My previous post on tactile digital play was about a few new gadgets that blur the line between digital and analog, allowing for physical manipulation to control an on-screen app. Then there's the other approach: taking a digital property and turning into a physical toy or game. These game adaptations have their roots in the app world but are are almost completely analog — no iPad required.
Before I get into the specifics, it's worth asking why these games exist. Why would you take a physics-based puzzler like Angry Birds (which, of course, uses its own tweaked version of physics) and turn it into an actual toy (which uses real physics and is therefore much harder)? Why take an arcade game that uses your smartphone's accelerometer and touch screen, requiring reflexes and dexterity, and attempt to replicate that in the world of cardboard and dice?Well, money is the easy answer, of course. If you have a franchise as big as Angry Birds then you might as well make hay while the sun shines. But there's more to it than that: if you were just after some extra licensing opportunities, the T-shirts and plush toys are surely an easier solution. Instead, there's this odd compulsion to recreate videogames in real life, to turn Fruit Ninja into a physical experience, and that's (at least in part) because we still crave those tactile experiences. When we play a videogame, we want to be in the game. Again, it's why the Wii (along with the Kinect and the Move) was so successful.
So does it work? Some better than others: while the physical experience of Angry Birds isn't exactly the same as the app (for one thing, you have that pesky third dimension to deal with), the toys do recreate the experience of the app: You set up structures and then knock them down with birds. Granted, your birds don't have special abilities and the blocks don't actually splinter and shatter, but it is essentially the same game. Fruit Ninja, on the other hand, doesn't quite capture the feel of the app: you're flipping over little plastic fruits on a surface with plastic swords, which isn't nearly as fun as the idea of slashing away at fruit flying through the air. And once you get to the abstraction of the card-only Fruit Ninja game? Then it's purely branding — come on, where's my sword?
Ok, so enough of that. What about the games? I received review copies of three app-based games recently: Temple Run Danger Chase, Temple Run Speed Sprint, and Where's My Water? When I heard about these games, part of me was pretty skeptical, and part of me totally bought into the merchandising: my younger daughter really loves the Where's My Water? app and I figured she'd probably enjoy a game based on it. (What can I say? Swampy is cute.) Temple Run seemed a harder sell: it's less character-driven, and could you really do a fast-paced action game as a physical board game?
Let's start with Temple Run.
Ok, the first impression I got of Temple Run Danger Chase (from Spin Master) was the packaging, which isn't great. It's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find at a big box toy store rather than your friendly neighborhood game store: it's a thin cardboard box (like a cereal box) that opens on the top, and inside you get this molded plastic oblong that sort of holds the boards in place. Estimated empty space: 75%. I'm not sure how you're intended to store this game — keep it in a ziploc bag? Find a shoebox? One thing's for sure: you don't want to stack much on top of this box.
It's too bad the box is flimsy, because once I got the game out, it's actually pretty fun. It's not the same as tilting and swiping a screen, of course, but thanks to the little electronic idol timer, it is speed-based. Here's the way it works: you set up the five game boards in a row, with the temple at the far left and the Start board next to it. Up to four players begin on the Start board, and the demon monkey starts in the temple. Each player gets one Boost token and one Resurrect token.
The gameplay is a bit like Zombie Dice but with a time limit. You slap the top of the idol to begin your turn, and then roll the five dice. Each die has some combination of blank faces, monkeys, 1 runner, and 2 runners. You can re-roll anything but the monkeys, as many times as you want, and then slap the idol again when you finish. You get to move as many spaces as there are runners, and then the demon monkey moves as many spaces as there are monkeys. If you land on another player, you move forward to the next empty space. Landing on a Boost or Resurrect space gets you another token, and landing on a Magnet space lets you steal a token from somebody else. If you wind up on an obstacle space, then you die, unless you spend a Resurrect token. Oh, and of course, if the demon monkey catches you, you're dead no matter what.
There's one more thing to watch out for, though: if you spend too long rolling dice (trying to get those 2-runner faces), you may hear the monkeys screeching:
When that happens, you go to the back of the pack — and if you were already at the back of the pack, you move back one space.
The boards are double-sided, and as you reach the end of the last board, you take the first one and flip it over, adding it to the path. It makes for a fun way to simulate the never-ending levels in Temple Run, and the drumbeats and screeching monkey from the electronic timer are a fun way to keep the tension high as you're rolling. (There are Easy, Medium, and Hard settings which adjust the amount of time you have before the monkeys screech.) Another interesting aspect to the strategy is that sometimes you don't want to roll too high, because it'll land you on an obstacle — in those cases, you might find yourself re-rolling a 2-runner die. The dice do have different distributions of monkeys, but unlike Zombie Dice they're not colored differently, so as you're playing you don't really have time to stop and inspect a die to see which ones are best to re-roll.
My kids enjoy watching me play the Temple Run app, but the tilt-swipe controls are still a bit hard for them (particularly while holding the heavy iPad). The Danger Chase game, while not terribly deep, is a fun way to let them get in on the action. I do wish the box were a little better, and the punch-out tokens are pretty flimsy, too, but the figurines (especially the demon monkey) are pretty fun and the never-ending board is a nice touch. At $29.95 retail, it's on the edge of what I'd pay for a game like this; overall, though, it was better than I expected. The game retails for $19.99, which is pretty reasonable for its components and gameplay; overall, it was better than I expected.
