We got pretty into geoDefense Swarm here at Techland. Except we called it Nerd World then.
Yesterday I got word that the geoDefense people had a new game out called geoSpark. So because I hate productivity and want to fail at everything I do, I downloaded it. This morning, with my daughter hanging over my shoulder, mocking my every move, I fired it up. It is in fact our App Club Game of the Week. See below for what that means.
OK, so you immediately realize that this is a different vibe than Swarm. It has the same sweet, ultra-slick, vector-graphics-esque style and interface. But it’s kind of … chill. Basically these swirly objects drift onto the screen — possibly these are the titular “sparks” — and you have to squash them. You can squash them one at a time, but you get more points if you take one of them and drag it into a series of other ones, the longer the chain the better. Only when you keep your finger on one, a gravity well forms around it, dragging the other sparks toward it. If two sparks (of different kinds) touch each other, the game ends.
That’s it. No shooting. No levels (or if there are I haven’t beat level one). You may possibly hear piano music at some point. This definitely belongs to the abstract expressionist school of game-making.
Which gave me a little trouble. If I’m in a combat game I like to be all, pew pew, I’m shooting dudes. Racing games, vrm vrm, I’m beating dudes. With geoSpark I was all, tinkle tinkle, I’m squashing sparks … at a rave … with Enya. It was weird. I’m having trouble engaging with the fantasy.
But like I said, it looks great, and it’s weirdly compelling. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to keep playing this game, and over the course of the week I’m going to post updates with my progress, through Friday, by which time I hope to have finished it. If you like you can grab it — it’s $.99 — and we’ll discuss in comments and try to beat it together. I’m going to do this every week with a different app. Such is the essence of App Club.
My high score right now is 12,560 after about half an hour of gameplay. Join me, and together we can end the threat of musical sparks once and for all.
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