Game Review: Taptitude: Volume 1

Ever since I had a gaming console, I always enjoyed those all-in-one arcade games. Maybe it's because I was a cheapskate from a very early age, but games can be insanely fun when they offer a cohesive, consistent experience. Last night I stumbled upon one of those games titled Taptitude: Volume 1 from 4Bros Studio in the Marketplace. I was initially skeptical as I thought this was just a developer dumping games in the Marketplace in order to make a quick buck. However, I was pleasantly surprised: not only are most of the games pretty darn good, but they're also individually free and ad-supported or altogether for $0.99. Curious? Jump past the break for our thoughts on the first volume of Taptitude.

Bomb Defuser

Bomb Defuser is probably the most exciting and frantic of the Taptitude games. The game loads a grid of 4x4 green orbs and the objective is to tap on all of the orbs that are changing color before they become red and explode. Bomb Defuser is deceptively simple at a glance, but once the difficulty begins to ramp up you'll discover new muscles you didn't know your thumbs had.

Draw a Circle

Remember when you were back in elementary or middle school and your friends challenged you to draw a perfect circle? Now imagine trying to do that with your fat index finger on a capacitive touchscreen, and doing it with a pen and paper doesn't seem so bad anymore does it? You're given a tiny circle in the middle of the screen to help as a guide for your finger, but it may not help you out that much. Draw a Circle is quite possibly the simplest game in the world that manages to drive you insane every time you play it.

Scratch It

Most of these games manage to create compelling experiences through simplicity, but I'm not entirely sold on Scratch It. The goal of the game is to 'scratch' the orbs that pop up on screen by rubbing them with your fingers as quickly as possible. However, I found the game to be a little too simple as the orbs are fairly large and their placement in each new game doesn't provide much variety. In simple terms, it feels like you're playing the same game over and over because nothing seems to change each time. Scratch It is fun for the first few times, but over time the game proves to be quite repetitive and you'll likely lose interest pretty quickly.

Stay Inside

Stay Inside manages to make use of the touchscreen more so than the other Taptitude games by offering a seemingly reachable goal: keep your finger on the floating orb for as long as possible. However, just like the other games it really isn't that easy. As you keep your finger on the moving orb, it suddenly begins to move more spontaneously and the real goal is to try to keep up with the rapid shuffling of the evil AI. Stay Inside offers a lot of differentiation as the game gets harder,

Tap Sequence

When you start a game of Tap Sequence, you're greeted by a bunch of orbs that are numbered from 1 to 20 and are spread out randomly across the screen. The goal of the game is what you expect: eliminate all of the orbs by going in sequence from orb 1 until 20 as fast as possible...and that's it. Just like Scratch It, Tap Sequence is just too simple for its own good and manages to become quite boring after the first few games.

Other Notes

4Bros Studio has gone out of their way to make the Taptitude series a very consistent experience. All of the games share the same UI, which is fairly basic but also perfectly smooth and functional. Also, the design includes a 'Messages' section which posts new updates from the developer about new games and/or updates, which is a pretty nice touch. Either downloaded individually or purchased altogether, the entire Taptitude series supports local and online leaderboards. The online leaderboards are broken down into 'weekly' and 'world' categories, and upon seeing how good other people are at these frustratingly elementary minigames makes you want to play them even more. When you start any game, there is a nice countdown timer screen of 5 seconds that appears before you start and at the top of it there are tips specific to that game which hint at strategies for you to improve your score. One final thing to note is that the individual games have ads and are thus free, but if you purchase Volume 1 the games do not feature any ads.

Conclusion

4Bros Studio has managed to create a compelling brand of uncomplicated yet addictive minigames for the Marketplace. Taptitude: Voulme 1 provides some of the best pick-up-and-play gaming we have yet to see on Windows Phone 7. While there are some duds in the mix like the uneventful Scratch It, there are also games like Draw a Circle that really manage to hook you in despite their relative ease. 4 Bros is already at work on Volume 2 of their series and despite a few bumps here and there in Volume 1, I can't wait to see what comes next.

Click on any of the tiles above to get a game! (Opens Zune.)