Mobile content continues to grow and expand, even as it changes the mobile landscape in its wake. Its evolution has moved forward alongside that of the mobile phone vessels that bear it, and even outside of the mobile phone itself technology has lent mobile content the impetus it needs to move down new pathways. Where once the height of mobile content was a cheesy buzzing ringtone that approximated the sound of a bell, now actual song clips are on almost everyone’s phone announcing incoming text or multimedia messages. Mobile content has since also expanded to include better, more colorful and sharper graphics, as well as software applications that do everything from plan your day to help you save the universe from rampaging Decepticon warriors.
The latter type of mobile app is the mobile video game, which has surfaced alongside the smartphone platform that has given mobile phone manufacturers plenty of options in expanding their horizons. Sometimes existing console and handheld platform video games are imported and simplified to suit the smartphone platform and control scheme, while sometimes all-new games are created specifically for the smartphone hardware and audience – and both tend to maximize the rich graphics and audio capabilities of their platforms, not to mention the internal accelerometers that lend a new air to the gaming experience. Some games are intense shoot-em-ups like Call of Duty or Doom, while some are side-scrollers and real-time strategy games that are intense in an entirely different way.
Developer Sebastien Faurite has spent some time working in a completely different game genre – the puzzle game – to produce a new $0.99 game app called iBloxs. Playing smartly on the idea of maximizing a simple game concept and making it enough of a challenge to intrigue and fascinate the casual gamer who might be tired of explosions, aggressive aliens and trapped princesses, iBloxs is typical of a puzzler in that it is deceptively simple – until you play it and find it has much more depth than you expected. Fans of the old Columns series of games will be right at home as they try to line up similarly-colored blocks to remove them from the screen.
Simple but colorful graphics greet players right off the bat as they configure their profile from the main menu and get themselves set up to play in either solo or Bluetooth-powered multiplayer Time Attack or Puzzle modes. Puzzle Mode gives the player a choice of level layout, which they will then clear of blocks with no time limit – removing multiple items with one move, or combo-ing, gets players high scores, and when they can score no further with the leftover blocks and layout their score is totaled up and the game is over.
Time Attack is, as one can imagine, much more exciting thanks to its survival theme and fast pace. The game starts with a half-filled screen, with blocks coming in from the bottom of the screen [and blockades coming in from the top] as you play to keep clearing space out before time runs out. Blockades can be converted into removable blocks, and a good deal of strategy is required for assured survival. Multiplayer is a modified version of Time Attack, and the fun factor is cranked way up for up to four players.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
