“Joey, you’re going to love this” the e-mail began, emphasis very much theirs, and very much over-hyping what was to follow!
“A really great mobile game called Pin Town is now available on Ubuntu on Snappy. You have to write about it. Thanks!”
I think they mean it’s available as a Snap rather than ‘on Snappy’, but given the daily butchery my mother tongue goes through at my hands, I appreciate that I am not in a position to criticise.
Now, trying to persuade me to write about anything gaming related is difficult. Regular readers know that I’m not a modern gamer. Anything post-GameCube is post-my-attention-span.
Yet here I am… writing about a game… so it must be brilliant, right?
Well, to be totally critical, it’s not brilliant. But I’ve written about casual games to pass the time with plenty of times in the past, and Pin Town, built in HTML5, is no worse than most of those.
Is it challenging gameplay? A stunning feat of graphical aptitude? A marvel of cinematic, non-linear narrative presentation? Absolutely not — but pinging, popping, and parachuting your way through each level is really rather fun in short doses.
“Simply aim the Pin Pal (or Gal) and send them bouncing madly through numerous custom-themed levels filled with power ups and special challenges”, reads the game description.
And it’s literally as simple as that.
‘asinine, addictive gameplay that hides a real competitive charm behind cartoon graphics’
Although each of the 60 included levels vary in their aims, obstacles and goals, they all start off in the same way: you drop a bouncy character in from the top of the screen. This slime blob will ricochet, tumble and vault around the screen, careering into clouds, balloons, and the occasional stray seagull, until it comes to a natural stop at the bottom.
If you’re thinking that sounds a bit like pinball then, honestly, well done: the game is inspired by Pachinko, a Japanese variant of the more linear pinball game most of us are familiar with.
Much like Oh My Giraffe! this is asinine, addictive gameplay that hides a real competitive charm behind cartoon graphics.
And while it won’t be meriting a mention in ‘reasons why I suddenly, dramatically, and uncharacteristically switched to Ubuntu last night‘ type posts anytime soon, it’s perfect way to stay entertained while you wait for the latest KDE Neon .iso download to complete.
Pin Town is a free download. It’s available direct from Ubuntu Software.
If you don’t fancy downloading the Pin Town snap app (or you’re using a distro that doesn’t support snap apps) don’t burst anything inflatable as Pin Town is available virtually everywhere (pun intended), including on Android, iOS, and online.