£Free on Apple iOS
Nimblebit
From the creators of Pocket Planes and Tiny Towers comes another (addictive/annoying; delete where relevant to your tastes) game that will swallow fans’ time.
This time round they’ve decided to do an update on the classic Snake game (known as Centipede on 80s computers) – that is, swallow food, avoid enemies (and level walls) and grow larger – then avoid your own tail. Last for as long as you can.
How Nimble Quest works (and it is quite sharp) is to swap your snake for Knights, archers and mages (which become available as pick ups after you defeat enemies) – making your ‘band’ of warriors longer, their abilities more effective (they can shoot arrows or fireballs in any direction), and advancing through the endless levels (such as forests, graveyards and castles) defeating more difficult bosses, in trickier environments.
Swiping is a bit less effective than the buttons we used to put (I often ‘mis-swiped’ leading to an untimely death).
That’s it really. Not much more to it. It keeps the 16-bit 90s retro graphics Nimblebit have made their ironic forte.
Nimblebit have got the ‘freemium’ pay as you go model down pat, so you can of course buy more power-ups (such as shielding, more powerful attacks) and hopefully boost your high score. There didn’t appear to be an endgame in my experience, and the game does get fiendishly hard on later levels, but it is a pretty good example of a mobile game – play for 30 second bursts and discard. It won’t stick in your memory, or your phone’s.
