I love iPhone apps, I use all kinds from social networking to productivity and especially games, not that I am a big gamer but I do enjoy some of the simpler easy to play, time waster games as I call them. A few games that I have recently come across from FORMation Alliance fit in with my game play as well as keeping me sharp from a design perspective. These games were built designers and visual people.
Eye vs. Eye ($0.99)
Eye vs. Eye is an intense color-matching duel that matches you against an opponent or the iPhone in a race of color accuracy. Challenge all comers and build your reputation for chromatic perfection.
How to play:
A random color, the Target, is presented momentarily. Each player uses red/green/blue sliders to try and reproduce the Target color as closely as possible in a limited amount of time. Each player’s color is compared to the Target and a percentage of accuracy is scored. The higher score wins. A series of games determine the highest average color accuracy. An infinite number of games can be played in a single contest.
The game is oodles of fun especially if you have someone else who loves color and design. There’s no end to the gameplay as the game chooses any random colour so there’s 16 million possible rounds. And even if you don’t have a ‘colour crazy’ buddy, you can always hit back on the mono gameplay to hone in on your colour detecting skills. There’s a video of the game in action at the FORMation site. For just a dollar, it’s well worth the price.
Kern ($0.99)
Kern is a minimalist typography game challenging you to precisely place a missing letter into a falling word while avoiding any unnecessary ligatures. Practice and prove your typographical proficiency.
How to Play:
A random type-centric word with a missing letter appears at a variable point size. As the leading begins to shrink, you navigate the missing letter to the proper space and release its handle to lock it in place. The placement accuracy is measured and your score is calculated based on the size of the type, the leading height, and the perfection of placement—all measured in points. If you miss by too much and form an unnecessary ligature, one of your five ligature tokens will be lost. Lose all five ligatures and your game is finished.
The game will improve your knowledge of typography, and improve your judgement when it comes to perfection in character spacing, etc.. Although, one would argue that it doesn’t really help you recognize fonts. If for instance Bodoni is the word that’s tumbling down, it’s still the same old Helvetica that’s falling through. There’s always version 2.0 for that. Another $0.99 affair.
Press Check ($1.99)
The latest release in the “Games for Creatives” is Press Check. This app replicates printing plate alignment tasks but with accuracy and speed rankings.
Press Check is a game taking you back to the old-school art of print plate alignment re-imagined as a challenge of speed and accuracy on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Show off your non-digital skills with levels ranging from the beginner 2-color set-ups to the expert 5-color jobs.
It’s a pretty good concept, as you arrange different coloured plates so they match up to form the final image that would hypothetically be printed out at the press. There’s varying levels of difficulty, with upto 5 colour plates, and the time is always ticking. There’s also an online leaderboard so you can compare your scores against others who share your strange idea of fun. $1.99 a pop.
Each of these games is just a dollar or thereabouts and offer up a lot of fun if you are a visual kind of person, they are great for the designer as well as the student of design. If you’re using apps similar to these do let us know.
