Game Review: Gimme Friction Baby

Gimme Friction Baby

The first reaction:

The beauty of this game is the un-striking simple idea behind it. When I looked at it for the first time, it didn’t visually appeal to me. When I played it for the first time, I couldn’t make out much of it. After every few random fires, I was shown a ‘Game Over’ message. Such a simple looking game can’t be too complicated, but I was clueless about how to play!

I must admit that the initial learning wasn’t smooth, and that I had spent not less than 20 minutes to understand what is it all about. But once the initial hurdle was overcome, it was too difficult for me to stop playing. I was glued to the game for about a week. It’s still in my all-time favorite list.

Strength:

• Innovative game-play.
• Fun, Repayable and Sticky.
• The Hi-Score next to the current Score builds up a competition with self to perform better every time you restart.

Weakness:

• Confusing in the beginning. Lack of any instruction could put-off many players.
• Slow progression.

About the game:

This game is created by Wouter Visser of The Netherlands. You have to click mouse to shoot orbs from the swinging turret. It will start with a counter 3 and would expand till it touches the boundary or any other previously shot orbs that are lying on screen and reduce its counter from 3, 2, 1…and finally 0 to explode. In the next turn, the last sent orb also adds up to the screen space, thus making it difficult to shoot anywhere without bouncing back to the death line (a dotted line on the bottom). Each time you explode an orb, your score is incremented.

Not sure if it is a bug…just shoot an orb towards extreme Left or Right below the death line to see what happens. You might see a non-reactive, flipped orb created below the death line.

My Rating:

Overall 4.5/5