Happy New Year, all. I hope you had some lovely festive
times, and enjoyed seeing 2013 off or seeing 2014 in, or maybe even both. I
thought I would start the year with an insightful and fascinating rundown of apps
for games you can play on your phone. You’re welcome.
1. Dots. This is
my friend Daisy’s latest game of choice. Like all good games, the concept is
alarmingly simple. Your screen is filled with different coloured dots, and all
you need to do is link dots of the same colour. For exciting big scores, make
squares with them. It’s worrying that I can while away an hour doing
this, and yet I’m apparently unable to get a score above 200.
2. Candy Crush Saga.
I think by now everyone’s been through the Candy Crush tunnel, yes? The hatred
of the cubes with little black nets on them, the dread of having to do a
high-score speed round, the sadness when you reach a ‘get the fruit and nuts to
the bottom’ level, the sheer joy of finally passing a level you’ve been stuck
on for a literal actual month. My affair with Candy Crush happened in the
Spring of 2013; every second of my train commute, and a good deal of my working
day was spent feverishly swapping the candy around or desperately waiting for
time to pass so I could earn another life. Disturbingly like some kind of crack
addiction. Eventually, I had to go cold turkey and delete the app completely.
Life is just too short.
3. Candy Crush
Knock-Offs. It seems everyone’s trying to get on the Candy Crush success
bandwagon. And to be honest, fair play to them. Jelly Splash looks exactly the
same to me, except the creators have cleverly set it apart by giving the coloured
blobs eyes. Genius. And now there’s a new game, the Papa Pear Saga. Again, the concept
seems identical, except this time we’re apparently ‘bouncing around a wonderfully
wacky world of fruity pegs’. Excellent. My main problem with this one is that
Papa is a green ball in a helmet; he’s clearly not a pear. Oh, and for a long time I thought it was called
Pop-A-Pair Saga, which, to be honest, might have been better.
4. The Simpsons
Tapped Out. This one is my favourite. I’ve never actually played it, but it
sounds mental. Essentially, you build Springfield and then you run it, a bit
like God or some kind of dictator. You start off with Homer and gradually find
more characters, and you make money by building things like the Power Plant and the
Kwik-e-Mart and then sending people to work in them. Cletus Spuckler the Redneck also seems to play a major role.
The best part is the updates. So while your phone will beep
to inform you that you’ve been tagged on Facebook or that something newsworthy and
important is happening in the world of real life, you’ll also be getting things
like:
“Cletus has finished brewing moonshine.”
“Homer has just finished a 12-hour shift at the power plant.”
“Sideshow Bob has been spotted in the area.”
“Cletus has helped Brandine give birth to another Spuckler.”
And my personal favourite:
“Apu has finished relaxing in the Brown House.”
Now I just need someone to invent an app that will let me
relive my favourite Amiga Commodore 64 game Bubble
Bobble, and my life will be complete. You know the one; you had to build
bubble towers so the little dragons could reach the top of the screen. Genius.
PS. I sort of thought the title of this blog sounded a bit
like Game of Thrones and was ergo
mildly amusing. Then I thought it sounded a bit like the 1981 Duran Duran
smash-hit Girls on Film and was
therefore definitely mildly amusing.
I now feel it doesn’t actually sound enough like either to
be mildly amusing and is therefore basically just shit. However, after all this
thinking, I can’t be arsed to think of a better title. Bet you’re glad you read
to the end, aren’t you?
