Personally when I sit down at my desk, I look for immersive experiences like MMOs and RPGs. Games like Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the old Pirates Online tended to be my mainstays. But, like many others, mobile apps are taking more and more of my play time.
Mobile gaming’s strengths tend to come from short learning curves, simple but detailed play, reflex action, and repeat playability. After all, most of the time you’re swiping over to play a game on your phone or pad it’s to kill time or take a break. You want to be able to start, pick up where you left off, play a bit then be able to step away.
InfiniteSquare’s HiLight: Touch the Light! touches on many of mobile gaming’s positive elements, but doesn’t necessarily break any new ground.
Deer in HiLight
When I first saw the gameplay video (above) I was reminded of the old hand-held games of my salty youth (Yes, the Amazon is putting a date on herself). Battery operated playthings like Merlin, Wizard and Simon would play Follow Me or Simon Sez type games.
This would entail the game displaying a series of lights and tones, which the player must then duplicate. Each success meant the next level would be that much more challenging.
HiLight uses this same memory challenge using taps and swipes of your mobile device screen with a variety of increasingly difficult levels and various watercolor style backgrounds. As you succeed, the background begins to lighten, as though the sun is rising on a new day.
Sunlight is the theme here.
In the Level Selection screen, note the dusky desert which your efforts will soon illuminate. The completed levels show your best score rated with glowing suns from 1-3. You can always go back and try to improve your score.
As I said before, HiLight is easy to pick up. The first levels walk you right through what’s what.
At the start of each level, the game will perform it’s first move – highlighting a circle by either tap or swipe motion. Once the sequence is complete, it’s your turn to replicate the steps.
Failure just means a chance to try again. And success is measured in how sharply you performed the moves and how quickly you finish. To that end, the game is not only simple to play but very positive in it’s re-enforcement to keep you trying.
Lightweight
For all it’s elegant simplicity, HiLight does accelerate into becoming a more challenging tap-n-swipefest and the higher levels require you to remember a lot of quick moves on reflex.
I can say it’s a nice distraction. My sons and I tinkered with it a while, but some will likely find it’s subdued colors, minimal soundtrack and simple play a bit of a turn off. However, there’s a lot of room for InfiniteSquare to enhance or upgrade in the future – beyond just adding more levels.
It’s going to stay in our Game Apps folder for now, at least until we can beat the hardest levels… IF we can.
Let The Sun Shine In
If you want to add HiLight to your Games folder, it’s a quick free download from:
Disclaimer Paragraph
As one can view from my Twitter feed, the above review was prompted after I was approached directly by a member of InfiniteSquare’s marketing division. Her feed will also show she has invited a number of players & writers to try the game. As someone in marketing, that’s her job; to get the word out about a product they are proud of.
I post this so there’s no misunderstanding. Leonie Pereira has been very nice, but has put no words in my mouth. Neither GameSkinny nor I gain anything by me posting my thoughts and opinion above.
