Hello, and welcome portable gaming aficionados to Jump Dash Roll's first mobile round-up! Mobile and tablet gaming increasingly offers a unique experience separate and distinct from PCs and consoles, and we’re here to let you know what’s worth downloading from your app store of choice. Read on for this month's recommendations.
FlipFlop Solitaire (iOS)
Developer Zach Gage has a reputation for taking well-established traditional games and messing with them for his and our enjoyment, and he’s back with a new take on that old pioneer of video game adaptations, Solitaire. While previous game Sage Solitaire offered a fusion of solitaire with poker elements, FlipFlop adheres more closely to the standard format, with the minor but influential inclusion of being able to stack cards numerically up as well as down. Games with differing numbers of suits can be selected if you want to up the difficulty. You might have a solitaire game of some description on your phone already, but this probably has enough extra features to take its place.
Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story (iOS, Android, PC)
A sequel of sorts to developers Accidental Queens’ first game A Normal Lost Phone, this mystery uses the same conceit of emulating the interface of a misplaced mobile, tasking you with poring through the notes and apps contained within to find information on the missing owner. As with the previous story, the game’s strength lies in the verisimilitude of the experience and the narrative being slowly uncovered. The Android-like OS is even more convincing than before, and there’s a small collection of eclectic, yet chilled tunes on the player to listen to as your comb through the artifacts of Laura’s digital footprint and your investigation into her disappearance progresses. A somewhat brief but well crafted and thoroughly modern mystery you’ll want to solve.
Triple Agent! (iOS, Android)
Bluffing and deception games are both great fun and a chance to learn a few things about your friends, such as whether they are evil quisling traitors who’d stab you in the back at the first opportunity. Great examples include Coup, Avalon and Secret Hitler, but developers Tasty Rook have distilled the core elements into a fun ten-minute bout of arguing and recrimination which only needs one phone to play. The Service have been infiltrated by enemy Virus agents, and any one of your supposed trustworthy colleagues could be corrupt.
Passing the phone round allows sharing of key information to certain specific players, who then have to convince the remainder of their innocence; everyone votes at the end and finds out whether the true culprit or a non-guilty patsy goes to the slammer. Drenched in stark cold war symbology, this is a finely crafted game which can have several different modifiers thrown in to switch things up for future plays.
The Room: Old Sins (iOS)
Fireproof Games have been polishing and refining their quietly unnerving puzzle series The Room for some time now, and this fourth installment, while steadfastly adhering to the established formula, is arguably the best one yet. Wandering through dusty wood-panelled rooms on the trail of a scientist who may have discovered the powerful but mysterious null element, you’ll find many elaborate puzzle boxes and intricate machines to pore over in search of clues. The locations are wonderfully detailed, and the soundtrack genuinely unsettling if you have the lights off. Newcomers should probably go back and play through the previous three titles before picking this one up, but fans of the series should definitely make room for one more.
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