Review: Chicky and the Cats: Dorobou Neko

Chicky and the Cats: Dorobou Neko is a puzzle game in the vein of ChuChu Rocket. The object of the game is to guide Chicky the chick around the game board to pick up packages while avoiding obstacles and dodging angry kittens. Chicky will walk in a single direction until he's incapacitated in some way, so it's up to you to place arrows to guide him around the level's obstacles. You place the arrows in advance, then tap the "Start" button and watch Chicky go. And watch you shall, since he's not exactly a fast walker, and you're probably not going to get the arrows right the first time.

Graphics:
Cartoony and reminiscent of old 16-bit era games. They're not flashy, but I found them well-done and suitable to the game's content. The isometric view when Chicky is walking around is a bit glitchy, but looks really nice.

Sound:
The one song is a bit slow, which made the game seem even slower than it already was. There's no option to turn it off, but I have volume controls, so it's not too bad. Sound effects are limited, but appropriate to the game style.

Gameplay:
You begin in an overhead puzzle view with the tile-based game board in the middle, and your various pieces off to the side. Arrows (and Chicky's airplane which allows him to fly over obstacles) are placed by tapping and dragging them onto the board. The pieces are a bit small for my fat fingers, but I managed okay. After you're happy with your placement, you hit the Start button, and the game switches to an isometric view where you watch Chicky walk around the board. It's head-poundingly slow. If Chicky makes it to the goal with all the packages, you win. If not, you lose and have to start over. Seeing Chicky devoured by a cat just as he's about to make it to the end, and realizing that you'll have to start all over again is heartbreaking.


What I Liked:
-The puzzles are reasonably well-designed, and the difficulty seems to scale relatively well as you progress.

What I Hated
-Tapping Chicky will make him change direction, but this change doesn't persist between run-throughs, meaning you have to redo it every time.
-It's slow. Incredibly slow. Watching Chicky walk around the level without having any input is really, really dull.
-Each time you launch, you're met with an unskippable intro scene.

Final Verdict:
A fine start, but needs a few tweaks to be really good.

Chicky and The Cats: Dorobou Neko is available for free from TriHam on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 0.3.1.

Review: Princess dress up

After discovering that nearly every app review site wants you to pay them for the honour of having your app reviewed, I decided that I would choose two apps and two games to review here. Choosing the two most recent arrivals on BlackBerry App World has produced some strange results.

Princess dress up is the latest in a long line of dress up games. Well, latest in the sense that it's new to the Playbook. It's an Android app that runs in the emulator. And I use the word "runs" fairly liberally since I was only able to get it to start once without having to reboot the device; after that it seemed to work fine. But, when it does actually work, it's a pretty generic "dress up" app.

I should also note that the listing on App World is "Dress up Princess" but the app description and icon refer to it as "Princess dress up", so that's what I'm going with.

Graphics:
Fairly simplistic, but good enough for what it's trying to accomplish. You're given a choice of seven girls to dress up, and each one comes with a variety of different clothing pieces. Some bits are generic across all the girls, but most are tailored individually, and fit with the style of the game.

Sound:
One short, annoying song playing on a loop. There's a control to turn it off, which is good. Very good.

Gameplay:
Practically non-existent. You drag and drop bits of clothing onto the girls, and that's it.

What I liked:
-The girls were a little ethnically diverse and of various ages, so there's something for all the girls out there.
-If you want fine movement, there are controls on the side that will allow you to move things on a pixel-by-pixel basis.

What I hated:
-The music was terrible and grating.
-The clothes only really seem to fit in one particular spot most of the time, and there's no option to get them to snap to it.
-Using it made me feel like a creepy pervert.

Final Verdict:
It's not really my bag, but if you're a young girl, this might be your thing.

Princess dress Up is ad-supported and available for free from kidgames on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0.1.5

Alternate Means of Distribution

With Completionist now available on Google Play, I decided to try to boost awareness by releasing it on a few other app stores as well.

Right now, it's available on GetJar, and I've submitted it to SlideMe, but it hasn't been approved yet.

Meanwhile, I have to say that it's a bit of a pain to get your app up on either of those stores. At least it was for me.

GetJar has a funny requirement for multiple icon sizes. Strangely, it limits the maximum file size as well, so I had to spend a few minutes trying to optimize a 120x120 icon down under 10kb. Ultimately, it just wasn't possible, so I wound up having to upload something that was considerably less than ideal, all for want of 5000 bytes. With today's bandwidth and storage costs being so low, I can't imagine why they need to limit things so harshly.

The SlideMe site became unresponsive when I tried to complete the app upload process, so I wound up having to repeat it three times before it finally took. Additionally, the upload site has a bug where the tiny thumbnail it produces after you upload a screenshot will occasionally be for a different app entirely. The file still uploads properly, but it's a bit disconcerting.

That being said, there's at least one thing I like about SlideMe: The ability to respond to user comments. I can't do that on BlackBerry App World and it's been an unending source of frustration. Too many users leave questions in the comments, and there's just no way to reply.

Unfortunately, after two and a half weeks my app has yet to be approved on SlideMe, and GetJar has led to a mere 12 downloads. As it stands, I can't recommend either one.

Completionist

I have finally made an app specifically for Android devices. If it does well enough, I might port it over to other platforms.

Why not give it a try? It's free!



Can you finish every song lyric?

Do you know the name of every movie?

Then prove it.

Completionist is the pop culture word game that challenges you to prove you know everything.

With hundreds of questions across more than a dozen categories, you might never finish it all.

Are you a completionist?

Categories include:
-cartoons of the 1980s
-hit songs of the 1970s
-reality shows
-box office hits
-and, of course... T

As you can see, I didn't fare so well when I was making the screenshots. I think you can probably do better.

Slow to Upgrade

For my latest app, I decided to try out Android. Unfortunately, the Android OS install base is fragmented quite severely. As such, I stuck with version 2.1 so I could reach the maximum number of users. A few days ago, I gave up on it. The market share for 2.1 has shrunk below 5%, and there was a feature in 2.2 that I needed to help handle the audio. I could've spent hours trying to figure out a decent workaround, but instead I decided that reaching 95% of the audience is good enough. Eventually those 2.1ers will upgrade to new phones. My sanity may not eventually return if I have to spend all day banging my head on the keyboard.

Word Scramble

Word scramble brings the classic jumbled words puzzle to your BlackBerry PlayBook.

Unscramble the words, then letters from the words create a new, jumbled up solution. Unjumble the solution to find the answer to a riddle, a joke, or a truly terrible pun. It's fun for the whole family!

Two ways to play: Drag the letter tiles, or just tap.

With more 70+ puzzles, you get more than you'd get from your local newspaper in an entire year! All for one low price. How can you pass up that deal?

Word Scramble Landing Page

Hi, thanks for indulging me. Please leave a comment letting me know if there are any features you'd like added to the app. Maybe bookmark this page and come back to it later.

And, why not check out one of my other apps:

Completionist - A fast-paced pop culture trivia game.

Scooter Wants Cheese - A fun maze game where you help Scooter the mouse reach his cheese

Lapse Master - Time Lapse Photography

Awesome Word Search - Word search puzzles with over 12,000 words in more than 40 categories

GPS Data Master - Finally put your Playbook's GPS to good use.

Awesome Sudoku - The classic number game with nearly infinite puzzles and three kinds of hinting

Answer Ball - The answers to the mysteries of the universe are yours... in ball form

Only a Buck - Five apps in one, all for less than a dollar


Or, you could donate. I don't expect you to, but a buck or two would be most appreciated.