Today's game is Seeds on the Wind by jambeep.com
Overall score 2.5 / 5
How many seeds must a man blow around... before you sow in the ground? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind... er, anyway. Today's game is Seeds on the wind, which is a platformer, where you control the wind, and your objective is to guide a dandelion seed into fertile ground, which is located some distance away, and there are obstacles in the way. In a way, it feels like lunar lander, except you don't control the seed directly, you control the wind which controls the seed.
The seeds of joy are sown in this simple and moderately fun game by its attractive price tag of zero. The controls are easy to understand, and the gust of wind is depicted well enough for visual feedback. However, the ad control is active during gameplay, which was a point I made in my previous review of Spectrum Sprint, which detracts heavily from the game experience. There is no way a legitimate click will be made on an ad control when the gamer is engrossed in the game, and you inevitably get in the way. This is definitely a seedy way to make money. (Okay, sorry, I'll stop now.) Take a look at the following simulated screenshot that illustrates the problem:
To complete the game it was necessary at one point to guide the seed to the right, and the ad was exactly where I needed to place my finger to blow on to the seed.
The difficulty of the levels was a bit esoteric, and felt contrived to me, rather than intelligent or surprising. There were a few funny moments in the game, though, when in chapter two, a bee caught hold of my seed and started flying around with it. The number of levels is also very limited, just two chapters, with 6 levels each.
Overall impressions, simple and easy-to-learn game. Will be a nice pastime for the first time you play it. No real replay value. Not many surprises. Game coding seems robust - no crashes or weird behaviour (on my Samsung Focus). Ad control gets in the way quite a few times. Few levels. Hence, my overall score for this game is 2.5/5
Seeds on the wind is available free from Zune marketplace, or from the official website
Overall score 2.5 / 5
How many seeds must a man blow around... before you sow in the ground? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind... er, anyway. Today's game is Seeds on the wind, which is a platformer, where you control the wind, and your objective is to guide a dandelion seed into fertile ground, which is located some distance away, and there are obstacles in the way. In a way, it feels like lunar lander, except you don't control the seed directly, you control the wind which controls the seed.
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| Seeds gameplay. The little blurb over the grilling oven is the seed that you control. |
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| Seeds on the Wind screenshot, showing where the ad control appears during gameplay. Since the screenshot utility does not seem to work with XNA games, I was not able to take a screenshot of a read ad, so the size of the ad might be off by a bit. |
The difficulty of the levels was a bit esoteric, and felt contrived to me, rather than intelligent or surprising. There were a few funny moments in the game, though, when in chapter two, a bee caught hold of my seed and started flying around with it. The number of levels is also very limited, just two chapters, with 6 levels each.
Overall impressions, simple and easy-to-learn game. Will be a nice pastime for the first time you play it. No real replay value. Not many surprises. Game coding seems robust - no crashes or weird behaviour (on my Samsung Focus). Ad control gets in the way quite a few times. Few levels. Hence, my overall score for this game is 2.5/5
Seeds on the wind is available free from Zune marketplace, or from the official website
