#7 - Drop Brick

Game: Drop Brick

Price: £Free / $Free | App Store |
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: iFun Studio
Rating: 4+

Design: 3/10
Sound: 5/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Overall: 5/10

Put Those Stacking Skills To Good Use
Use your balancing and stacking skills to arrange a series of blocks on scales. Achieve the target height and weight to progress to new levels and take on advanced challenges, as long as you can prevent your blocks from falling off the scales. The game is as simple as that, but don't let the low scores put you off, as this is certainly still something worth playing.

Design
The design really lets the game down although it does ensure an incredibly simple interface and makes it quick and easy to play. The background is simply ruled paper and some variation here, although perhaps a little distracting, would have been nice to see. There is incredibly minimal variation in the actual blocks that the game is played with and some variety here really would have been easy to do and would have added a nice layer of detail. All in all, it feels as though the bare minimum has been done and although this is in keeping with the simplicity of the game as a whole, it causes a lack of engagement and causes the game to drag out.

Sound
The soundtrack to the game is pleasant and is just about ambient enough to ensure the, often frustrating gameplay, is not added to by an irritating song. That said, there is an enormous amount of repitition and combined with a complete lack of SFX (there's not even a sound for the bricks landing on the platform) you'll be saving your battery in silent mode almost immediately. Sadly, the chances are you'll be doing that to ensure you have enough left to play another game rather than this one!

Gameplay
The gameplay offers a reasonably well executed puzzler that utilises the accelorometer to good effect. The controls are simple and effective with drags and swipes moving the blocks into place. Sadly, there's a great deal of repitition here too with weight and height being the only measurements of success combined with only a handful of level styles. The game offers 77 levels that increase in difficulty ensuring a decent amount of playing time and there's a nice feature that sees a number of future levels unlocked everytime you complete a level ensuring you don't get stuck and bored by one particular level. Sadly, that doesn't prevent a number of levels from becoming incredibly frustrating as the difficulty increases and the accelorometer comes more into play.

Conclusion
Overall the game has very few highlights and is unlikely to keep you entertained for long, but with a £Free price tag, it's certainly worth a look as the developer has at least achieved something that will challenge you. A lot of the free games on the App Store lack quality or are the dreaded Lite versions but this game certainly does not fall into those categories. I think as long as you take it for what it is (a short fun puzzler), then you'll get enjoyment from playing it.

#6 - Pocket God

Game: Pocket God

Price: £0.59 / $0.99 | App Store |
Genre: Simulation, Adventure
Developer: Bolt Creative Inc.
Rating: 9+

Design: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Overall: 9/10

Their Future Is In Your Hands!
Welcome to the island. Situated in the middle of, er well... nowhere really, and inhabited by a small tribe of people called Pygmies, you play the role of their God and have complete control over their everyday life, or should I say death? What will happen to the Pygmies and their picturesque island today? That's for you to decide and implement *insert evil laugh here*.

Design
The game looks amazing and is crammed full of vibrant colours, exciting locations and fun features. There are loads of ways for you to impact on the Pygmies lives including volcano eruptions, tidal waves, lightning storms, giant spiders, deadly ants and angry dinosaurs! Discovering new methods is all part of the adventure. There are numerous island locations to interact with including the sacrificial mountain, haunted woods and snowy retreat as well as a number of fun minigames that could easily be stand alone app games themselves. To date, there have been a staggering 35 updates to the game, each adding a new feature, minigame or location. Game design does not get much better than this.

Sound
The soundtrack to the game is left wanting a little, but it's pleasant enough and adds to the fun nature of the game. It is easily made up with a large selection of great SFX and character mutterings though. The SFX are not only triggered by your actions, EG erupting a volcano, but also automatically as the Pygmies go about their day on the island. It all adds to the fun atmosphere and allows you to truly lose yourself in the game.

Gameplay
There is a huge amount of things that you can do in Pocket God. There must be upwards of 40 different ways that you can destroy the Pygmies with at least another 20 ways that you can interact with them and yet more ways that you can interact with their surroundings. That's added to by a number of minigames that can be accessed through your interactions EG the cloud jumping game is triggered by dragging a Pygmie up into the sky and dropping them on a cloud. There are no scores per say but everything you do can be linked with Openfeint to unlock achievements and share progress with friends. You can also customise your experience by tagging the Pygmies with names or downloading new themes. The developers add content at a ridiculously high rate ensuring fresh content more than once a month on average. I doubt there's a game that's updated more often, making the £0.59 price tag an absolute steal.

Conclusion
Pocket God is by far one of the greatest games to ever be released on the iPhone and at £0.59 is one of the best purchases that you can make. There are hours and hours of entertainment in this game and with regular updates you are sure to need a space for this app on the front page of your phone as you'll be revisiting it very regularly. Additional content is released often and though it started out very light on its feet back in the day, it has now become a vast game packed full of features. Give it a go now, you won't regret it!