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Pick Crafter, Pocket Craft, Crafting Idle Clicker

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I have been looking for some app games that give any percentage of the enjoyment I get from classic Minecraft mods, with their tech trees and production line management.  Things like IndustrialCraft, GregTech, EnderIO, Thermal Dynamics, Frestry bees & trees ... surely, SOME app game does something of the sort? While it's easy to find game after game that just took Minecraft graphics and put them into new games, they are not the same. Pocket Craft is a drop merge game with blocks designs obviously taken from Minecraft.  Square blocks didn't seem like they would be much fun to drop, but the blocks flip off the edges of other blocks, the stacks tilt and topple and it gets chaotic quickly.  I had a good feel to it, responsive with accurate drops.  Once in a while, a merge will spit a smaller block all the way across the screen.  I got bored of the main game after about eight tries, but it also had a mode with a sequence of puzzles, where you have some number of ...
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Dog Park & Mille Bournes for 5

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     We had a get-together last Saturday and ended up with 5 players.  Anne & I are usually the only players, so I was curious to see how some games worked out with more.  We chose a classic (Mille Bournes) and a much more recent game (Dog Park).        The basics of Mille Bournes are easy to pick up, but we hit a weird situation where we ran out of mileage cards after two re-sorts.  That just didn't feel right.  The little rulebook seemed to suggest that we should be playing in teams, but the game just ended before 1000 and whoever had the most miles was the winner.  At home, I long ago drew up a curvy little race track split into 25 marks and 100 marks, so it was weird for me having to go back to placing cards in groups of 100 or 200 or whatever made sense at the time.      We brought over Dog Park and it was fun teaching the overall gameplay.  The base game is only meant for up to 4 players so An...
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Suika Games part 3

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The Merge Watermelon game added a Level Mode that brings up puzzles where you have to drop and eliminate certain obstacles blocks.   That was totally unexpected and again, the developer did a solid job with more options than expected.  The drops may be spinning or on fire, each with its own effects.   I'm not sure why it doesn't automatically load the next level.  You go back to home and have to tap Level Mode again.  But it's yet another addition to the fruit drop realm.  And rather than being totally repetitive you get to wonder what the next puzzle will be or what new blocks might appear with what new behaviors.  # For some reason, my phone today had an icon for Fruit Merge Cafe.  I had already picked out my top two games of this sort, but this gets an honorable mention.   Clean friendly graphics, reasonable bounce.   Characters line up at the top to "order" a fruit but they don't get impatient and anno...
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Some Antique Arcade Games

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We were at an automotive museum today (Dear Park Winery, Escondido, CA) and in one corner were some very old arcade games.  Drive Coast to Coast had a map of the USA with a few numeric displays and details, while the game itself was just moving a metal car left and right on a dial with a road painted on it.  The road had some obstacles drawn, but I couldn't think of a mechanism for actually detecting the player's performance. Next was this Steam Shovel game .  On the back is a big scale saying "How many tons can you load in hopper?"  The little labels at top left say: "Raise Shovel to Red Mark on boom to clear hopper.  Empty Shovel by operating shovel lever to right."  The rules at the bottom are: "Move Levers to Operate Steam Shovel.  Empty each shovel of material into hopper. Material loaded into hopper registers on scale.  When two or more play, highest number of tons registered on scale determines winner."  For only 10 cents you can feel ...
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Horrified, with Friends

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A cousin of Anne's had a board game afternoon, so we went to visit and played two rounds of Horrified then a funny game of Bananya. Horrified is an odd game.  It's a cooperative game where your team tries to defeat some number of classic movie monsters.  It's SO collaborative that everyone pretty much plans out your move for you by the time your move comes around.  Each player gets a character card.  Each character has 3, 4 or 5 actions plus a special ability.  The actions are (from memory here): - move your hero one space - move a villager one space - make one attack on a monster - pick up all chips on your current space - trade some number of chips with another player on the same space Chips are placed on the board throughout the game.  The chips each have a color, some number of points, and the name of the space where they are placed. Each monster has its own quirks and different ways to defeat them.  For Dracula, you have to wipe out all four of hi...
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Suika Games part 2

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I tried a few more Suika games and they were so similar I uninstalled them after a few runs.  Juicy Fruit by Yermex, Fruit Drop by Alpha Creative.  Not bad, they do what they need to do, but they stop at the basics. But this one -- "Watermelon Merge Game" by Brilliant Games -- went way beyond.  The game itself has a fun feel to it.: bouncy and an extra element where the fruits almost try to burrow down and find each other.  You earn stars that you spend on filling in a city build with many other scenes listed for later on.   You can also spend points on new art sets for the fruits,  a new skin for the dropper character (including a ghost and a flying saucer and a dog that farts rainbows), and Buy more power ups. The power ups are: break one fruit, shake the box,  remove all fruits that match the one you click on,  and a sec that falls and boasts all fruits up one level. There's also a PVP "Battle Mode" option that we tested out.  I made a ro...
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Suika (Watermelon) Games

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I stumbled upon an odd category of games while looking for new stuff in the Google Play store ... fruit drop games.  More specifically,  games where you drop merge fruits leading up to the ultimate watermelon,  and if they reach the top of the box the game is over. Apparently these are all clones of Suika Game, where suika is the Japan's word for watermelon.    See the Wikipedia page . Now, you would think they're all the same exact boring thing,  but it turns out there is a lot of variety in the game play and physics.  The dropped items might be bouncy or squishy to varying degrees.  You might have to drag the drop line and then let go, or one touch anywhere well drop the next item.   The top of the box might trigger the end immediately or let you overflow a little, or have a few seconds of countdown before ending.   And some of the games came up with ways to extend past the original number of objects,  add levels and ski...
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