Despite a rise in graphics and processing power on phones, TVs, computers and gaming systems, many of the popular electronic games are the simplest.
An iPhone app called aa has spread like wildfire throughout the student body, and shows no signs of slowing down. Despite being such a popular game, aa has a single basic challenge and simple controls. All the player has to do is tap the screen to connect a dot with a large spinning ball. As the game progresses in levels, the difficulty increases, with dots firing at different speeds, barriers blocking them from hitting their target, or the faster speed of the target ball.
“It’s a pretty basic game but it’s easy to play and really addictive,” says Willy Verneris ‘18. Jimmy Gruver ‘17 further adds, “It’s the new big app. I just can’t get past level 49.”
This game has proved to be popular to students because of how easy it is to play. If a student is waiting around until their next class, they can simply pull out their laptop or phone and play a few levels.
This isn’t the first time a simplistic game has become popular throughout Blake. Last year a game titled Flappy Bird was largely played, again having simple controls with the basic concept of tapping the screen to get a bird to fly around obstacles.
Many popular games these days are not the most complex ones or the games that look the most realistic, but the ones that are easy for all to play and can be played anywhere.
Minecraft, a game with block-like graphics has the simple goal of allowing the player to mine the blocks in the world and build what they please.
Despite having poor graphics and no directions, Minecraft became immensely popular and was sold to Microsoft for 2.5 billion dollars.
Cal Slavitt ’16, Tyler Kossila ’16 and Brandon Boyd ’16 all take a study break on their phones.
This recent trend of simple but addictive games has overtaken many games that have better graphics and complexity, but due to their difficult are shunned by many people. This new trend in games to be simple and all inclusive has shown itself to be the future of games.
