Review: GemsXXL2

This title screen is far more exciting than the actual game.

Match three or more jewels to score some points. Hm... I think I've played a game like this before.

Graphics:
Pretty good. The gems look appropriately gem-like, and the backgrounds and interface are all pretty good. I especially like the lightning bolt effect when you complete a match.

Sound:
A few effects and a single musical sting. The fidelity is fine, but the light tinkles you get when you match a set don't mix well with the sharp interface noises. It's best to play with the sound off, which, thankfully, it gives you the option to do.

Gameplay:
It's Bejewelled, but with a couple twists. Every time you match a set of three jewels, a gem appears on the board, and then you can match sets of three or more gems. The object of each level is to remove a certain number of gems in progressively fewer and fewer moves.

Match the jewels? Where have I seen that before?

If you remove more than 10 gems/jewels from the board with a single move, you'll be given a 10x gems, and one of 35 collectible gems for your trophy case. They don't do anything, though, so there's no reason to collect them.

What I liked:
-Tries to add a twist to the classic match-3 formula.
-A couple of the visual effects are pretty good.

I like how the edges turn red when you're running out of moves.

What I hated:
-Lets you know that Jesus is Love. I'm sure all the non-Christians out there are tired of hearing that.
-Doesn't cycle the ads enough. I'm fine with looking at ads if that's how you pay the bills, but you've gotta mix it up a little bit.
-Only lets you restart on a higher level if you reached that level on your previous play through. So, if you want some gems from level one, you'd better collect them after you get all the ones you want from level 26.
-When selling gems in the gem market, you have to tap the gem, wait for the screen to switch, tap 'Sell', wait for the screen to switch again, tap 'Yes, I'm sure', then wait for the screen to switch one more time. It takes way too long, especially if you're selling more than one.
-Only one game mode. At this point, we've been matching three things for over than a decade, so you've gotta give us more.
-Some graphical glitches.

I have no idea what's going on here.

Final Verdict:
It's a competent gem-matching game with a minor twist, but it has some odd design choices, and only one game mode, so there's no real reason to download it; you've played this game before.

GemsXXL2 is ad-supported and available for free from Lunagames on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 2.0

Review: Emily and the Magic Maze

Emily is out Trick-or-Treating when she wanders across a haunted house. A magical black cat inside mistakes her for a real witch and turns her costume broom into a real flying witch's broom. Now she has to escape from the house before the evil witch who lives there catches her.

Graphics:
Excellent. The characters are well drawn, and although it's a tile-based game, there's enough variety in the tiles that it's not too noticeable.

All the animated characters move fluidly, and their idle animations loop seamlessly.

The menus are well drawn, but the interface elements don't give a lot of feedback, unfortunately. They seem to respond to input too quickly and the game jumps to the next screen before the interface animation has time to complete. But, that's a minor quibble.

That's one of the prettier interfaces I've seen recently.

Sound:
The effects work well, and the music is both appropriately spooky and bouncy.

Both the music and effects can be disabled at any time, and the audio levels are very good, which is something that a lot of developers seem to overlook. I can't count the number of times I've nearly had my ears blown out by an overly loud effect.

Gameplay:
The object of each level is to fly Emily around a room, pick up a key and exit through the door. It's relatively straightforward, except, since she's only just learning to fly, Emily can't stop herself and will fly forward in a direction until she hits an obstacle. Therein lies the puzzle.

Now you're thinking with portals.

Things start off simply enough, but soon there are multiple enemies and obstacle types, and picking up all the optional treasure (candy, naturally) before reaching the exit can get a bit tricky. You'll breeze right through the first two levels, but once you hit about level 15, even veteran puzzle gamers will find at least some small challenge.

There are five achievements to earn, but you'll grab most of them without even trying.

I got this one without even doing anything.

What I liked:
-Brief interludes between the levels add a little levity and explain the game mechanics. The English isn't perfect, but it's passable.
-Puzzles get more complex as the game progresses.
-Sounds work well and fit in with the game's aesthetic.

Before levels, the cat gives you advice. Always take advice from animals. They know what's up.

What I hated:
-One terrible bug.
-There aren't more levels available. This is the kind of thing I could play for a while.

