App Reviews: Dancing Line, Swipe Casters
Dancing Line
Dancing Line has a pretty simple premise. There's a line. It is always moving forward. And you are in charge of making sure it doesn't run into walls. With bright animations, however, and a pretty fun soundtrack best enjoyed with headphones, it turns into a surprisingly engaging game that will have you competing ferociously against yourself to get through the levels. (Also, you may not think you can get emotionally attached to a line, but this game definitely proves that you can.)
Shepherding the line through all the obstacles can be tricky, especially when the twists and turns come fast. But the game is easy to reset, and you have options to unlock levels out of order, so things shouldn't get too repetitive, even if you're constantly crashing into walls.
Free for iOS and Android devices.
Swipe Casters
Take command of magic to defeat monsters in Swipe Casters, a smartphone game that tests your speed and pattern recognition. Faced with different kinds of monsters, players are challenged to duplicate the correct pattern by swiping between several points on a magic circle. The more you advance, the more complicated the patterns get. Plus, there's a time limit - you can't expect monsters to wait forever for you to strike, after all - so you have to think and act quickly. Get the pattern wrong and you'll be defeated.
The game is fun, though can get a little repetitive, and one is certainly incentivized to watch ads if they don't want to pay real money for the in-game currency. But the premise is solid, and for shorter playing sessions it's a fun way to pass the time. Plus, you get to pretend to be a sorceress. What's not to love about that?
Free for iOS and Android devices.