Windows Phone Game Recs
Xbox Live is a major selling point of Windows Phone; the integration with XBL friends, avatars, the achievement system, etc is quite unique in the market*. Not all games are XBL certified though – far from it. The marketplace has a problem in that it’s hugely biased to show off XBL games over indie ones, but there are great games out there. You just need to look a little harder. In this post, I will do the indie games I’ve found the honour of talking about them first. Keep fightin’.
Without further ado, here are a few games I’ve enjoyed playing over my year of owning a Windows Phone.
IN THE BLUE CORNER, THE INDEPENDENT DEVELOPERS! NO XBOX LIVE. AND USUALLY NO INCOME EITHER.
Indie
Wordament
Wordament is a word search style game in which you, well, search for words in a 3×3 grid. This isn’t as simple as it sounds, given the time limit and the obscene amount of words possible (seriously, look at the word list after a game: you’ll be baffled by half of them, and then you switch to the “obscure” list and find that you don’t know English as well as you thought). The way some players get those scores is impossible. At least, it is to my anagrammatically challenged mind.
AlphaJax
Free with ads, or £2.29
AlphaJax is a scrabble-style game, which I’m told is similar to Words With Friends. AlphaJax has turn-based multiplayer with opponents chosen from your contacts lists, skill-based matching or randomly. Naturally it can take a while to finish a game – the toast notifications and live tile updates help a lot with keeping your turns timely – but this just makes victory all the sweeter when you win a close victory with a word like ‘cat.’ Qi is a particular favourite of mine.
Interestingly, the developer has decided to give out the free version two ways – in its own listing and as a trial for the paid version – but that’s a point for another post.
Nom Nom Worm
Initially I downloaded this because of the intriguing title (and the, frankly, ridiculous tile picture), but it was a keeper for two reasons: firstly, it’s a very fun take on the Snake genre, and secondly, it has DELIGHTFUL music. Seriously, I will never tire of those beats. The developer, Elbert Perez, has loads of other nice games on the Marketplace, played by enough people for his device statistics to be a good indicator of which devices are out there. Also, he made $30k over five months from his games alone. That’s pretty sweet.
Occupied
Occupied is a simple left/right sorting game. What’s hard about that? The time element introduces a challenge of course, as does the online leaderboard. However, the most challenging thing is when the airport ‘renovations’ move the bathrooms around. Seriously? Argh.
As far as I remember, this was first release of a new developer around the release of NoDo. It’s gone on to have over 100,000 players, presumably bringing in a good slice of ad money for the dev. Hopefully stories like this will inspire more devs to publish their wares and bring quality games to the platform.
AND IN THE RED CORNER, THE BIG GUNS: THEY’VE GOT ACHIEVEMENTS, AND IT’LL COST YA
Paid XBL
Orbital
Orbital is a nice game to show off Windows Phone out and about, with its flashy graphics and easy gameplay. The game concept isn’t nearly original, as I’m sure I’ve played it dozens of times (though I can’t seem to remember any specific examples), but the premise is this: shoot orbs at existing orbs to destroy them, keeping in mind that orbs stay on the screen after you shoot them. I’m impressed at how slick this game is – it loads almost instantly, and the fast-resume support makes it ideal for quick gaming sessions. The multiplayer is very nice too, with two players playing on the same board. It’s something I wish more games had.
Tentacles
This is probably my favourite game on the marketplace at the moment. You are a parasite, an experiment from a dolphin-headed (and probably insane) scientist, navigating guts, brain and arteries, in order to put an end to all the madness – at least, I think so. It’s not really clear. But, it’s fun, and with the challenging… challenges, achievements and levels, it’ll last a long time. In fact, it was too challenging for some people so the developers made the end levels easier (along with adding in fast-resume support) – though I managed somehow.
ilomilo
Initially an exclusive for AT&T customers, ilomilo was released to everyone in January, along with a rather good XBLA release. It’s a 3D game – very nice looking for one of the earlier releases – which asks you to reunite ilo and milo by moving them around the cube-based world and solving puzzles. The developer has updated it to support fast-resume, as well as adding extra chapters to play. It gets fairly challenging part way into the second chapter, so it’s definitely worth the money.
PopCap
Of course, no games platform would be complete without a PopCap game or two – and this one has two. Plants vs. Zombies (£3.99) and Bejeweled Live (£3.99) make an appearance*, both ridiculously addictive and well made. Unfortunately, last time I checked, neither has fast-app switching support (which is only really a problem when playing PvZ), but that will surely change as the platform grows in popularity and developer support.
IN THE YELLOW CORNER, WE’VE GOT THE CHERRIES ON TOP. THE ICING ON THE CAKE. THOSE SPECIAL DOG-TREATS. DON’T LAUGH, THEY’RE FREE
Free XBL
Breeze
Released pretty recently, Breeze is part of a small band of free XBL-enabled games on the platform. This means achievements, but only 50G worth each.
It’s essentially a maze game, where you guide a little flower around a course using either the tilt controls or a virtual joystick, collecting sun – and once you’ve collected enough sun, you can make your way to the exit. It’s by no means enthralling, but it’s one of the better uses of tilt control.
Shuffle Party
This is another one of them free XBL games. The simplest way for me to describe Shuffle Party, having never heard of the “traditional game of shuffle board” talked about in the game’s description, is that it’s like Wii Sports Bowling. It has the obstacle challenges and everything. You can’t pretend you’re actually bowling a ball like you can with a Wiimote**, but the touch control is nice enough.
Another bonus: this game has multiplayer! Local, two person multiplayer that is. We’re still waiting for the asynchronous online multiplayer games on Windows Phone (at least, XBL ones; see AlphaJax).
The other free XBL games are Flowerz, Minesweeper and Sudoku, if you’re interested.
AND FINALLY, IN THE GREEN*** CORNER, WE’VE THIS GUY…
Xbox Companion
I’ve included this because although not a game, it’s essential if you have a 360. Well, not essential, but it’s pretty nice to be able to search the Xbox, launch & download apps and control media all using your phone; for those rare situations the controller is too far across the room to fetch. Still, browsing the marketplace whilst remaining in-game is pretty handy. It’s also a great sign for further integration between console and platform. Imagine it: a free extra controller! It’ll never happen of course, but one can hope.
I think that’s it. I didn’t mean for this to turn into such a hefty guide, but there you go. It was a great distraction from university work so I thank you if you read it. Leave me a comment here or send a tweet @rikkilt if you’ve got any thoughts to share.
Good night, and good luck.
* Maybe I should do a post on how easy it is to use phrases like ‘in the market’ and ‘make an appearance’ and sound like a precocious tech journalist. ** Unrelated point: I maintain to this day that I coined the term ‘Wiimote,’ on the Official Nintendo Magazine forums shortly after Nintendo’s unveiling of the controller. *** Did you see what I did there? Red, blue, yellow, green… remind you of anything? No? Oh, never mind.