2012-366 Day 236 – Android Games

I like to play games. Yeah, you probably knew that about me already, but just in case, there you go. It’s also particularly handy to have games on my phone for when I need to kill a few minutes here or there. I had a TON of games downloaded on my old phone, though I didn’t play very many of them too regularly or I beat all the available levels. Only a few games have made it to my new phone (or I’ve downloaded them since then), so we’ll take a look at what I have now (maybe some other time I’ll go back for the other ones).

Title: Carcassonne
Type: Board Game
Price: $4.99
Notes: One of the games that made it over from my old phone, and one of the few I actually paid for. I’m always looking for good board game ports and this one was recommended on a website so I took the plunge. An interesting tile based game that seems like would need a very large table in real life, it works well in the handheld environment. The CPU comments are a bit annoying (and feature some corrupt religious themes, which is annoying) though, so I shut those off. I don’t recommend you give it a try unless you are willing to put a little bit of work into learning the rules, it’s a bit complex (think Settlers of Catan complex).

Title: Phase 10
Type: Card Game
Cost: $0.99
Notes: If you’ve played Phase 10 and like it, this is worth every penny (all 99 of them). A simple game that takes you through all 10 phases against fairly good A.I. on the hard level, I still win the majority of games but it’s never a certainty. No frills (not even stats, which is mildly disappointing to me), but just a great translation of the card game to the Android platform.

Title: Pocket Soccer
Type: Sports(?)
Cost: Free
Notes: My most recent download and semi-addiction, Pocket Soccer apparently adapts a real life game that seems to cross pogs and foosball. Each team has three discs and you alternate flicking your discs at a ball and try to ricochet the ball into your goal. There’s all sorts of settings to customize on this one and several different play modes. The controls can be a touch (heh) tricky, I’ve missed plenty of open shots by a hair, but you still get the great feeling of scoring the winning goal right before time expires (or pulling out a one goal victory if your playing first to 5 or 10). Simple, fun, and takes a while to master. Also, you select countries to play as (well, the flag that goes on your buttons), and that adds extra fun (at least for me).

Title: Shadow Era
Type: Card Game
Price: Free
Notes: I was looking for a good collectible card game for the Android and found this one, which does the best job I’ve seen so far. I haven’t really played it in a while, but it boasts cross-platform play, so I can play games on my phone or on my computer. If you like CCGs, then I recommend you give this one a shot. My only complaint is that leveling up takes a long time, and you are stuck playing the same opponents while you level, so the challenge factor hasn’t really increased for me yet. The early opponents are quite easy once you learn how to play.

Title: Split Decision
Type: Board Game
Price: Free (90 question pack, first expansion with 660 questions is $1.10 – I haven’t bought that yet)
Notes: Whoops, just realized I lied earlier (who bothers with editing nowadays?), this has been on my phone for a grand total of an hour and a half, and my five to ten minutes with it shows some real promise. An adaption of the physical game made by the good folks at Mental Floss, you have to decide whether the listed item is one thing or another (like is Lasting Pride a Military Operation or Cat Litter). I’ve enjoyed it so far and am probably going to buy the expansion, there’s several game modes and the game play is really fast.

Title: Triple Town
Type: Matching Game
Price: Free (Limited Turns, Unlimited Turns costs a little bit)
Notes: I was addicted to this one for a while, you can also play a version on Facebook (I never got that far). You have to match items to create increasingly more valuable structures while avoiding the bears and ninja bears. I haven’t quite mastered the high scoring maneuvers, because it requires looking further ahead than I’m generally willing to in a casual game, but it can be a lot of fun to play a couple games since they go fairly quickly.

Title: Lock and Roll Pro
Type: Dice Game
Price: Amazon Deal
Notes: The lone holdover from the one free app a day the Amazon app store does, this is a very simple game where you plug dice into a 4×4 grid and try to get rid of matching colors or straights while scoring points. It also goes very quickly and is a good game to kill a couple minutes with.

I’m sure my roster will expand and some old favorites will come back (I had all of the old Angry Birds on my last phone, but haven’t wanted to start over again). I love playing games and having them all at my fingertips is one of the greatest things about having a cell phone with over a thousand times more power than my first computer. Heaven knows I don’t call anyone with the dang thing.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 258.1 miles
Fitocracy Level: 25 ID: disciplev1