Final Verdict:
If not for one, simple but important bug, this would have been my first 5-star review. Unfortunately, the game failed to save my progress when I quit. I'd only put about half an hour into it, and I could probably complete the whole thing in a single sitting, but that's still unforgivable. It doesn't occur in all situations, but I was able to reproduce it.

Emily and the Magic Maze is available for free from Lilium on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0.1

Review: Combinations

Combinations is the one of the latest group of Android apps to be spammed onto App World by Handster Inc. In general, everything Handster puts out is either garbage or broken. However, while it's not great by any means, Combinations is at least functional and somewhat novel.

Graphics:
Nothing terribly impressive. Mainly simple geometric shapes. The background is suitably understated.

The rockets don't seem to line up quite right.

Sound:
Two sound effects and two music clips from what I could tell. The music is fine, if a bit short, but the effects are a bit loud and kinda jarring.

There's a button to turn off the effects and music, but it doesn't seem to work quite properly.

Gameplay:
You're start with a triangle that's subdivided into 16 smaller triangles. Along each side are four images, and each of the smaller triangles corresponds to an intersection point. When the level starts you'll be shown an image that's made up of three of the smaller images, one from each side of the large triangle. Double-tap the corresponding intersection point and you'll get some points and a little extra time on the clock. When time runs out, it's game over.

Can you beat my high score? Probably.

What I liked:
-A game type I haven't seen before. That's pretty rare.
-Integration with a number of services including Scoreloop. I'm not big on it, but it's nice that it's there.
-Rewards success, and punishes failure, but not too much.
-Replayability. If you're the kind of person who constantly wants to be your high score, this could be for you.
-Decent amount of variety in the image types. I saw clowns, rocket ships, cars, and about ten other things.

The are the least creepy clowns I've seen in a while.

What I hated:
-Sound effects are pretty bad.
-Music loops are way too short and aren't seamless.
-Bugs.
-Seems a little slow to respond to taps sometimes.

Final Verdict:
It's okay, not great. I'm unlikely to play it again, but it's designed in a way where you always think you can do a little bit better the next time, so someone else might get some decent use out of it. They'll probably want to turn the sound off, though.

Combinations is ad-supported and available for free from Balofo games on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.2

Review: Fantasy Game HD Free

Fantasy Game HD Free is the latest piece of Android garbage spam to be crapped out on App World.

Graphics:
Drawings of anime characters. They're good, but I'm fairly certain they're all stolen.

Better get this one fast before the copyright holders find it.

Sound:
One horrible sound effect. There's an option to turn music on and off, but it only affected the sound effect.

Gameplay:
A large picture of an anime character (girls mostly, but not really scantily clad or anything like that) is covered by a bunch of smaller pictures of anime girls... and some guys, I think, but it's really hard to tell. Tap a pair of matching pictures and they'll disappear. When all the small pictures are gone, you win. If time runs out, you lose.

I won! But then the game locked up.

The one minor element that makes gameplay sort of difficult is that the pictures you tap must be able to connect via some kind of path. I was never able to figure out exactly what the pathfinding rules are, but if a picture is totally blocked off, you won't be able to make a match.

What I liked:
-The gameplay has a little bit of strategy.
-The instructions are in bad English, which I find delightful.

"If the players will reach 2 pikachu eat it." Makes sense to me.

What I hated:
-The sound is bad.
-The UI buttons are too small to be of use.
-Plenty of bugs.
-Barely a game.

There's a button in the top right. Good luck getting it to work regularly.

Final Verdict:
When the Playbook finally got the ability to run Android apps, I was hopeful that it would bring a flood of awesome apps to App World. Instead, we got crap like Fantasy Game HD Free.

Fantasy Game HD Free is ad-supported and available for free from Truong531.developer Inc on Blackberry App World
Reviewed version 4.0

Review: Underwater Invasion

Underwater Invasion is barely a game.

Graphics:
Not bad. They're done in a cartoony style that works well. The interface buttons fit into the aesthetic quite nicely, too.

There are some minor graphical hiccups on the menu screens, but nothing too bad.

The graphics are actually pretty good.

Sound:
The music is light and bouncy. When you finish a level, you get a nice, happy melody.

