It’s true!! The mobile game market is definitely a capitalist dystopia, like, “by mass”, I guess… It became infeasible to make money off of a mobile game by giving it a one-time non-free price tag. For whatever reason, I guess just because so many free games exist, people have largely decided that they can’t be asked to pay money for games on their phones.

Remember how furious people were when Super Mario Run, a full-length video game with plenty of levels and different characters and modes, cost a mere 10 dollars, with the first world or so acting as a free demo? They were mad because mobile games aren’t “supposed” to cost that much, even though it’s basically nothing!

Anyways that was a bit of a tangent, uuuhh, my point is that despite the “free but with ads or pay-to-win-if-not-pay-to-play” trend, the medium of mobile games isn’t inherently bad, and this is exemplified by games that either say “fuck it, I’m gonna be a Normal-Ass Game even if it doesn’t make much money, give me 2.99”, or employ other creative means to resist the trend.

My favorite example of the latter, and honestly the reason I’m even writing this, is the mobile port of everyone’s favorite(?) trendsetter, Vampire Survivors. I really like Vampire Survivors, and I really really like what it does in its mobile port. First of all, the game is free, and has some DLCs that each cost like… a dollar I think? They’re good DLCs but the game has plenty of content without them. Anyways, there’s also a system when you die where if you agree to watch an ad you can be revived. It’s totally optional and you can just not use it and never see a single ad in your entire Vampire-Surviving experience. Pretty good, right?

… Just kidding, it’s not done, it gets better. This feature, which is already completely optional… can be turned off in the settings. You can set the game to just never show you that button. This single fact alone speaks volumes about the developers’ attitude towards what they’re trying to do with their game. There is no reason to include this option that benefits the developers in any way. I guess, if you want to get absurdly cynical and paranoid about it, you could look at it like they’re wringing their hands and going “muahahaha we’ll pretend to be nice so people trust us”, but that’s, like, no, lmao. They genuinely just put it there, not to make money, but because it’s more convenient for players who don’t want to look at ads.

Anyways there’s other good mobile games, many of which are admittedly ports (don’t gotta follow shitty trends to make money if you also make money off of non-mobile markets, which is also something Vampire Survivors has going for it). Super Hexagon, Boson X, Mini Motorways… probably Slay the Spire but I haven’t played the mobile port yet (it just feels like it’d kinda have to work)… and then other hidden gems like Bean Dreams (oh my god play Bean Dreams)!

Uuuhh idk lol that’s a really good point I’m not sure why I said the thing about the “specialty” I guess I just meant “I’m not as into that as one could be”

My specialty is uuuhh… ummmm… just “tf” in general maybe lol

No, wait, okay, my actual specialties:

• Boson X
• Powder Game
• Foam dart blasters

Those are just actual things that I know a truly unreasonable amount of information about. Play Boson X and buy a Villainator.

Double digits! And the start of the second half of reviews! Exciting stuff.

Dark Graviton is a dimension of silliness and chaos heavily featuring platforms that move at varying speeds, requiring you judge distances that are adjusted for these speeds. The patterns are decently open-ended, the score rate is kinda fast (but not quite like Dark Radion), and the geometry is all over the place.

The “off-grayscale” color scheme of Dark Graviton paired with the strange Graviton music creates a hell of an atmosphere for this level. Of course when you beat it the colors go absolutely crazy and paint everything in the purple and lime green it deserves.

Also, this level has a very minor oversight/bug that occurs when you reach 100%. The particles in the pre- and post-100% backgrounds look quite different from each other, but when you cross that threshold and beat the level, the particles that are already there don’t change. This creates an interim period where the old particles stick around for awhile in the new color scheme, which I’ve shown in the third screenshot on this chost. If you look closely near the middle of the screen, you can see a few of the new particles have just started spawning in. (There’s also no score counter in this screenshot but that’s because it blinks in and out of existence for a little while once you reach 100% as like a “WOOOAAAH YOU DID IIIIIIT” animation.)

I really like Dark Graviton. Play Boson X.

At this point in time I have gathered all of the screenshots for the rest of these reviews. All I have left to do is write them, so let’s get into it.

Dark Radion doesn’t have too many talking points. I guess the thing that stands out most to me about it is that you gather score very quickly in this level. Furthermore, there’s one pattern in particular (shown in the first image above) that features a huge stretch of very chaotically placed energy platforms. If you optimize your route through this pattern well, you can get anywhere from 60-80% just from one instance of it, which is pretty nuts.

Dark Radion has this spawn animation where level pieces kinda “sweep” into place, moving in from the background while also revolving around the center of the tube a little bit before reaching their proper destinations. There’s a degree of randomness to it as well, so even pieces that are the same distance away from you won’t necessarily stop moving at exactly the same times. It doesn’t really trip me up too much, but it feels like it’s worth mentioning.

Overall, I like Dark Radion. Runs usually don’t last very long but you can still score big in that small window of time because of how fast your score goes up when running on energy platforms. The gamble-y nature of “am I gonna hit the jackpot this time” gives the level a pretty distinct flavor. Play Boson X.