Game: Annoying Cab
Developer: Pine Entertainment
Platform: iOS only
Release Date: November 13th, 2014
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
I found this app on the iTunes store under the New Best Apps list. I saw that it was free and that it was also in the style of an 8-bit game. You guys know how much of a sucker I am for 8-bit looking games. I tried to find a picture of the game and I couldn't. That should have may be an indication about this game.
Presentation
There is not much to this game other than it is 8-bit. The menu's are very simple. There is not much of what you can customize or change. See image below.
So you can enable and disable the music and sound. You can turn off notificaitons which is pretty standard for iOs games. You can enable and post to Facebook and Twitter. You can let your friends know what your progress is in the game.
It is linked to Gamecenter, which to this day, I don't really care for. Most people I know do not have these games, and the leader boards are useless. It always seems that the top scorers have hacked the game and get a score that is impossible to get.
You can use in-app purchases in the game to remove the ads.
Gameplay
Screenshot of Gameplay
The gameplay is very very simple. Essentially you pick up someone to be in your cab. In order to keep the game alive, you must type what is on the screen as fast as possible so that the red bar does not disappear. Once the bar disappears, you get thrown out of the cab. You get thrown on the screen and it cracks.
The only upgrades that I can see is that depending on the percentage that you type, you can unlock some new cabs.
Cab Available
Cab you can Unlock: It seems there are 3 cabs to unlock.
Controls
This is where the game I think suffers. The only keyboard that works is the english keyboard. I can understand as the game is in English only for now. I do not know if there are any plans for language support in the future. However on the iPhone I found it very difficult to play. Everyone knows how the iPhone keyboard reacts and very often the letter you try to press is not correct. Hence the autocorrect feature. I have fat fingers and this really sucks when typing. There should be an option for landscape mode. This would at least give players like me a little more room to type. Maybe this is better with the iPad as the screen and keyboard are larger. I could not however test this as I do not have an iPad.
Bottomline
This is essentially a free typing class for your iPhone or iPad. The iPhone controls are not that great and I can't think that this game will be in the top of any charts very long. There is nothing that hooks you to the game so that you want to play it again. I am not sure if it is very new, but the website doesn't even list this game amongst the others that Pine Entertainment have produced. This is an example that simple is not always better.
Rating: 4 cab rides out of 10.
Philip Teoli is one of our contributors. To learn more about him you can check out his website philipteoli.com.