Mix Match Review

Mix Match

Mix Match reminds me a bit of some of the Wii or Nintendo DS mini-game packs or brain training games. There isn't a lot to learn about this game. You move the center tile to one of the four corners that match the type of tile is being shown. You have shapes, letters, numbers, and yellow smiley faces. I ran in to several problems with the game. For a game that depends on speed, I had problems that it didn't always detect my swipes or it detected them wrong saying I was trying to move a tile to the wrong corner. I am not sure what the issue was given that Fruit Ninja and similar games work fine. The initial directions are printed in a very small font making it hard to read them and they do not adequately explain what is expected at each level. As I was moving up in levels it wasn't clearly explained what the goal of each level was such as how many tiles in X time or X time to do as many tiles as possible. The idea here is not particularly orginal as I have seen several programs do this exact thing in brain training type program. It would help though if the directions for each level were make clearer.

The game mechanics are quite simple, and everyone should have no problem understanding what to do once the objective is clear. The screen-shot here shows that the "C" title is in the center so you would move/swipe the tile to the upper right hand corner where the "ABC" title is located.  You can see the numbers, faces and shapes in the other three corners. If you try and move a title into the wrong corner you will hear a bell sound letting you know that your attempting to move the title to the wrong corner. The game mechanics are all that hard. It is the fact that everything is timed and must be done quickly is what adds to the difficulty causing you think fast and accurately. It is developing pattern recognition as well as hand-eye coordination. The combination of the two are suppose help your brain.

The application is listed in the Entertainment category, but I tend to think since it is so much like brain training programs that perhaps it should have gone in the Healthcare & Fitness category since things like these are suppose to help improve your brain's "health".

Given that this game is not particularly innovative and we have seen many of these types of applications, it starts out with only one star. The graphics are not particularly outstanding or impressive, but then given the game type I'm not sure what could be done to make them stand out. I'll give it another star for adequate graphics, but nothing special. The game mechanic is good, but the execution leaves something to be desired and may end up frustrating some people. This results in half a star due to issue of detecting correct movements reliably. This results in two and half stars for this application. If you don't already have a brain training program then this might be something you want to pick-up, especially with the cost being so low right now at its introduction.

Pilot Winds Review

Pilot Winds

Pilot Winds has been in development for some while. If you are familiar with Tiny Wings then you will find the game somewhat similar. It has really wonderful graphics and the game play is a great time waster for when you only have a few minutes and want something to play for just a short period. It is also great for short periods of gaming because you don't have to remember where you are in the game from the last time you played.

The mechanics of the game are very similar to Tiny Wings. The biggest difference is that in Pilot Winds you press in the bottom right corner only, and you press through both the down slide and part of the up slide as well. It does come in a free version that offers a nice play mode. It is the purchased version that begins to shine with its six different play modes. There is checkpoint (also in the free version) in which you must race to a checkpoint in 60 seconds. If you make it then you race to the next one with any left over time added to your available time. Velocity requires you to keep your speed up or the game ends. Mad Minute asks how many points you can get in 60 seconds. The Bonus Play mode has you trying to see how many bonus points you can get as your only point source and make it to the checkpoint in 60 seconds.

The game works very well for what it is trying to do. I am afraid that given the long development time, allowing Tiny Wings to be released first, may end up hurting it. The multiple game modes may convince some to purchase this game. My biggest problem with the game is after playing Tiny Wings is that it just seems more of the same. It doesn't seem that the slide ropes varied that much. The music in the background was very annoying over time to me, thankfully you can turn it off. I also had very infrequent issues with the game stuttering causing it to break the flow of the game. I couldn't see a pattern as to why they happened, fortunately it only happened once in a great while. I would have liked to see the bonus mode have the same countdown timer game mechanic as velocity mode, where you had to keep getting bonuses to keep playing.

Given the fact that this game came out after Tiny Wings, normally I would have given it one star as a me-too/clone, instead it gets two stars because of the long development. The extra game modes are nice, but they aren't large variations on each other, so that only gets half a star. The graphics are well done and fit the theme and mechanics of the game well. It isn't a bad game, but for me it doesn't rise to greatness, so I am only giving it another star. I am giving it a total of three and half stars.