Hyperspace
An expansive variation on the tilt game, Hyperspace was one of the first serious games to appear for Android but age has not wearied it in the slightest.
The objective of Hyperspace is to roll a football through an increasingly complicated series of levels dodging holes and other obstacles, all against the clock. The further you progress the more complex the levels become until they quickly become more hole and obstacle than level ground.
Each level has stars dotted about it, all just off the optimum course. Collecting stars earns you more time, but you need to be careful you don't burn up more seconds mucking about trying to grab them than they earn you. The game has four difficulty settings ranging from Easy to Insane, and a Reverse mode that I think makes you play it backwards - I've not got that far yet.
Perhaps it doesn't sound that interesting, but the movement of the bouncing ball and the accompanying sound effects are simply a joy and some real thought has gone into the design of the levels. The only downside is that at £2.94 a pop its one of the more expensive games in this round up.
Reg Rating 80%
Price £2.94
More Info Psychotron
Jewellust
The basics of this game are pretty straightforward: swap jewels in a grid until three or more line up vertically or horizontally so that they vanish. Continue to do this against the clock until random pieces of mosaic work their way to the bottom of the grid. Complete the mosaic and you win and progress to the next round.
What separates Jewellust from the herd is the cracking design and introduction of an over-arching goal in Campaign Mode which takes things beyond simply racking up a high score for the sake of it.
As the levels increase, the mosaic you need to complete gets larger but you also get an increasing number of special features such as a Line Blaster or Time Zone. Managing all these features against the clock is where the skill comes in. At the end of each section you also get another puzzle to complete adding further diversity.
The design has a bright and colourful look to it and a vaguely Egyptian theme - you are supposedly making your may through various pyramids in search of Pharaoh's Treasury in the Great Cheops Pyramid. Fourth Dynasty nonsense aside, this is a highly inventive variation on a theme and well worth checking out.
Reg Rating 80%
Price $2.95 (£2)
More Info Smart Pix Games
COMMENTS
Marvin - ZX Spectrum Emulator
ZX Spectrum emulator - links directly to the World of Spectrum archives for instant access to over 9,400 Spectrum games.
Nice to see a couple of Apple fanbois taking time out from fingering their own prostates to come and troll these pages. Obviously the rise of Android is starting to worry you guys.
http://www.replicaisland.net/
Replica Island
Replica Island is a free, open-source game for Android.
Guide the Android robot through 40 action-packed platforming levels on a quest to discover a secret power source on a mysterious island. With an retro style and unique, challenging game play, Replica Island is a new take on the classic platformer genre.
http://www.androidtapp.com/air-control/
Air Control
A simple premise to control the aircraft heading for your airport can turn into hours of addictive time-wasting.
Just select an aircraft and draw a route for it to land at its designated zone. Sounds easy but as more aircraft enter the area, all with different speeds and all from different directions it becomes a strategic nightmare. Even getting 100 points seems impossible for some time.
The Ad supported version is free, the paid version is 60p.
Appbrain install: http://www.appbrain.com/app/dk.logisoft.aircontrol
Games!
For all fans of Abduction: World Attack it was a very close run thing between that and Zombie, Run! for the final place in the list.
Re. the hardware, I used my Hero simply because, well, its my phone and I had it to hand, and because there are a lot of them sloshing about in users hands.
Yes if I had taken screen grabs from a Nexus One or Xperia they would have been larger on the page and more impressive and colourful, but the essential game play would have been the same and that is what I was concerned with.
Please keep in mind those screen grabs are actual game play images taken with the Android SDK and have not been tarted up in any way.
As for the new 3D games from Gameloft I tried the only one available at the time of writing - Asphalt 5 - on a mate's Desire and was less than impressed by it. I also understand that none of the news crop of 3D games from Gameloft will run on Android 1.5 or 1.6.
In 12 months time I would expect this list to look very different as games developers take full advantage of larger, higher resolution screens and Snapdragon chippery but for the time being I stuck with games that are just fun to play even on an old G1.
Trap
Game involves trapping balls moving around the screen by drawing lines to separate the area into smaller areas. The goal is to capture 75% of the screen to clear a level.
Great free game but it gets hard quite quickly though, and I have only got to level 6 so far.
