Friday, February 24, 2023

Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade - Simon's Cat: Story Time - The First 50 Minutes

This twelfth video in the new Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade series is on Simon's Cat: Story Time. I Played this as part of my Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade series, i think this game is exclusive to the service.

i was curious how a "match 3" game would work in Apple Arcade as games on this service don't seem to have mechanics that you would associate with a match 3 game. these typically include a limit to how many games you can play at once, for example a life system. 

This game does not have a life system. it seems like the limit is purely down to the time the player has. there is a mechanic that uses the coins you earn in the game. when you run out of moves, you can spend some coins and gain some moves. but you're also given a choice to retry the level at no cost.

This meant i was able to sit and play for 50 minutes, except for when it crashed. the app crashed to my phone's "desktop". this was the first Apple Arcade game to do so, but it's difficult to put the blame on the game itself as i had used my phone to play other games and use other apps. Simon's Cat: Story Time was also updated the day i recorded this video so if there is an issue there's a chance it'll be fixed in a day or two. so whilst it crashed, i'm not worried about it as it could be due to any number of reasons.

the game looks amazing, the world is so much bigger than i anticipated, and it's fully of animation. the game makes good use of the phones vibration motors, too. it was easy to control with my finger or with a controller, but when i switched to the controller there were no on screen prompts as to what the buttons did. this would've been useful as it wasn't as obvious how to move the screen.

There is soo much more to this game. when we unlocked the trophy room, each one was for some part of the game i had yet to unlock. i have no idea how many hours it will take to play it all, but in the first 50 minutes i played i only managed to finish the first chapter! so let me know in the comments how big this game actually is.