Smartphone fun and games

So I’ve been playing games on my smartphone all day today. Well, it’s Sunday, isn’t it; others go mountain climbing of a Sunday, others binge watch TV series, others visit art galleries – and others play games…

Until recently, I didn’t play any games on my phone except the occasional solitaire or Pac-Man; certainly not anything complex like sim or hidden object games. I thought that was the sort of thing teenagers like my daughter do. I had been a bit addicted to computer games for years, though, I must confess – many times, games like “Monument Builder” or “Castaway” have kept me up till VERY late at night, not to say early morning…

But now, ever since I got my new Galaxy phone with lots of storage space, I’ve discovered there’s lots of great stuff on Google Play as well! My favourites are sim and farm games, and there’s a huge choice of them on Google Play Store. Farm Day Village, for example, where you slowly expand your farm from a few wheat fields and hens to a really busy place that produces everything from popcorn to clothes. It takes patience, but it’s enormously relaxing and fulfilling!

Funky Bay is a fun combination of farm and sim game: you run a farm on an island, and at the same time you clean up the beaches to make the place a tourist resort. You can sell blueberry punch, peanut butter and honey to the tourists who arrive on their surfboards!

Then there’s Gardenscapes and Homescapes, two very similar games in which you can repair and decorate a big garden and house respectively; protagonist in both is butler Austin, whom experienced gamers will already know from the PC version of the two games. In order to get money for your designs, though, you have to solve Match 3 puzzles which can be quite tricky!

And how about a different sort of game? Being an ardent lover of murder mysteries, I simply can’t resist those interactive hidden object games where, finding the objects in the pictures, you can solve a crime – like in June’s Journey! June investigates the murder of her sister and brother-in-law, which leads to her niece being kidnapped and taken to Cuba…

So those are my gaming tips for you, dear friends; let me just add a few more things I’ve been thinking about today during my session. First of all: don’t get tempted by the in-app purchases; that ‘easy’ way of paying with the one-click buy will prove disastrous for your bank account! All you need is patience; the energy or the coins or the diamonds or whatever you need to proceed in each game will fill up eventually. And not only will you lose money constantly, but you’ll also develop a guilty conscience which will spoil the fun; I know – I’ve been there.

Second, don’t overdo it – gaming IS addictive, but try and stick to a certain number of hours every week. Playing on your smartphone all by yourself isn’t good for your social life, and neither is staring at that screen all day good for your eyes. I’m just preparing a camomile solution for mine after this long day…

Apart from that, enjoy your games, friends!

Pictures from Google