From BeaverTap Games, the guys responsible for the ‘Mikey’ series comes Radical [Free], a minimalist endless runner type game where the players objective is to navigate a little triangle (space craft) through oncoming gates. Played in portrait mode with two hands, players must thumb touch and hold each halve of the screen to move the ship left and right, you can also wall teleport from through the left boundary of the screen and come out on the right, and vice-versa – which is pretty cool and ads an interesting flow to the game.
The game style is a shift away from what the BeaverTap have produced in the past, and this is fine. I don’t believe developers should be locked down to a particular game style or genre because they had success with it in the past.
Radical is ‘simple done well’. You could easily find yourself thinking “This game could have been made in a day”, and while this is true for the main game mechanic, the game has a level of polish in the UI and balancing that puts it in a more premium league.
However, I can’t help but feel that this game is a bit of a sell out by the developers, in the pursuit of the ‘Flappy Bird’ effect, which I think has an negative effect on the indie market and developer mind set, as many developers are now reducing the scope of their more robust passion projects to instead focus on for one button, high replay/ high ad serving games – in the hopes for a Flappy scenario. Which is a damn shame.
With that said, Radical, is a simple fun game which is worth a play for the Free price. No IAP and tasteful monetization gets BeaverTap my respect.
Radical’s main revenue source would be it’s video ads, which it cleverly integrates into the game flow unobtrusively. After a game over the player is given the option to continue by watching a video ad. This pretty much makes viewing an ad part of the game cycle IF you want to stay competitive on the leader board – Which is a pretty clever strategy that has become popular lately based on the seemingly optional and unobtrusive nature.
Some would argue that in fact this form of ad is deceptive intrusive, as if you want to be competitive you MUST watch ads. But its still better than full screen popup ads appearing under your finger just as your about to click start, right?
Go grab Radical, it’s free and a nice little time killer when you have a few minutes to burn.
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