Category: Game
Price: Free
Gotta-have-it factor: 6
As far as gaming goes, the Android OS has been best suited to puzzle-type games for a while now, with very few exceptions. I’m not sure if this is caused by hardware limitations in the phones themselves, or if the OS itself is to blame, but hopefully we’ll see some more complicated games in the future with updates coming to the OS, and more powerful handsets coming out every few months. I am not personally a huge gamer, so it doesn’t bother me that much, but I believe that if Android OS is going to appeal to a broader demographic, there will have to be some improvements in the number and type of games available.
That being said, one of my favorite games available in the Android Market right now is called Fish Food. It is a puzzle-type game with some similarities to Bejeweled. The play area is set up like a Bejeweled board, but instead of different colored jewels, you get different colored fish. The fish are also different sizes. The twist on the Bejeweled formula is that you don’t try to line up three same-colored fish in a row to get rid of them. The strategy in Fish Food is to get the larger fish to eat the fish one size smaller. The green, being the smallest, cannot eat any other fish, but can be eaten by a blue fish. When a blue fish eats three green fish, it becomes a purple fish. The purple fish can only eat the blue fish. Once a purple fish eats three blue fish, it becomes a red fish, which is the largest of the fish. The red fish will explode by being long-pressed, or by eating three purple fish. The red fish also blow-up any other red fish in the immediate vicinity. The more you blow up, the better your score.
The game is actually much more simple and easy to pick up than that previous paragraph indicates. My wife and I have become addicted to it and compete against each other for the high score. The graphics are also a major plus, as this game looks much more polished than other puzzle games I have seen in the market. Another plus to the game is that it is free, although ad-supported.
The game had a few bugs in the beginning, but the developer seems to have ironed out most of them so far. If you love Bejeweled, Tetris, or similar puzzle games, you should give Fish Food a shot. It’s one of the better ones out there.
