Promiscuous Gamer

Neko Atsume and Hello Kitty melt the Promiscuous Gamer's heart

This guy will play anything

Neko Atsume and Hello Kitty melt the Promiscuous Gamer's heart

As game executive Bing Gordon famously put it (about) in 2010, "This is the most promiscuous app audience in the history of mankind."

This is the diary of a (brand new) promiscuous gamer...

Current Games

1. James Bond: World of Espionage (Glu Mobile)

For a game that I'm not actually enjoying all that much, I'm putting a surprising amount of time into James Bond: WoE. I've completed the first area to 100% and moved on to the next level, which apparently means I have even less chance to do things each time I play thanks to a doubled energy cost for each action.

Good thing I shrugged off the entirety of the PvP aspect and poured all my upgrade points into my energy meter, I suppose.

2. Farm Away! (Futureplay)

I finally built up enough money to unlock chickens. I've harvested and rebuilt my farm at least a dozen times now, so my carrots rake in about a billion gold in less than a second, which is somewhat unprecedented.

I imagine if real farmers had the same revenue stream, it would solve a lot of problems in the world.

Still don't know what my long-term is here, however.

I've yet to unlock the ninth square, which remains so close yet so far despite how much money I'm making per minute. It might be worth my time leaving the game alone for a few days and seeing if that helps at all.

Apparently, there's a big update due in mid-December too. 

3. Sniper X (Glu Mobile)

Not really played much of this.

Knowing the grind was there put me off somewhat. Still, I got an assault rifle, so maybe now Statham will stop having a go at me.

4. The Walking Dead: No Man's Land (Next Games)

Again, no progress on this one. The introduction of a turn-timer that brings in more zombies is what's putting me off. There's enough stress in my gaming life as it is.

5. Pocket Trains (NimbleBit)

Forgot I even had this installed.

6. Beneath The Lighthouse (Nitrome)

See #5.

7. Blossom Blast Saga (King)

See #6.

8. Beatniks (Harmonix)

After the tense finale of last week, you'll be pleased to know that Beatniks works fine for me. I built my Beatnik out of DNA that makes it more jazz-inclined, forgetting that most people I know who are jazz-inclined are also people I try to stay away from.

As such, I kind of hate my Beatnik. I think it knows this, which is why it keeps getting bored and scribbling all over the walls of the house I've built for it. Ungrateful little sod.

In fact I mostly just go on to listen to a song called Summer by Opal Puckett, which has the benefit of giving me a bunch of coins every time there's a "listen to songs in Beatniks x number of times)" objective as I'll just loop the damn thing. So catchy.

New Installs

1. Dustland (Gumbug)

Installed and then completely forgot about for a few days. When I finally booted it up, it turned out to be a match-3 RPG with a weird, post-apocalyptic feel to it.

I'm absolutely terrible at it. I blame the tutorial for not making it more obvious that you can move gems to anywhere on the board, not just in columns or rows. It could just be that I've never been particularly good at match-3 puzzlers, however.

2. Nords: Heroes of the North (Plarium Global)

I knew I was supposed to play something…

3. Bakery Story 2 (Storm8 Studios)

Look at this title screen. Look at the old man. Who eats what appears to be some kind of doughnut with a knife and fork? What kind of sick world is this based in?

I'm pretty sure most of the content is streamed in this game, meaning that, thanks to my magnificently terrible broadband, I couldn't see half of what I was making or building.

Cooking invisible muffins on an invisible stove is funny in theory, but very difficult in practice.

4. Peanuts: Snoopy's Town Tale (Activision)

I played The Sims: Freeplay once when I first got an iPhone. That's the extent of my exposure to the town-building genre.

This is not the game that's going to persuade me on the genre. The sheer number of wait timers and convoluted mechanics, like the crafting and baseball systems, are just too much.

Within ten minutes of starting I was asked to wait for over three hours for something to build. I can't stand waiting that long for pretty much anything in life, let alone a virtual baseball field that will soon be ignored in the main questline.

5. Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector (Hit-Point)

Had a bit of a meltdown once I realised the English translation of this was on the App Store. They may have been tears. There was definitely an undignified string of tweets.

I regularly check in to see if there are any cats hanging around, but there's seldom any. I always make sure to take a picture if they're there. I love them. Cats are amazing.

Here's four of them looking adorable. They're mine now. Hands off.

6. StormBorn: War of Legends (JuiceBox Games)

See #3 (Not really played much of this).

7. Hello Kitty: World of Friends (Assorted Nuts)

Did you know Hello Kitty is actually a girl in a cat costume? And everyone calls her Hello Kitty? That must be so annoying, people saying "hello Hello Kitty" all the time. Blimey.

This is basically a reskin of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, which therefore makes it one of the best games ever, and stars Hello Kitty, making it the greatest thing of all time. (I promise you, I am a professional games journalist.)

The tone is a little strange though. It's obviously aimed at children, since it's a Hello Kitty game, but regularly throws in both hip-hop and Tennessee Williams references. For… reasons.

8. Mavenfall (Blue Tea Games)

See #6 (Forgot I even had this installed).

9. Mobile Strike (Epic War)

Jon said Mobile Strike would make me both angry and confused. He seems to have a very good grasp on how games will affect me.

There's not enough room here to go into why Mobile Strike makes me so angry and confused, but I will point to one thing – the tutorial.

Wrestling control from the player and hiding everything that they don't need to interact with at that one specific moment is poor design. That's all that really needs to be said here.

Uninstalls

1. COLOPL Rune Story (COLOPL)

The first casualty is a game that I couldn't even load. Still a little saddened by this, but Matt pointed out that he couldn't get it to work on his iPad Mini either, so at least I'm not alone.

Weekly recap

Installed: 9

Uninstalled: 1

In Play: 17

Spending: $0.00

To-date 2015 'Life Time' Value: $0.00

Editor

Ric is the Editor of PocketGamer.biz, having started out as a Staff Writer on the site back in 2015. He received an honourable mention in both the MCV and Develop 30 Under 30 lists in 2016 and refuses to let anyone forget about it.