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ysobelUnrelatedly, the worst part of Ravelry being down is I can't commiserate with my rav peeps about the "horror" of rav being down. Kind of like when your internet goes out so you try to send an email saying you have no internet...
Anyway. I haven't done more writing up the apps I like best, but one of my newer ones did a "we will give you 50 gems for leaving a review in the App Store", and I figured the information may as well go here too. I've added a bit of detail so it more matches the previous rec post, but it's only one app this time. (Not necessarily my favorite though... but high on the list. I may eventually get to reviewing the more meh apps/games, but I'm doing the ones I like first.)
Diggy's Adventure
Indiana Jones meets The Mummy meets "smash all the pots" video game rpg logic, with a charming retro feel and a sense of humor.
Premise: You are an ... er ... archaeologist? ... who likes smashing things for the stuff inside. When you come across a mummy with dire warnings and "whatever you do, do not touch" helpfully written down for you, you touch it and invoke the wrath of the gods, where "wrath" means "must go around smashing things to collect various items, or bad things will happen". Along the way there are side quests helping various characters, by dint of going places and smashing things to collect various items. Oh, and I think your dad's gone missing or something, but luckily he left you helpful notes. Like don't touch the cursed mummy.
Gameplay: Tap things to smash them. There are occasional puzzles, of the "roll a stone onto a specific square to open the next gate" variety; this again is tap and tap. (Tap on stone to initiate rolling mode, tap the direction you want it to go. Default behavior is you can move the stone one square at a time, towards you or away from you. There is a booster you can buy to allow multiple moves with one click, but whatever.) Each smash costs some amount of energy, which regenerates over time. As you progress you start building a base camp, which allows you to expand your energy capacity and energy regeneration, cook food that will restore energy, and so on. You can be over energy capacity -- if you are at 450/500 energy and eat a 100-energy food, you will have 550/500 -- and level rewards are a fixed energy amount rather than the more variable "refill energy bar" -- but regeneration only occurs when you are below maximum energy.
Pros: It is cute, and has a retro feel to it. Smashing things is fun. There is no way to get irretrievably stuck, and no way to lose or die or whatever. Because there is an energy limit, this isn't as much of a time warp as some other games (Merge Dragons and Zen Koi, I'm looking at you!). Nothing so far is timed, so I can go at my own pace. There is a sense of humor to some of the signs (and heck, to the plot itself. The first section at least is Egypt-themed, and I like ancient Egypt stuff; locked maps indicate other areas like Scandinavia and China.
Cons: The interface is confusing to figure out at first -- especially since many things are entirely graphical with no text labels. The bottom menu bar (with things like shop, camp, town, quest list, map, and current dig site) is confusing, and even now that I've figured out *what* things are, I consistently confuse both the camp / town icons (tentlike thing) and the map / quest-log icons (parchmentlike things). Gameplay is straightforward but has its own confusions -- for example I recently had to google the solution to a puzzle because I had both red stones on the red markers and it wasn't triggering anything, and it turned out that one marker/stone pair was actually red-orange. Plus there are nice, bright green action indicators (hand for things like levers, energy count for smashable items) but they only show up if you are near.
Cost/ads: Free but with in-game purchases. There are two forms of currency, gold (found in the things you smash) and gems (premium currency, occasionally acquired as rewards but also purchasable). Gems can be used to purchase energy, directly (when you run out of energy I think there is a refill-with-gems option) or indirectly (purchasing higher-capacity camp equipment, purchasing foods), and can also be used to get speed potions or similar bolstered. It very much falls into the category of "perfectly playable for free, also perfectly easy to support the developers if you prefer". No ads (Yay!)
Anyway. I haven't done more writing up the apps I like best, but one of my newer ones did a "we will give you 50 gems for leaving a review in the App Store", and I figured the information may as well go here too. I've added a bit of detail so it more matches the previous rec post, but it's only one app this time. (Not necessarily my favorite though... but high on the list. I may eventually get to reviewing the more meh apps/games, but I'm doing the ones I like first.)
Diggy's Adventure
Indiana Jones meets The Mummy meets "smash all the pots" video game rpg logic, with a charming retro feel and a sense of humor.
Premise: You are an ... er ... archaeologist? ... who likes smashing things for the stuff inside. When you come across a mummy with dire warnings and "whatever you do, do not touch" helpfully written down for you, you touch it and invoke the wrath of the gods, where "wrath" means "must go around smashing things to collect various items, or bad things will happen". Along the way there are side quests helping various characters, by dint of going places and smashing things to collect various items. Oh, and I think your dad's gone missing or something, but luckily he left you helpful notes. Like don't touch the cursed mummy.
Gameplay: Tap things to smash them. There are occasional puzzles, of the "roll a stone onto a specific square to open the next gate" variety; this again is tap and tap. (Tap on stone to initiate rolling mode, tap the direction you want it to go. Default behavior is you can move the stone one square at a time, towards you or away from you. There is a booster you can buy to allow multiple moves with one click, but whatever.) Each smash costs some amount of energy, which regenerates over time. As you progress you start building a base camp, which allows you to expand your energy capacity and energy regeneration, cook food that will restore energy, and so on. You can be over energy capacity -- if you are at 450/500 energy and eat a 100-energy food, you will have 550/500 -- and level rewards are a fixed energy amount rather than the more variable "refill energy bar" -- but regeneration only occurs when you are below maximum energy.
Pros: It is cute, and has a retro feel to it. Smashing things is fun. There is no way to get irretrievably stuck, and no way to lose or die or whatever. Because there is an energy limit, this isn't as much of a time warp as some other games (Merge Dragons and Zen Koi, I'm looking at you!). Nothing so far is timed, so I can go at my own pace. There is a sense of humor to some of the signs (and heck, to the plot itself. The first section at least is Egypt-themed, and I like ancient Egypt stuff; locked maps indicate other areas like Scandinavia and China.
Cons: The interface is confusing to figure out at first -- especially since many things are entirely graphical with no text labels. The bottom menu bar (with things like shop, camp, town, quest list, map, and current dig site) is confusing, and even now that I've figured out *what* things are, I consistently confuse both the camp / town icons (tentlike thing) and the map / quest-log icons (parchmentlike things). Gameplay is straightforward but has its own confusions -- for example I recently had to google the solution to a puzzle because I had both red stones on the red markers and it wasn't triggering anything, and it turned out that one marker/stone pair was actually red-orange. Plus there are nice, bright green action indicators (hand for things like levers, energy count for smashable items) but they only show up if you are near.
Cost/ads: Free but with in-game purchases. There are two forms of currency, gold (found in the things you smash) and gems (premium currency, occasionally acquired as rewards but also purchasable). Gems can be used to purchase energy, directly (when you run out of energy I think there is a refill-with-gems option) or indirectly (purchasing higher-capacity camp equipment, purchasing foods), and can also be used to get speed potions or similar bolstered. It very much falls into the category of "perfectly playable for free, also perfectly easy to support the developers if you prefer". No ads (Yay!)