Friday, November 18, 2011

Phone Friday: 2 Player Reactor - A no brainer game recommendation

I've never really got into gaming. Sure, I mastered Super Mario Brothers and Doom - but that's pretty much where my gaming expertise ends. Every once in while I'll poke around the Android Market for games, but I don't usually get into them. But, I do believe I've found an exception: 2 Player Reactor.

I found 2 Player Reactor after having a bit of a brilliant thought: perhaps there's a two person game that I could have Shira and myself download, and next time we're waiting around for a train to arrive, we could play against each other. The odds of finding a game we'd both want to play were slim. And it's not unusual to have no cell phone access when we're standing around waiting for a Metro train. So, the whole thing was a long shot.

Turns out, 2 Player Reactor fit the bill perfectly. The game, as the name suggests, is a played by two people. The clever part, though, is you don't play it over the Internet. Nope, it's simpler than that - you play it on the same handset.

The Reactor part of the name comes from the actual game play: you and you opponent take part in tiny little exercises and the first to get the right answer gets a point. For example, the screen may show a series of color names that have a particular color to them. When the name and the color matches ("blue" is shown in blue, versus "blue" being shown in red), you click your section of the screen. The winner gets a point, the loser loses a point. After a number of questions the game ends a winner is pronounced.

My explanation is more complicated than the game itself.

I just love the simplicity behind the game. I love that it actually makes your phone more social, rather than less so. And I love that every once in a while, I'm faster on the draw than my wife and I get to earn a few points.

A related game is 2 Player Ripples, which is quite a bit more chill than the speedfest of Reactor 2. But, it too has its place.

Both are definitely worth having on your phone. I'd expect this app would work well for kids, too.

No comments:

Post a Comment