I had planned on writing about Channel 4’s Agents of SHIELD, but I’m going to stick with gaming for tonight’s post.
Casual gaming. A dirty phrase for some, but for others it is all they know. With Facebook, comes Farmville, Candy Crush Saga and many more, I’m sure you’ve heard of at least some of them.
For me casual gaming is all about playing a game on my phone. Quick to load, simple to play and generally the cheaper the better.So it was with some trepidation that I splashed out 69p (I think) on a game called Jelly Splash on iOS.
Now this is a simple connect the coloured ‘things’ and the more you connect the more you score. Each level (and I don’t know quite how many there are – I got bored scrolling up for quite a long way on the level select screen) has a different challenge, beat the score, clear specific squares or get a specified number of diamonds from the top of the screen to the bottom. All fine, all good clean simple fun. The more of a single colour you can chain together the higher your score – you need to chain at least 3 each move.
If you chain 6 or more in one move you add a bonus clear horizontal or vertical ‘thing’ – use this in a move and clear everything along the row or column (or chain them together for some awesome clearing of the screen).
Each level usually has a move limit, and any unused moves are added to a bonus at the end of each round. Once you have completed the challenge you get a final score and can move on or try again.
If you don’t complete the challenge you lose a life. Now , this is where they make the money off you. you get 5 lives and each life takes 30 minutes of real life time to regenerate if you lose it. You can buy more by handing over money, doing Facebook things and all the usual type of stuff. I don’t use Facebook so I normally wait for the lives to regenerate. but I’m sure plenty of people will use that option, or pay money to not have to wait.
So onto the title of the post, no – I am not scoring this game 3 stars. Once you have completed a level, your score is tallied and you are given a star rating – out of 3. Now it is my aim to score 3 stars on each round before I move on.
I did this with Angry Birds a few years ago, and was apparently insufferable when they released new levels, so lets hope there is a definite number of levels and that the people behind this game don’t keep adding more!
I cannot stress how stupidly addictive this game is. I never realised that all those people on Facebook talking about their farm or a level on CCS were actually closer to people addicted to crack or something. Any spare moment and I’m pretty much playing this game, flattening my battery and as such haven’t seen this week’s Agents of SHIELD yet,…
Maybe I should get round to that soon…just one more go..my lives are back…