depth

depth is a fairly simple yet addicting game. It has absolutely no real story--and has no real reason to come back to it besides to beat your high score--but the gameplay is fun enough to keep you entertained each time you play it. Your character is a green slime trying to collect what looks like little strips of colored confetti while dodging large black objects that fly at you from the top of the screen. As you collect the confetti things, your score rises and your green blob grows larger and faster. Hitting the black blocks however causes your score to drop and your blob to shrink. It's game over if the blob shrinks too much. Like I said, it's very simple, but collecting the little dots is quite fun and addictive.

You also have a few abilities to help you collect what you need while dodging the obstacles. First is the Grabber, which lets you grab confetti pieces from afar. It's definitely the most useful ability and the one you'll likely use the most often. Next is an invincibility power that prevents the blocks from hurting you for a very short time. It's very useful, but also risky since if you're still touching a block when the effect ends you'll still be hurt. Lastly is a speed boost. This one is not greatly useful unless the blob is terribly slow from being hit too much, and the game can easily be played without it unlike the other two.

The controls seemed awkward to me at first, for some reason. You move using the right mouse button, and use your current ability with the left mouse button. It seemed to me like it'd be more comfortable the other way around, but it's a minor issue and I got used to it eventually. You switch between the three powers by pressing their respective key on the keyboard: Q for gripper, W for invincibility, and E for speed--An effective method that also might take some practice. Unfortunately, the game is pretty much only playable with a regular two-button mouse and is almost impossible on, say, a laptop mouse pad.

This game's difficulty left something to be desired. The game hardly changes difficulty normally, which means the only way the game gets harder is when your blob starts getting hit too much, making it slow to a crawl. While trying to recover from a few hits is fun and challenging, the fact that the only way for the game to get significantly harder is to be hit seems like a flaw. This also has the unfortunate side-effect that one game--if you're skilled--can last a very long time. After about 6 games I was already having hour long sessions.

The presentation in depth fairly minimal, yet polished. The 2D graphics are fun, especially the animations for the blob and the grabber. The black shapes against the gray background are visible enough without being overbearing. As for sound, there's only one song and no sound effects that I remember. But due to the minimalist nature of the rest of the game, this isn't a big deal.


Summary:

depth is a simplistic game with fun gameplay. With perhaps a little more variety, especially in difficulty, it could become great. For now, though, it's just a great time waster in the vein of many mobile games. I'd say you should give it a quick download and try it for yourself. You'll probably have more fun playing this than, say, Angry Birds.


Score: 3.5/5 - Good


P.S. My current high score is 88,600 if you want to try and beat it.