I’m still in my Google Play Pass month, so here are 3 more games!

#1: TAP! DIG! MY MUSEUM!

This all-caps archaeology game is repetitive and easy, but if you’ve got Play Pass it’s somewhat enjoyable.

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.10.6:

Museum overview Early level Later level
Tap dig my museum museum overview Tap dig my museum early level Tap dig my museum late level

Review

Imagine you’re an archaeologist with no prior knowledge, what do you imagine you do all day? Maybe dig in areas and try to find dinosaur bones? Well, that’s what Tap Dig is about!

Equipped with a pickaxe (other tools are available later) and a multi-layer environment, your goal is to find the bones before you run out of energy. This is generally pretty easy, so long as you can reliably identify fragments of a bone poking out from a neighbouring tile.

Once you’ve collected enough bones in an area, a dinosaur will be constructed. This attracts visitors to your museum, who contribute money, which can then be used to pay for more digging expeditions, upgrades facilities, etc.

I tried Tap Dig My Museum a couple of years ago, but found the monetisation too aggressive. With Play Pass this problem obviously goes away, but is replaced with another: the game is clearly designed around a grind and paying to skip this grind. Gems, income boosters, in-game perks, once the financial limits on these are removed the fairly shallow gameplay loop becomes unfortunately clear.

There seems to be some sort of “rare bones” mechanism, with a red-box bone sometimes appearing in a level. These seem to form full skeletons, but after around 500 excavations I still don’t quite understand them! My museum has 2 floors of 3 rooms, and around 5 complete skeletons per room. I suspect eventually the third floor will open up, and be more of the same.

Monetisation

Tap! Dig! My Museum! is free on Play Pass, with hourly free items, school buses (extra visitors), spotlights (income boosters), extra energy in an excavation, etc.

Without Play Pass, I think the grind and constant incentives to watch adverts / pay would be too aggressive to recommend this game.

Tips

  • Claim powerups etc as soon as they are available, they make levels a lot easier.
  • With the “Bulldozer” powerup, try to use it on the top or bottom 3 rows, to avoid any small bones being missed.
  • Always keep your coin collectors upgraded, since they’ll directly influence your income.
  • The game only seems to generate idle income when open, so if you’re low on money then leave it open for half hour.

#2: Possessions

Possessions is a game all about spinning a camera around to make things line up!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 2.18.b75:

Home Cinema Monument Cutscene
Possessions home cinema Possessions monument Possessions cutscene

Review

Yet again, this is a game that you’ll pretty much fully experience within the first 60 seconds. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the simple act of lining up floating objects is deeply satisfying.

In a typical level, you’ll have 5-8 items floating in the air. Your task is to rotate the camera so that these items line up with where they should be. This start off simple, but later on one object will block another, and it might be unclear what an object even is. The levels have high quality unique art, and there are a few little puns and visual jokes if you look closely.

There’s around 30 “story” levels, complete with a somewhat abstract cutscene between every few levels. I admit I couldn’t entirely follow this, something around a husband’s overworking impacting his family? It is told through characters fading in and out, perhaps leaving a bit too much up to interpretation.

As a nice surprise, there are 10 “bonus” levels after the story, and I actually enjoyed these more. Instead of a domestic environment, you are piecing together famous monuments like Sydney Opera House or Big Ben. The gameplay in these levels is more focused on how the actual pieces combine instead of what they even are.

Overall completing Possessions won’t take more than an hour or so, at least at the relaxed pace I took whilst watching a video. The achievements mention an Augmented Reality mode that I couldn’t find, maybe a headset is required. There’s also 1 more “Secret” achievement locked, awful for the completionist in me!

Monetisation

Free on Play Pass, otherwise a ÂŁ5 (~$6.50) payment is needed to play more than a simple trial. There also seems to be other payments listed on the store, possibly for the bonus levels.

In my opinion that’s a little too expensive for the length of the game.

Tips

  • If something looks correct but isn’t working, try rotating the scene 180 degrees.
  • If you get stuck, try slowly rotating in a circle until the “3 hexagon” symbol appears briefly. Then, slowly move until the object is placed.
  • There are no time pressures / incentives, so take it slowly.

#3: Super Arcade Racing

Can you guess what Super Arcade racing is about? Yep, arcade racing!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.15:

Desert Race City Race Cutscene Garage
super arcade racing desert race super arcade racing city race super arcade racing cutscene super arcade racing garage

Review

Super Arcade Racing looks simple, but has a surprising amount of depth. Clearly heavily inspired by 80s and 90s top down games (it reminds me a lot of old GTA or Micro Machines), it includes the brutal difficulty you’d expect!

Each level consists of 1-3 laps racing around a complex and winding course, often with oil slicks, secret bonus levels, shortcuts, jumps, boosts, and environmental events (e.g. collapsing logs or snow drifts). There are 60 tracks in total, across 5 biomes (e.g. city, desert, racing track), and each track is designed to be easy enough to learn, yet hard enough to always provide a challenge.

The difficulty can be brutal, with a single wrong turn (or missing a jump) often dooming an entire race. Whilst this is faithful to retro games, it’s pretty frustrating when driving up or down and only being able to see a few metres ahead on a phone screen. This problem is compounded by your thumbs blocking the bottom of the screen, meaning your main enemy isn’t the other drivers but your own visibility.

Whilst there is a Steam version, this limited visibility (minus the thumbs!) seems to be an intentional choice. Admittedly there is a “practice” option for each track, but for a casual racing game I always skip it and generally do okay.

Luckily, many levels don’t require a win. Most just require finishing in the top 3, which at least allows recovery from a minor mistake.

On top of this retro racing gameplay is a story about your kidnapped brother, plus a detailed customisation system. Completing levels will earn money, used to upgrade your car’s parts (with higher tiers being unlocked as you progressed). In a nice touch, your car’s visual appearance can be customised independently of any performance. As part of this, you unlock “front”, “middle”, and “back” parts, all interchangeable, letting you make a ridiculous sports car / pickup hybrid!

There’s an online multiplayer mode, but after ~20 levels (out of 60) I don’t feel good enough to want to be ridiculed online! There’s cross-platform multiplayer, so it’s hard to see how any player using touch controls would have a chance against a PC player on a controller.

Monetisation

Super Arcade Racing is fully free on Play Pass. Worryingly, there seems to be in-app purchases for $1 - $20 listed on the store, yet I’m not sure what they could be for. I noticed my income is doubled, making the challenge more skill based than just a grind, so hopefully the payments are mostly for car cosmetics.

Tips

  • I never use my brake! Thumb on the accelerator, easing off for a hairpin turn, other thumb trying to steer.
  • For your first lap on a track, it’s a good idea to follow the AI who actually know where to go.
  • You can totally barge opponents into walls to get ahead!