Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | APPS | 10.12.2012 @ 3:00 pm
(Talksauce is a weekly editorial that represents the opinions of Tapsauce editor-in-chief Jacob Hall, not Rocksauce Studios. If he says something stupid, blame him and him alone.)
When I made the big switch from my Android to an iPhone, certain sacrifices had to be made. Chief among them was the complete and total loss of my mobile game library. Everything I had downloaded from the Google Play store was going to vanish into the ether and I was going to have to rebuild everything from scratch…or I wasn’t. I had a choice: do I re-download all of my old games to have everything I had before, or do I start anew and leave the past behind me, my new smartphone representing a new start.
I ended up splitting the difference.
I decided to not re-download everything I had before, but to instead re-download the the cream of the crop, the games that were not only superb, but would be worth playing over again from the very start. Thus began an incredibly brutal decision making process that found me weighing two types of good games against one another.
One of these groups is summed by Angry Birds, which made the cut and now lives on in my iPhone. In addition to being a darn great game and one of the most important achievements to ever happen in the mobile field, it’s just plain fun, an addicting experience that can be played for hours at a time or for just five minutes on the toilet. Although I had lost all of my progress, the arcade style of the game lends itself to re-playability, so playing through the game again and unlocking all of the levels a second time was an absolute joy.
And then there’s a game like Battleheart, which didn’t make the cut. That may come as a surprise to those with long memories, since I all-but declared it the greatest mobile game of all time when I reviewed it. Unlike Angry Birds, Battleheart derives its pleasures from leveling up your characters, building a team, collecting loot and other activities that take many hours and a certain amount of luck to achieve. Being forced to re-buy Battleheart and start with a clean slate is like your younger sibling accidentally deleting your Final Fantasy save file after 50-plus hours of gameplay. To start again would be tragic and heartbreaking: it just won’t be the same.
I put the question out to the Rocksauce Studios office. Which games would you buy again? Which ones would you not, even if you like them?
Michael Robin: “I’d definitely buy Draw Something and Angry Birds again. They’re games that are crucial to my need to fiddle with games on my phone. Although I love Baby Monkey, I’d probably not buy it gain.”
Adam Weeks: “I get tired of mobile games fairly quickly, but the ones I continue to find myself sticking with and would definitely re-buy would include PuzzleJuice, Zombie Gunship and Ski Safari.”
Daniel Burres: “Two games I play consistently on the iPhone and iPad are Tiny Wings and Bejeweled. They are great time-fillers for those three or four minutes where you find yourself waiting on your wife or sitting in a waiting room.”
Faith Goh: “I would re-buy these games: Scramble, Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader, Sushi-Go-Round and Dice. I get tired with games really easily, so once I’m bored with it, I delete it off my phone. I’m a little more tolerant with apps, but I can part with things pretty easily. The only reason I keep physical cards people give me is so that they don’t get offended that I threw their card away. Once a year is up, they’re off to the shredder. So with digital media, I’m even more unattached.”
Q Manning: “Games, whether they are mobile or not, will always get boring. We love a style of game, but the thematics lose their edge. It’s why we have dozens of Tower Defense clones or Tetris wannabes. For me, the only game I *have* to buy consistently is Tetris. No other game has the replay value. I’ve had it on every phone I’ve ever had, and that won’t change.”
And, in list format, here are some more:
John Gholson would re-buy Songpop, Puzzlejuice, Pac Chomp, Robotek HD, and 100000000.
Steven Walker would re-buy Angry Birds (Original, Seasons, & Space), World of Goo, Osmos, Atari Greatest Hits, Cut the Rope, Feed Me Oil and HD Pinball.
Robert Blake would re-buy Yahtzee, Pictureka and Scribblenauts.
Peter Yoder would re-buy Civilization Revolution, Risk, Settlers of Catan, Kingdom Rush, Tap Tap Revenge and Tiny Tower (but only if his data was saved on the cloud). He would NOT re-buy Flight Control, Temple Run, Draw Something, Words With Friends or Angry Birds.

