This is the first of a series of mini-reviews that will begin popping up on GiN. The games featured in the mini-reviews are mostly iOS or Android titles that deserve your money and your time. First up: Sand Slides.
When I first read the description of Sand Slides, I thought it would be a typical falling block game in the style of Tetris. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Aside from being really addictive like falling block games can be, the style of play is completely different. This is a game about directing waves of sand. It’s not as cut and dried as a falling block game. Sand, as sand does, slips and slides.
Some of the sand ends up in the wrong place, but that’s not a deal breaker. Scoring in this game is about volume. Getting most of the sand where it belongs is the goal.
That sounds simple and the game mechanics are simple. You draw lines with your fingers, which is why I rated the difficulty level as "easy." If only it was that simple to make all that sand go where you want it to go.
The sand comes in three colors: red, blue and turquoise. You have to match the sand that’s coming from bins at the top of the screen to the funnels at the bottom of the screen, but of course, they don’t line up perfectly. So it’s a matter of drawing lines to direct the sand where it goes. You can even draw buckets to hold sand while you’re moving other colors, but of course there are time limits for how long lines last before all that sand comes pouring down.
It seems so simple, but it’s devilishly tricky. I played for over an hour the first time I played. I had intended it to just be a ten-minute test run, but I couldn’t stop.
I played Sand Slides on my iPad. I’m not sure how the game plays on a smaller screen, but I can’t recommend it enough if you have an iPad.
Feeling competitive? You can sign into the server and compare your scores with others. If easy to learn, super addictive games are your thing, run, don’t walk to get Sand Slides.