Download Games Roundup
Elastic! Shank! Racers! Balls! Witches!
Balls Up! HD
- iPad / £0.59
Apart from the fact that playing an iPad on a train automatically gives you the aura of a massive git, I definitely got the feeling that my fellow commuters weren't feeling the love for Balls Up! HD when I played it on the way home yesterday.
You can't blame them, really. It's a game where the sole purpose is guiding a flow of coloured balls into their respective exits as they pour inexorably from their source. Set on graph paper, you get to drag and drop a few shapes into position and deflect the balls in the required direction. It's a chain reaction game - rather like Enigmo, in fact.
But while Enigmo had a bit of substance to it, developer David Tillotson deliberately narrows the focus to a point where it all feels a tad limited and restrictive. You can't, for example, rotate any of the shapes you're presented with, or scale them in any way, so you're stuck with what you're given.
There's only a few puzzles, too - most of which you'll solve in a matter of minutes. With a bit more depth and a lot more content this could have been a real time sink, but for the price you can't really go far wrong.
6/10
Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials
- iPad / £5.99
Hidden Object Games usually make my teeth itch. I'm not sure how people can possibly extract enjoyment out of essentially playing a point-and-click adventure with all the dialogue, exploration and puzzle elements removed, but apparently they do. So why did I mildly enjoy Midnight Mysteries, then?
Well, for one thing, it's a hybrid, expanding the hidden object concept into something approaching a traditional point-and-clicker, and for another it throws in puzzle-solving, exploration and bit of dialogue for good measure.
With a half-decent story to hang the whole thing on, you find yourself wanting to find out more about the ghost of a dead writer who has come to you for help. Probing around a spooky 17th century town, you probably won't mind the occasional hidden object interlude. As an occasional challenge it fits rather well.
The puzzles aren't bad either, and flitting between nicely-rendered static environments is pleasantly old school, and works well on the iPad.
The only question mark is the slightly beefy price that MumboJumbo is asking for it. It might be a Collector's Edition with tons of extras, but for most of us this sits just outside the impulse purchase bracket.
6/10