I played a lot of video games when I was in my 20s. When I had kids
I no longer had time to play. But I started playing again when “casual
games” became available on the iPhone. Some gamers say casual games
are evil. Good for them — they can stay away. Casual games are a
great way for me to sneak in five to fifteen minutes of fun almost
anywhere. Below are five of my favorite mobile games. All can be
enjoyed in five minute slices of time, but can also be played for
hours on end, alleviating the boredom of a long flight.
Dungeon Raid ($2.99, iOS,
Android)
I don’t care much for “match three” style games, where you are tasked
with lining up three or more matching icons (usually jewels) in a grid
of icons. For me, it’s no fun to formulate a strategy for clustering
together as many matching items as possible to reap a bonus. My
exception to the match three genre is Dungeon Raid, a game
I’ve been playing for nearly a year, and keep coming back to. The grid
is a “dungeon” filled with monsters, swords, shields, healing potions,
and gold coins. The object is to survive as long as possible by
swiping a line through swords and monsters, carefully managing
resources, and using acquired spells and skills at strategic times. If
these symbols were jewels, I’d have no interest, but since they are in
the theme of a dungeon crawler, I love it. The sounds that the
monsters make when you “hit” them with a sword creep me out (in a good
way).
Time Ducks ($0.99, iOS)
Time Ducks requires you to guide different creatures
across a busy freeway without allowing them to get crushed under the
wheels of an oncoming vehicle. To send a critter on its way, you
simply draw a path for it to walk along. Ducks must be directed to a
pond; cats enter a cozy cottage with smoking chimney, bunnies go to
the hollow log, etc. The eight-bit graphics are reminiscent of 1980s
arcade game. The instructions for playing the game seem designed to
bewilder, but amusingly so. Once in a while, the display gets
staticky, becomes black and white, and the time counter runs
backwards. It’s like playing Frogger on strong
psychedelics.
100 Rogues ($2.99, iOS)
One of my favorite computer games of all-time was
Rogue. I played it on my DOS PC in the 1980s. It used ASCII
characters to draw dungeon levels. All the monsters were letters of
the alphabet. It was a very difficult game to win — I never made it
to the end. Lots of other people liked Rogue, too, and
there’s now a whole sub-genre of “roguelike” games on every platform
imaginable. One of my favorites is 100 Rogues. The graphics
are more complex than Rogue, but still charmingly primitive
by today’s standards. The game is challenging and engaging, and the
boss levels are great fun. I died dozens of times before making it to
the end (I was on a plane at the time, otherwise I would have pumped
my fist in the air and shouted a victory oath).
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