Tilt to Live!

A few days ago, I downloaded a fun new iPhone game called 'Tilt to Live'.

(Click the link above to watch the trailer)

I'm enjoying the simple clean design of the game as well as the layout of the menu's.

Instead of being flat, the options appear to be set at an angle, giving the menu more 'pop'.

The loading screen (which lasts only about ten seconds at the very beginning) does not tell you that it is loading, instead it gives you a variety of different instructions to distract you for a moment.


The loading screen messages I've seen;

A Test of Rage - Become infuriated at the spinning icon to advance.

A Test of Geography - Recite the names of all 7 continents alphabetically to advance.

A Test of Debate - Compel the spinning icon to stop using sound logic.

A Test of Tranquility - Relive a happy memory from your childhood to advance.

Gameplay is very simple; little red bacteria-like enemies appear and swarm toward your little white triangular ship. A variety of weapons spawn in at random, which you trigger by running into them. The music is a catchy-folksy-French tune that sounds like it belongs in the movie Amelie.

There are no on-screen controls (which is a problem in many iPhone games, where your finger is covering up important onscreen real estate). Instead, you simply tilt the phone to move your ship.

I appreciate game designers that don't take themselves too seriously - even the weapons have quirky names. This is a good game, well worth the $1.99 price tag.

'Catan' for iPhone

Just a quick one - there's a truly great board game out there called 'Settlers of Catan', which was first published in 1995 in Germany. It's been called the killer app of board games.

If you have never played, you are doing yourself a great disservice - run right out and buy the board game now, it's available at most Barnes & Noble stores.

To me, the best part of Catan is the fact that even during other people's turns, you still get to play (after a fashion) as you may gain additional resources with each roll of the dice, on your turn or not - and you're constantly scrutinizing the board and the actions of the other players to fine tune your own strategy.

An iPhone app for Settlers of Catan was released recently - named simply 'Catan', it's $4.99 and I have to say - not worth it. It's perhaps worth 99 cents.

The gameplay in the iPhone version is clunky, the interface is dated and there are many times in the game when you have no access to the menu, there is no landscape view, there is no online multiplayer, you can save only one game at a time. The AI is not at all challenging, even when you manually select all of the most skilled bots as your opponents.

The 'fun' factor is very decidedly lacking. (I know I've said before that FUN is the hardest thing to write into code...) I can't recommend this game at all. I'm very disappointed, because I was very excited when the game was announced. I've played other digital versions, such as the one offered by MSN Games - for all its flaws, the MSN version is 1000 times better than the iPhone version.

Please check out the MSN version of Settlers of Catan here - it's a lot of fun. It's a demo version, but it takes about sixty seconds of Googling to find the registration key you'll need to convert it to the final version. I've spent at least thirty hours playing the MSN version and it's an enjoyable challenge.

Fondleworthy: Meteor Blitz

Most of the iPhone apps I own are free downloads, but Meteor Blitz is worth the $1.99 price tag.

Gameplay is straightforward - it's Asteroids. You have two control sticks; the left stick steers and the right stick fires (I always think of this as 'Robotron Controls').

I'm still not completely sold on using the touchscreen as controller and display - it's frustrating that my hands block part of the action, and the friction of my thumbs against the screen seems to vary depending on the moisture of my skin at that moment. I'd welcome a hack that would allow me to use my Wii Remote to control the iPhone - I'm sure some ingenious hacker is at work on this.

It's challenging without being impossible, with a variety of weapons and upgrades along the way. It's the kind of game you can play for just a few minutes if you're killing time waiting in line or what have you.

If you enjoy a little mindless rock destruction, you'll enjoy the game.

Boxed In

I downloaded an iPhone app recently called 'Boxed In'.

It's a simple game - you're a little robot that pushes boxes out of his path, and/or onto little pressure pads that allow him to collect gears and exit from one level to the next.

The robot can only push, cannot pull, and must collect all gears before leaving the level.

I got a bit stuck on Level 9, since I could not simultaneously get boxes on all three pressure pads (the colored dotted lines) at the top. I even took the time to create a version of the map in Excel, so I could just study it without the distraction of actual movement.


Finally while studying the Excel version, I realized you don't have to maintain pressure on all three pads at once. My assumption was keeping me from solving the level. TSK!

I Dig It (Indeed I Do!)

I downloaded a fun new iPhone game yesterday - only 99 cents - it's called 'I Dig It'.

Basically, you have a big tractor that's been jury-rigged into a tunnel-boring machine, and you're digging deep into the underdark looking for fossils, trinkets and goo-gaws to sell.

You turn the money earned into upgrades for your digging equipment. It's surprisingly addictive, for all its simplicity. I wasted about 3 hours on it yesterday, until my phone ran out of juice and died in the midst of a dig (my progress was saved, fyi).

Oddly enough, instead of digging a series of shafts, carefully ferreting out the nougaty goodness of Roman coins and mineralized fish carcass, I'm digging a gigantic pit mine.

I have this enormous cavern dug out, and when I descend from ground level, I free-fall for hundreds of feet before coming to the current bottom, where I carefully, gleefully clear just one more neat, level row of excavation before rocketing (LOVE the rocket!) back to the surface to hock my subterranean wares. Is this careful virtual digging another symptom of OCD?

Am I, in truth, digging into my psyche? What if there is no game, no app, no phone?? Just me, sitting, glazed, hands held up holding an imaginary device, digging an imaginary hole into my wounded, sobbing ID?? What if the Etruscan Vase power-up represents my feminine side, at war with my reptilian need for a jetpack? No, wait - it's all real. Whew!

I wonder if there are research studies that observe exactly how different people play games, and what it means about them...?