Shu’s Garden is a relaxing and fun exploration game. The player controls a small furry creature that can roll around a planet. Wherever it rolls, grass will grow. Using it, the player can gather seeds and plant them all over the planet, using trees to climb and jump from one planet to another to populate them all.
Tested on Android / Asus Transformer Tab
Time of Exploration is a kind of text-based civilisation-like game. The player has to reach a civilisation’s top achievements, the equivalent of building a Wonder in Age of Empires, for example. In order to do this, he will need to create buildings and generate resources. Buildings cost resources to build, and can sometimes have an upkeep (aka cost resources over time). In return, they will produce other resources. The whole game is based on simple text and button interfaces.
Tested on Android / Samsung galaxy S3
Continue reading A game usability review of Time of Exploration
Ollie Pop is a pixel art skateboarding game in which the player has to progress as far as possible in the level avoiding obstacles. To do so, he has to charge a jump by holding his finger on the screen. Releasing the touch will trigger a jump. The longer the player touches the screen, the higher the character will jump.
Tested on Android / Samsung Galaxy S3
Continue reading A game usability review of Ollie Pop Retro Skateboarding
Auralux is a smart kind of strategy game in which the player controls planets. Planets generate particles which revolve around the planet. They can be used to conquer new empty planets or invade planets controlled by an AI. The goal of the game is to control all the planets and get rid of all AIs.
Tested on Android / Samsung Galaxy S3
Amazing Brick is a very simple mobile game about making a cube pass stages by tapping the screen on the left or right side to make the cube jump up in one direction or the other and get as far as they can. And here’s its short usability review.
Tested on Android / Samsung Galaxy S3
Quantic Dream proposes games that challenge the definition and nature of gameplay itself. In doing so, it also faces specific usability issues and proposes solutions to others. Many articles about the game discuss how the game fits in game design theory concepts like how Beyond Two Souls addresses game and play. This one focuses on its strength and weaknesses in terms of usability and user experience, in particular in comparison to the previous titles of the studio. Let’s have a look at some of the good ideas to learn from, and some of the issues that remain.
Triple townTriple town is a mobile puzzle game by Spryfox that has kept me addicted for quite a while, despite the free to play time limiting features. In this article, I will introduce the game’s strength, then walk you through some of the usability issues that would be worth fixing to make the experience even more enjoyable.
The Mass Effect planet exploration gameplay evolved greatly from the original game, until the last sequel. This article reviews the approaches to planet exploration in each of the 3 games, and studies how each would influence the player’s behaviors and enjoyment of the feature.
Continue reading Planet exploration in the Mass Effect series
Rule of rose has been depicted as a vicious game in which you have to torture or slaughter innocent children, and of which the goal is to make them suffer as much as possible. clearly poeple saying that never bothered playing till the end. Most likely, they didn’t even bother playing it for more than the five sufficient minutes that it takes to slaughter a dozen imps and confirm the all-violent hypothesis.
