everygame:

Hidden My Game By Mom! (iOS)

Developed/Published by: Hap inc.
Released: 25th August, 2016
Completed: 8th January, 2017
Completion: Finished it!
Trophies / Achievements: n/a

So, I haven’t played anything on iOS in ages. So long, in fact, that I was honestly surprised to discover Game Center didn’t exist anymore (well, some aspects of the app still exist, apparently, but the app itself is totally gone.) But that’s fine, because Game Center was crap, and I’m happier without another set of achievementy bollocks that make me feel weird for not sucking the bones of every game I play.

As I’ve long said, I’ve “checked out” on mobile games—I’d rather play on a dedicated system, and I fuck about on my phone too much as it is. So, I haven’t downloaded Super Mario Run; I haven’t downloaded Fire Emblem Heroes… (“what about Dandy Dungeon?”—Ed.) (fuck off, there are exceptions to every rule…) but recently I found myself at a ramen place waiting for far too bloody long to get my ramen. I’d ran out of Twitter and Facebook and every other pointless time-twiddle, and someone had just mentioned this on one of those sites, so I downloaded it to play while I was waiting and getting increasingly hangry.

Anyway, this is a charming little light escape room experience where you tap stuff to try and find the Nintendo DS yer maw hid; sometimes you pick stuff up and use it on other stuff. It’s one of those “surprise” games, where the whole joke of it is that you’ll do something that you think would work (or just worked in the last level) but then a non-sequitur game over will happen instead.

Every room’s puzzle space is small, so you can work through it at a fair clip even though I must say one room is completely unfair (I’ll just spoil it—they hide something in the menu, which is a good meta-joke but frustrating at best) and the art is nice and it’s all wrapped up in a slight if sweet story.

Like, this really isn’t anything magic, but it kept me distracted while I waited for too-long for food and then I went home and finished off the last few levels and was like “that was nice.”

“This was an ok way to waste some time that was gonna be wasted anyway” is just about the most barely positive thing you could say about something, but, uh, there you go.

Will I ever play it again? Nope, but I’ve downloaded the sequel and I’ll play it?

Final Thought: if you are just looking for a timewaster, though, I think my favourites are still Eyemaze’s weird puzzle boxes such as the Grow series. Don’t seem to be on iOS, but if you’ve got Android you’re sorted for any ramen disasters.

(The ramen was fine in the end, though.)

fuchinobe:

Selected artwork from the Japanese manual for Katamari Damacy(2004).