The other game, Temple Run Speed Sprint, strikes me more as pure marketing ploy. It also has a little talking electronic idol, but in this case the gameplay doesn't make up for its egregious packaging. Estimated empty space: 90%. The exterior box (again, flimsy cardstock) is only slightly smaller than the box for Danger Chase, but in this case it just has a cardboard spacer that holds the small idol device and a deck of 60 cards. I don't know about you, but if I paid thirty bucks for this game and found this inside, I'd be ticked. The game retails for $14.99 but just doesn't sound like a great idea to me.
Here's the way the game works: each player gets one of the Runner cards to indicate their player number, and 10 to 12 cards (depending on number of players) which they lay face-up in front of them in any arrangement they please. The cards say Left, Right, Jump, Slide, and Invisibility. Switch the idol to indicate the number of players (2 to 4) and press the timer to begin.
The timer will announce a runner number and an action: "Runner 2: Slide!" The indicated player needs to discard the appropriate card (or an Invisibility card, which is a wild card) and then hit the timer before the demon monkeys screech. If you're too late, you draw a card as a penalty. There's also a "Pass!" command which means to pass any of your cards to another player. Finally, if somebody plays the wrong card, anyone can hold down the timer to pause the game — the player has to take back their incorrect card and draw a penalty before the game continues. The first player to get rid of all their cards wins.
It seems a little bit like playing Uno except instead of choosing a card, you're entirely at the mercy of the timer. That doesn't mean that Speed Sprint has more luck, necessarily, but I think it's an example of a digital-analog mashup that fails to capture the best of both worlds.
Last: Where's My Water?
Where's My Water? isn't as huge as Angry Birds (yet), but it seems to be headed in the same direction — and this time it has the power of Disney behind it. The app is a fluid-based physics puzzler that is easy enough for my kids to play but challenging enough to hold my interest. New levels appear with periodic updates, and there are clever alternate versions you can unlock, like Cranky's Story (get the poison to the drain to kill off the moss on Cranky's supper) or the Magic Duck which gives you all sorts of weird rubber ducks in place of the usual three. And, of course, for you Phineas & Ferb fans, there's Where's My Perry?
The physical Where's My Water? game, by Hasbro, is a sort of pachinko-style marble drop, with blue marbles standing in for the water, purple marbles as poison, and yellow marbles for ducks. It's intended as a two-player game, though both of my daughters have been happily entertained playing solitaire as well.
When you first open it up, the board does require a bit of assembly:
You'll have to snap together a few plastic bits to form the tub and a slider that directs the marbles to one side of the tub, and fold and attach the cardboard stand that holds the whole thing at an incline. There are stickers to apply to certain pieces, and these are all fairly straightforward. There were three little white pegs that took me a while to figure out, because they weren't mentioned in the instructions, but they attach to some of the obstacles.
To play, you pick a card from the deck — the number of ducks at the bottom indicates the difficulty level, and a gear means it's a build-it-yourself level. You set up all the obstacles and ducks as shown on the card. (On the build-it-yourself levels, you get a picture of the pieces you should use, and then set them up however you like.) You place yellow marbles on the little platforms behind the ducks, and purple marbles on the platforms of the skulls. There are also a slew of little blue pegs — you just fill in as many of the remaining holes as you can with these.
Each player gets five blue marbles, and takes turns dropping in marbles, trying to collect the ducks while avoiding the poison. You can slide Swampy the alligator left and right, which causes him to direct marbles into one half of the tub or the other so players can keep track of points. Once everyone has put in all of their marbles, you count up the results: 1 point for each yellow and blue marble, and -1 point for each purple. Whoever has the highest total gets the card, and then you draw another card to set up. Gain three cards to win the game.
It's a cute game, nothing terribly ground-breaking, but there's always been something fun about dropping marbles and watching them bounce around on a path. There are some obstacles which can be more interesting because they can catch marbles and hold them until you overfill them or hit them just right. My kids just like setting up the board and running marbles through it – and who wouldn't? It's no longer fluid dynamics, of course, and becomes maybe something more like Peggle.
If your kids like Swampy, it may be worth the $20 price for the board game, but my involvement so far has mostly been helping them set up the levels and then letting them play it out. I don't see it as a game that I'd break out for game night, in the way that I might introduce Temple Run Danger Chase.
Compared to the Sifteo Cubes and even Hasbro's zAPPed figurines, these sorts of app-based games are a far cry from real digital-analog integration. They're more of a throwback, something to play totally offline — maybe so your kids have something to do while your iPhone is unavailable. But I do think their very existence points to that desire many of us have for physical, tactile play, whether we're actually getting outdoors or simply finding a new way to play our favorite apps.
What about you? Do you have a leaning toward digital vs. analog games? Have you seen any innovative ideas? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.
Disclosure: GeekDad received review copies of these three games.