The one sound effect is crap.

Gameplay:
Terrible. There are three creatures floating in the sea, you earn points by tapping on them. After about 30 seconds, a timer runs out, and the level is over. At least I think that's how it works, there are no actual instructions explaining how to play.

This is as close as the game gets to instructions. Notice that it doesn't tell you how to play.

There are three levels. The first two are exactly the same except they feature different sea creatures. The third is a boss level, but I couldn't get to it because you need to reach specific high scores in the first two levels to unlock it, and after my first run through, the game wouldn't update my scores.

What I liked:
-Cartoony characters are cute.

The first two levels look different, but feature exactly the same kind of non-gameplay.

What I hated:
-Gameplay is way too simple.
-Bugs prevent updating your high score, so you'd better win the first time through.
-No music while you're actually playing a level.
-Some frame rate hiccups. Which is weird, because there is not a lot going on.

Despite my high scores, I was unable to progress, due to bugs.

Final Verdict:
It's technically Underwater Invasion Beta, but with gameplay this bad, I can't imagine the full version would be any fun.

Underwater Invasion is available for free from Gordon College CCS on Blackberry App World
Reviewed version 1.0

Review: Slyon Ball

Slyon Ball is an isometric 3D block-breaking game in the vein of Arkanoid. It's also a pay-to-win game, but it's relatively simple, and not very good, so you're unlikely to buy anything.

Graphics:
There are six or so 3D-rendered animal characters, and they actually look pretty good. They're suitably smooth, and their animations are fluid. You can toggle between high quality/low quality/no shadows, which looks about how you'd expect. High quality has anti-aliasing, and low quality is blocky. I didn't notice any difference in gameplay speed, but it's possible that if you're running multiple apps at once, the shadows could cause slowdown.

The gameplay backgrounds are pre-rendered, and look terrible for the most part. Well, I'm assuming they're pre-rendered. There's no reason for them not to be, but if they're not, then at least that would explain why they're so sparse and unattractive.

Who thought that hideous grass was a good idea?

The blocks you need to break look like garbage, too.

The fonts on the buttons and so forth look okay, but for some reason they're not centred vertically. It just looks sloppy.

More care should have been taken with font placement.

Sound:
The effects are decent. Blocks explode with a suitable boom, and the animal noises are cute.

The music, on the other hand, is junk. It's grating, and not at all appropriate to the level design. It seems like they more or less picked some songs at random.

The music and sound effects can both be turned off individually.

Gameplay:
If you've played any block-breaking game, then you've played Slyon Ball. There's almost nothing unique about it. Slyon the lion kicks the ball, it breaks blocks and bounces back. Some blocks take more than one hit, some blocks are indestructible, and some blocks have power-ups. Only one of which is actually useful.

Multi-ball is the only useful power-up.

You move back and forth by tapping to the sides. For some reason, they decided that Slyon should move more slowly, the closer he is to where you tap, so you just have to tap as far away as possible and let go when he gets where you want.

The only thing that's sort of unique is the ability to call upon a pal to break some blocks for you. There are four different pals, but as far as I can tell, they all do exactly the same thing. They run on the screen and randomly break one block, or possibly a stack of blocks if you've upgraded your pal in the shop. You see, some blocks will give you coins, which you can use to unlock more pals, whistles which allow you to call on your pals, and upgrades for your pals. You can buy coins for real money in various amounts ranging from 120 for 99 cents to 3000 for $19.99. It's really not necessary, though. The game's simple enough that you'll barely need your pals.

There are four 'pals' but they all do the same thing.

Oh, and there's a monkey that will occasionally run out and toss an additional block for you to break. It's mostly fairly benign, but on one level I found that it just kept stacking them in the same spot. A spot I found quite difficult to hit, so eventually it built a tower that wasn't entirely visible on the screen. I restarted the level.

What I liked:
-Lots of levels. I think there are 6 groups of 15, for a total of 90.
-3D characters are cute.
-Multiple ball styles. They all do the same thing, but at least you can switch it up a bit.

Ten balls. They all do the same thing.

