Geared

I was rummaging through the app store the other day, looking for a good game to burn 10 minutes or so, and Geared just popped out of nowhere. I don't know what it was, but something compelled me to click on it's link to read more. Apparently, without me ever knowing, Geared was the #1 paid app in the UK app store. Wha?!? Do people in the UK not share our freaky obsession with camera apps? I just assumed that it was a worldwide phenomenon. Guess not... needless to say, I think that Geared had now piqued my interest.

Geared is a relatively simple game in the Crazy Machines mold, although there isn't quite as much to do, or anger to be dished out. The game is presented, like everything else it seems, on a piece of graph paper, giving the game an oddly playful presentation. The goal of the game is to get all the gears on the screen to spin. On a typical level, there will be one spinning gear and a few non-spinning gears, with the goal being to make all the gears on the page spin. In order to make this happen, you get a set number of gears to fit into the open spaces between the pre-placed gears, but that's not all. Throughout the game, there are these 'no placement' zones that make you find interesting workarounds to your seemingly simple task.

The question now is whether or not I had fun with the game. I'd say that I definitely did, although the game went well over my 10 minute playtime goal. I sat and played the game for 42 minutes straight... I know because the game time happily told me so. Placing gears in different patterns across the screen oddly held my attention for longer than I ever imagined it would. I suppose that my problem with the game would be that once a level is done, it's done. I will never, in the course of my waking life, go back to play the first levels of Geared again. Is that so bad though? From my current experience, I would imagine that the total play time for the game is around an hour and a half, which really isn't so bad considering that the app costs only a dollar.

Other than the pretty solid gameplay, the graphics are good, if maybe overused in the "I've seen so many paper games in the last 3 months" sense. The sound effects are totally non-essential, as there is no music and only a basic clicking sound effect. Nothing about the graphics or sound rubbed me the wrong way, they just didn't make me gasp in shock.

Geared seems to have just about everything needed to be a successful game: a paper background, extremely simple concept, familiar feel, and of course, a $0.99 price point. It may never be your favorite game, but for $1, I would recommend picking it up right now