Mobile Games Roundup
Geared! Blind! Perfect! Phoenix! Zombies!!!
Blind World
- iPhone/iPad (unified binary) - £1.79
Fed up with odorous commuters sitting next to you on trains and squashing you against the window? Then play strange and interesting videogames that make you mutter out loud with disturbed bewilderment.
Case in point: Dmitriy Kuzmenko's endearingly odd roll 'em up, where confused fumbling is the order of the day as you gamely attempt some psychedelic interior decoration without the benefit of sight.
What you do have, though, is a strange little game that fancies that you might enjoy trying to roll a ball around the edges of various shapes by manipulating gravity. Doing so involves twisting the handset around, and swiping the screen in rotational arcs to make fine adjustments.
For a while at least, it's something to pleasantly zone out to. There's nothing especially skilful about it, you just have to be persistent and thorough, and then you're on to the next one like some sort of blissed out, dutiful decorator.
But then it goes and throws all sorts of junk into the mix and gradually turns into a bit of a faff. Sometimes adding challenge doesn't necessarily equate to more fun, so if you can roll yourself silly over all 60 levels, I will personally give you a biscuit of your choice. You deserve it.
7/10
Geared 2
- iPhone/iPad (unified binary) - £0.59
Hot damn. Such is the blazing pace of the world of downloadable games, by the time you read this you'll already have missed out on the chance to grab Geared 2 for free. But don't worry, at 59p you can instead feel like you're giving something back, as opposed to being a freeloading herbert.
Like Bryan Mitchell's other cog-placing puzzlers (including the recently reviewed Windows Phone 7 version, Revolution), it's all about getting power to specific gears. You're given a selection of cogs of varying sizes to place down, and tasked with getting the whole thing connected up properly as quickly as your fumbling fingers can manage.
What always looks fairly simple to begin with inevitably becomes a teeth-gnashing mission as you try to find the elusive solution. And, this being the kind of horribly addictive puzzler that makes you sound like you're attempting to impersonate an irritated pirate, the 'reward' for your success is almost certainly an even trickier level.
With 200 of the blessed things to face (of which 140 are evil user-created levels), public transport delays will be positively welcome.
8/10