What I hated:
-The monkey. Oh, how I hated the monkey.
-No pause button. It'll pause if you change focus or minimize it, but it would still be nice to have a discrete button.
-The font is fine, but anything with words on it looks weird.
-If you have exactly the number of coins needed to make a purchase in the store, it won't go through.

No matter how many times I tapped, I couldn't buy those 100 whistles.

-Because it's in isometric 3D, even if the ball is bouncing straight backwards, it moves like it's on an angle. The whole movement effect is pretty lousy in general.
-Slyon's hit radius is such that he can kick the ball multiple times before it starts heading back up the screen.
-The game isn't multi-touch, but your hands are, and if you hit with more than one finger, it can lose track of things. Several times I wound up running to the left even though I was tapping on the right.
-The ball's hit box isn't always set right, so it won't actually reach the sides of the play area, and it'll bounce off nothing.
-On the first group of levels, as the ball moves back the shadow moves away, so it looks like it's flying or something.

Check out the top right corner of the play area.

-Sometimes the ball will clip through blocks.
-The pals come in and break blocks. Sometimes they'll break otherwise unbreakable blocks that you don't need to destroy. Sometimes they'll glitch and won't break anything.
-Scrolling the level select screen is harder than it should be. You have to drag it a fair distance before it'll cycle to the next level.
-The music is terrible.
-One power-up makes the ball move slightly faster (I think) and another makes it larger, but doesn't appear to have any gameplay effects. Both last for around five seconds, and are essentially useless.
-Occasional graphic hiccups.

Note the top block in the centre is hovering. It's not supposed to do that.

Final Verdict:
Slyon Ball has cute characters, but overall it's a poorly-executed mess. There are just too many bugs and glitches, and too much else wrong with it for me to recommend even downloading it for free.

Slyon Ball is available for free with in-app purchases from Slyon Studios LLC on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.1

Review: Jam!

It looks like strawberry, rather than blackberry.

Jam! is the latest in the line of 'keep the thing from hitting the ground' games. You know it's an exciting addition because it has an exclamation point at the end.
Graphics:
Fairly minimal, but well-drawn and appropriate to the genre. The designs it uses for the glass and wood blocks are pretty much standard at this point.

The lone background fits in fairly well with the whole falling jam jar aesthetic, and the colour scheme is very light and grandmotherly. I think the best word to describe it is 'pleasant'. It's a pleasant game to look at.

Even the instructions are pleasant.

Sound:
Again, fairly minimal. The effects consist of a button click and the sound of breaking glass. Both are understated and calm. Seriously, it's the calmest glass break you'll ever hear. The music is a single track on an infinite loop. It's appropriately light and jovial, and I didn't get tired of it in the time it took me to finish the game. However, it is a tad loud.

Both the music and sound effects can be turned off independently, which is always a plus.

Gameplay:
You've probably played similar games before. A thing (in this case a jam jar, but I've also seen balls, boxes, and a piece of cheese) is sitting on a tower of blocks. Some of those blocks can be destroyed with a tap. The object of each level is to destroy all the destructible blocks and keep the jam jar off the ground. The jar is oblong rather than perfectly symmetrical, but it doesn't seem to affect its movement much.

Sometimes the levels aren't static when you begin, so reproducing your exact steps from a previous attempt can be tricky. Overall, there doesn't seem to be as much of a puzzle element to Jam! as there is to other games of this type. It seems to be less about skill and brain power, and more about luck.

There might be a way to think your way through this, but I couldn't do it.

What I liked:
-Simple gameplay.
-Blocks seem to respond relatively well to taps.

I finished all 16 levels. Go me!

What I hated:
-Short. More levels are coming soon, though.
-Only one music track. It was nice, but I would've liked a bit more variety.
-A couple bugs.

The glass block on the left wouldn't respond to taps, but it didn't stop me from completing the level.

Final Verdict:
Jam! isn't particularly innovative, but it's a fine example of its genre. It's a bit on the short side (I finished all 16 levels in about 20 minutes), and like most games of this type it relies a bit too much on luck. But, if you enjoy this sort of game, and it comes out with a 50-level upgrade, I can't see why you wouldn't drop a dollar on it.

Jam! is available for free (with paid upgrades coming soon!) from Oleksii Kulagin on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0