Today, a 16 year old reviews the Ichi game app for Kindle Fire.
Product Title: Ichi (4/5 stars, currently priced at 99 cents and currently comes bundled with a $1 Amazon MP3 Store credit.
Product Type: Game App
Description: Ichi is a rather relaxing puzzle game. There are various objects you control, but the end goal is to get the little orange moving ball to go through all of the little orange rings on the screen without it running into spikes. You start out controlling this red bumper that the ball will bounce off of when it makes contact with. By tapping the screen you rotate the bumper clockwise to make the ball go in a different direction.
The next object you use is a warp, a little spiral that will send the ball out of another spiral of the same color somewhere on the board. There are also these blue bumpers that you make disappear and reappear by tapping once or twice. The last two features I’ve discovered in the twenty levels I’ve played are these rock-like blocks that the ball breaks when it bounces off of it and the ability to draw a line with the ball by pressing and holding. The ball will bounce off of the line if it hits the long side, but the line will just disappear if the ball hits it lengthwise, or once the ball bounces off of the side.
The levels start off easy, then get progressively more challenging in a good smooth learning curve. It’s very easy to understand the physics and mechanics of the game so it makes a surprisingly good mental workout. The trick is planning out and anticipating what to do next after the ball does what.
What I Liked: I like how simple the game is. You don’t have to be a genius to be able to win. Just takes a little bit of thinking and reaction time to succeed. There’s also a feature that allows you to create and play custom levels submitted by other users.
What Could Be Better: I feel a bit overwhelmed by how many levels there are. I’m used to playing puzzle games with only twenty levels, but that’s just me. I guess that just gives more game time and makes it harder to get bored of it. That’s not even counting all the user-created levels!
My Rating: 5/5 stars
I Would Recommend To: Anyone who either wants to feel smarter, get smarter, or just give their mind a bit of exercise.