Android Games – Alchemy

I recently got my first smartphone, the HTC Wildfire.. I wanted a new phone mainly for the camera and ability to record amusing videos of my friends, and this has a 5 megapixel camera with flash.  It also has the Android Market, which is full of apps and games.. 😉

This morning’s find was Alchemy.
When I saw the name, I assumed it was a clone of PopCap Games’ Alchemy and downloaded it without a second glance.. but I found it to be a rather more interesting game.

You start off with four elements, which you combine by simply dragging and dropping on top of each other.. this makes new elements, though not necessarily what you’d expect, and not necessarily what you’d call an ‘element’.  Combining water and fire produces alcohol, while water and air produces steam..

There are 370 elements to discover.. up to now I’ve found 31.  Most of the elements you produce can be used to create other elements in turn, though some, such as the “Molotov cocktail” are terminal elements, and are of no further use.

I’m not sure if this is a game that I’ll finish any time soon, as some of the elements are more likely to be discovered by randomly combining items rather than logically thinking it through.  However, it’s easy to pick up for a few minutes here and there 🙂

This is Magicka!

Magicka is an action-adventure game by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Paradox Interactive.  The game is set in a fantasy world with magic, goblins and trolls, a quest to help the King, a rogue wizard, and a heavy dose of parody.

In the single-player story mode, you put on your robe and wizard hat and combine elements to fire lasers, throw boulders and shoot lightning at your enemies!

There are eight elements to play with: water, life, shield, cold, lightning, arcane, earth and fire, and each of these can be directed straight at the enemy, applied to yourself, used as an area-of-effect spell, or even applied to your weapon.. doing this means you can use it on the enemies later, or just run around with a sparkly colourful sword 😉

One of my favourite defensive spells is a fire, earth and shield combination, applied as an AOE – this places a circle of fiery mountains around me which knock back and burning enemies.  Or friends, if they’re standing too close..

The game allows up to four-player multiplayer, in which you can play through the story or just blow your friends up.  Friendly fire is most certainly on in this game, and we ended up ignoring the story at the beginning of our session to just try and kill each other.

There is also challenge mode, which is survival mode with waves of increasingly difficult enemies.  On your own, you really don’t last long, but when playing with friends, so long as one person stays alive they can revive you with a quick spell.  I’ve not yet attempted Versus mode.. one for a little later maybe!

I think this would have been a good game without all the jokes, so the fact there are so many is a bonus.  Some of the achievements themselves are also jokes, such as the “This is Magicka!” achievement for pushing a soldier down a hole 😉