Review: Ice Tycoon

Type: Time Management
Platform: Android
Price: Free from Android Market

Ice Tycoon is a simple game of selling ice-cream.

Gameplay
You tap on various ingredients to create an ice-cream. If you used up an ingredient, you have to spend some money to refill it. If you make a mistake, you have to throw it away and start over again. This will cost you some money. Once your ice-cream is done, you need to drag it over to the customer and then click on the money they left behind. If you take too long to fulfill an order, the bubble over the customer's head will disappear for a few seconds. You clear each stage by earning the required amount of money before time runs out.

Thoughts
This is a simple game; there is no storyline and all you do is just create ice-creams according to the customers' orders. While I like the cute graphics, nothing ever changes. You still get the same customers and the same ingredients. So the game can feel repetitive after a while as you are just doing the same thing over and over again.

Each stage will get progressively harder and you will need to handle increasingly complicated orders at a faster pace. I enjoyed the challenge of beating my old score but I also felt frustrated at certain parts of the game. It can be difficult to tell what ingredients are used at a glance especially when the colors are so similar for the strawberry sauce and cherry. It can also be difficult to notice what sauce is between the scoops of ice-cream because so little of the sauce is showing.

While this game isn't very deep, it is a fun way to spend a couple of minutes.

Verdict ★★★
Game page

Review: Jewels

Type: Match 3
Platform: Android phone
Price: Free

Jewels is a free match 3 game on Android. It reminds me of the popular PopCap game Bejeweled. There are many Bejeweled clones on the market but most of them are not as polished as Jewels. The developer obviously put some thought into making this game. There are three modes of play - normal, timed and infinite. You can save the scores locally on your phone or submit it to the global scoreboard, but you can't do both. I liked the clean graphics and sounds, especially the sound effects of gems dropping down and when I matched three gems.

Verdict ★★★★★

Review: Air Control

Type: Time Management
Platform: Android
Price: Free and Paid (UK£1.99) versions

Air Control is a deceptively simple game with simple graphics and a handful of sound effects. The player has to get the planes to land at the airport by using his finger to trace a path to the landing site. The planes come in three different colors representing three different places they can land. There are no stages. The game ends when two or more planes crash into each other.

The game starts slow. As more planes appear with increasing frequency, it can become quite hectic trying to keep track of all of moving planes on the screen. Planes paths cross each other frequency and I often had to reroute a plane when it looks as if they are going to crash. It is easy to miss a potential crash when there are more than ten planes on the screen at the same time.

I've been playing the game quite a bit after I downloaded it from the Android Market. It is quite satisfying to be able to land a plane safely. I often turn to this game when I feel like playing something but did not want to spend too much effort or time at it.

The free version is ad-supported. The Blue Ocean map is also locked in the free version.

Verdict ★★★★