Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.
With a $1.99 price tag in the App Store, Sand Slides, a physics-wielding original game runs the risk of being overlooked in a sea of flashy games with thousands of downloads, but when you dig deeper, sometimes you find gems.
First Impressions
I have to come right out and admit that I judge a book by its cover, occasionally, and that’s true with software more than anything. When I first saw Sand Slides, I thought it had some potential, but the graphics didn’t draw me in. They weren’t bad, but I’ve been spoiled with some of the more popular games, I guess. At first glance, this looks like a simple game without a lot of depth, but looks can be deceiving. To be fair, I’m not sure how much you can dress up sand.
How To Play
This is where simple comes in. The basic premise of the game is to get the sand to flow in to the correct bins by color. Blue sand goes in the blue bin, yellow in the yellow, etc. Sometimes you get lucky and it can fall straight in, but usually, it’s up to you to create a slide by drawing a line. The slides help guide the sand to its proper destination.
At the start of the game, you get a kind of bank of 30,000 grains of sand and every grain that goes into the wrong colored bin deducts from your bank and every grain that you get into the proper bins adds to your score. Below is a video showing how the game play works.
It looks easier than it is to keep all your grains, though. In the harder modes, you can easily lose with one simple mistake.
Hard To Put Down
This game was surprisingly addictive. You could spend hours just trying to beat your own personal best score, and when you do, there are several other difficulty levels to try. This is also one of those games that generally only lasts a few minutes, opening the door to that “just one more game before bed” mentality. Losing track of time with Sand Slides was not hard to do.
Conclusions
At $1.99, Sand Slides doesn’t stand out as a deal that you can’t pass up. There are plenty of well-polished games in the App Store that I could easily spend money on, instead. That said, beauty is not just skin deep. The addictive nature and smooth play of this game are features even some of the best dressed apps forget about. If I’m playing this game months from now, it’s $1.99 well spent.
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on May 3rd, 2011 at 3:58 am
lol. Funny and interesting game. Saw few videos of it on youtube and I think it’s a nice game to spend your time haha
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on May 3rd, 2011 at 9:10 am
I love this game..good review.
on May 3rd, 2011 at 12:07 pm
GREAT REVIEW MAN! Keep up the great work!
on May 3rd, 2011 at 9:34 pm
hey man this is an excellent review of my ccurrent fav game:) keep it up joe:)
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on May 4th, 2011 at 10:31 am
more review at iPhone game,bro :)
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on May 4th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
great review I will have to check this game out. I havebeen addicted to world of goo for the past month.
on May 5th, 2011 at 3:48 am
interesting game , will be useful for my readers
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on May 5th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
This looks like an cool game, will have to check it out. I get pretty addicted to games, once I get going I pretty hard to make stop.
on May 15th, 2011 at 8:18 am
I first thought this game has no challenging factor but after I watched the clip, I honestly think it is exciting and can be a way to reduce stress and to keep your mind working even while playing. :) Surely $1.99 is well spent for this game.
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on May 16th, 2011 at 11:56 pm
Looks like a fun game, would especially be fun an iPad where you have more room to draw and see everything so to speak.
-Jean
on May 19th, 2011 at 3:43 am
This … is kind of interesting. There have been virtual sandbox apps for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone turn it into a game before. This one looks pretty well-done, nice effects, good frame rate. Seems like it’s primarily a go-as-long-as-you-can sort of game; are there other game modes, or does it just keep getting faster the longer you go?
on June 22nd, 2011 at 3:06 am
Hello Joe Tech ,
You might also know Sand Slides is not simple Game. In earilor time Sand sliders were use as time watcher.