had no issues in the beginning at all – never ran out of money, constantly made a profit, and quickly grew Fire Sausage (my new development house) to the point of unstoppable sales. My Animal Crossing clone in particular was a massive seller and award winner!

After 20 in-game years you reach “the end”, in that no new stuff happens, but by that point I’d won all the awards and created a best-selling console so I’d done everything there is to do.

Nuts (iPhone): COMPLETED!

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I discovered that, since they added an Apple app to my TV, I could actually Airplay my iPhone screen on there, and with a PS4 controller connected via Bluetooth, I basically have another console. And then, Apple gave me another free month of Apple Arcade. And then, I spotted Nuts on there, when I was about to buy it for the Switch. So here we are.

Nuts follows you, as a squirrel researcher, setting up cameras with which to watch what the squirrels get up to. You then wind through the recorded footage, print off screengrabs of important sightings, and fax them to your boss who frequently contacts you in your caravan via phone.

I caught a squiggle on the tree!

At first, you simply put a camera where you’re told, watch a squirrel appear, and then move the camera to where it runs off to. As it takes the same route each night, you can effectively follow it to its den. Later levels are more complicated, with multiple squirrels, no known starting point, or having to track them backwards.

It’s a fun little game, uncomplicated and clever, and there’s a whole overarching story as to why you’re doing this research too, which adds to it. It’s only a few hours long, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome and changes things up enough to keep things interesting for that time. Also, squirrels!

That’s my caravan.