Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery

Jacob Jones was supposed to be something special: a cute, memorable, compelling adventure about a clever kid who goes to camp and meets Bigfoot. It was supposed to make me smile. That's all I wanted. Honestly.

Here's what I learned from Episode 1 (not that you should be concerned, but there are minor spoilers):

• Most, if not all, adults are the direct and scrupulous embodiments of cultural and career-related stereotypes, and are harshly bound to these roles.
• They are also incapable of solving their own problems, to the extent that they must enlist the help of children in order to accomplish anything.
• Dialogue is an opportunity to showcase arbitrary adult references and employ tacky humor with as much frequency and foul-timing as possible. 
• Children are surprisingly good at telling ghost stories. Though it's amazing it takes them longer to get bored of them than it takes me.
• Voice acting is more realistic when performed by amateurs.
• Inane and unimaginative puzzles are required to balance the necessary levels of anti-fun in an adventure game.
• Puzzles do not require coherent instructions, nor do they require any originality whatsoever.
• Bigfoots are bound to become lifelong companions with children. They're pretty okay.
• Oh, and so is the Unreal Engine.

I'm sorry harsh sarcasm is what I came up with to review this game. Small children would enjoy Jacob Jones if the puzzles weren't mind-shatteringly frustrating. And so would adults. The dialogue is maybe forgivable and might even appear quirky to some, but I wouldn't risk it. I really am sorry to the developers. They're obviously nice people who were trying to make a nice thing. But I'm also obligated to inform anyone who might purchase this game that it's probably not worth it. The quality of the game might improve across future episodes, but there's no way I can trust that now. Good luck to all, I suppose.

Doodle God

Doubtless, you've at least heard of Alchemy before: that classic game in which you combine elements to make more elements to recreate the universe. You begin with water, fire, earth, and air, and end with God or an atomic bomb or whatever. It's been copied and expanded time and time again, hinting to a powerful quality it seems to possess: perpetual intrigue.

No matter how many times you try to combine the same elements and fail, the mysteries of the game always beckon you to return. It's a defeating process and, honestly, it's unjust to call anything resembling this formula a game. After the first half hour of mixing elements and mixing elements and coming to standstills and mixing more elements and finally creating that one insignificant object you need in order to feel you accomplished anything at all, your fingers are completely exhausted and your mind more than realizes this is a mathematical tech demo, not a game. But you take a break and picks it up an hour later, or the next day. There's something stupidly exciting about realizing you can combine stone and fire to make metal, and so on. And it never seems to dissipate, even when you've played version after version of the same inane exercise in elementary, combinatorial math.

Doodle God is no different in it's premise: combine, create. But it is memorable for its presentation and its variety. None of the elements are eyesores, and in fact, many of them look pretty darn good. In addition, the interface is stylish, artistic, and convenient.

But what really excites me about this game--and I will consider this one a game--is it's inclusion of a number of different modes, modes that range from the basic create-the-universe formula, to fun, interesting, scenario-based puzzles. It isn't a flawless experience by any means (and actually, the in-game shop glitched and gave me about two million credits for free, for which I'm still somewhat guilty, however accidental the event may have been), but it hesitates only slightly to advance a tried, though inherently unfun, formula in a direction that I think is very near to resembling an attractive, new puzzle game. Just as soon as the elemental combinations start making a little more sense. Sand + Life = Seeds? What even is that?

Robot Unicorn Attack 2

Robot unicorns are at least as magnificent as you'd expect. The organic sleekness of an earthly horse with the perfected shimmer of an electronic beast. I only wish this game were more about their backstory and general splendor than about dashing across canyons, shattering stars, and collecting fairies and tears. As cool as that sounds right now, it gets old really fast.

I hate to be a hater, especially when it sends me away from beautiful creatures like robot unicorns, but the repetition and limited depth of Robot Unicorn Attack cracks through within the first half hour. It's a side-scrolling, endless runner. Nothing more. While there is a good sense of progress, with missions to complete, wings to grow, and levels to up, these features fail to mask the familiarity of the environment and the redundancy of jumping and dashing.

There's an unfortunate paradox to this game: it feels like an epic, but it plays within a tiny sandbox. As much as I yearned to reach the Ice World, I was too bored to earn the level 15 requirement. Robot unicorns deserve a world more exciting than this.