Mobile Phone Games

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Our mobile phones are almost always near us, or on us. The only time we don’t have our phone with us is when we’re scuba diving, driving, unless we count Waze as a game. When I am home alone I usually don’t play mobile phone games because I’m distracted by other things.

One of the flaws with plenty of games today is that they are pay to win, or pay to play. I don’t like this model. I also don’t like games that require you to follow instructions, rather than play and experiment. I want to play, not follow instructions.

Games I Still Play

Fitness App Games

Garmin, Strava, Pacer and other apps do provide us with gaming when we walk, run, cycle or more. They count our steps, our distance, our climbing and more. I am currently walking the Appalachian Trail via Garmin, walking the Coffee trail on Pacer and more. I am also competing for step counts with others. Some games require you to be physically active to progress. Others require you to sit still and stare at a phone.

Ingress

Ingress is a game that I played for a while. I travelled to Paris, to Florence, to Fribourg and other places specifically to play the game with other people. It was a great way to meet unenergetic geeks and to explore geographic space. It’s similar to geocaching, but with virtual portals that are monuments, bridges and more. That data was then used for Pokemon Go and other games.

Ingress requires a lot of walking, or driving. I found that it is quite fun to play while cycling. You can get to distant portals more quickly than walking, but without the carbon footprint of using the car, which is another reason I slowed down the playing.

The key factor that got me to play far less is time. From a certain level upwards, especially if you live in the countryside it goes from taking days or weeks to level up, to months. If you live in town then it’s easy to make progress, but if you’re in a rural setting then you get stuck on a level for months or years, as I have.

TrainStation2

At first I didn’t like TrainStation2 because I expect to play a game for the time that I am free for. I don’t like to wait for hours in between actions. You can speed up the game by paying to win, but the flaw in this approach is that you can spend thousands and never be satisfied. That’s how Clash of Clans made a fortune.

What I like about this is that if you want you can play for 30 seconds, once an hour or less, so you don’t accidentally lose hours a day on the game.

Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans is another game that I played with passion for years, but eventually stopped playing. The problem with these games is that they are good, when you have a few minutes free at regular intervals, for example when you’re commuting, or stuck in an office waiting for a file to render, or some other task. If you have no moments of waiting then these games are less relevant.

Hay Day

I have played Hay Day for years but on and off. I used to play a lot but eventually it became more complex and took more time to achieve anything so I stopped playing.

Asphalt 8

Asphalt 8 is a game that I played for hours at a time for weeks or even months. I logged plenty of hours in the game and it expanded as I progressed. Eventually I played tiles, but it’s still a great game. Cars are intuitive to control and with time and practice you do make progress.

Rise of Kingdoms

Rise of Kingdoms is an acceptable game that you can play throughout the day when you have some free time. It is a game that requires an investment of weeks or months to progress and although they encourage you to pay to speed things up you don’t need to.

Games I don’t play anymore

Boom Beach and Clash Royale

I installed it, played a few times, but never engaged fully.

Pokemon Go

This game is crap. It’s built off of Ingress, but re-skinned for a different set of users. It’s crap because when you throw poke balls it fails more often than succeeds, so you end up frustrated. Worse than that, it encourages you to spend money because the code was written in a flawed manner.

Cooking Madness

I started by really enjoying this game, until I got to a certain level, and then the game stopped being fun. It stopped being fun because levels require you to use diamonds to get extra time, or to get cooking aids. This wouldn’t be so bad, if not for the fact that after a certain amount of playing those are earned by completing levels, or paying. They say that games are pay to win. This one becomes pay to play. At one point you get blocked and you can no longer progress, without spending 3 CHF, more than once.

It’s when I saw that I had to pay more than once that I removed the game. I come from the time when we payed to own, not to play.

Conclusion

I like mobile phone games that can be played in short bursts. I don’t like mobile phone games that are pay to win. I play games when I am in between two activities, rather than all the time. I can go for months without playing much. It depends on how free I am to get on with things. I expect that I will forget about mobile phones games now, for a while.