App Review: Two Dots

Today, I want to review a game that I started playing at the beginning of this year. Its title is Two Dots and in addition to being extremely engaging, it is fun and well-crafted. This game was created by Playdots, Inc, and huge kudos to the creative team!

Two Dots is a puzzle game that doesn't require quick fingers or uncanny reflexes - just patience and perhaps a bit of luck. I had great fun obsessively playing it and trying out all the features. In the process, I took a whole bunch of screenshots and will gladly spam you with them in a bit.

The Premise

Two Dots is played as a board with several differently colored dots in a grid. There may be features on the board that react when something happens, and special dots that require a specific event to happen before activating.

You play by connecting dots of the same color. Connecting a closed loop of dots results in a special explosion which may in turn trigger some other effect.

Each game has targets to meet. You may need to accumulate a certain number of dots in a certain color, fill up an entire screen with water tiles or eliminate all fire tiles. Or any other number of criteria, in any combination.

In every game, you have a certain number of moves to use, and once you run out of moves, the game is over.

There are hundreds of levels, and it will be a long time before you run out of stuff to play.

The Aesthetics

Two Dots is both an adorable and beautiful game - there's no better way to put it. It's cartoony, colorful, and the animations are both awesome and very addictive. If it's one thing that Two Dots does not lack, it's aesthetics. For sure.

The Experience

I could spend hours just making stuff explode and zip and pop in there, and spoiler alert, I have! Calling it "fun" can be a bit of an understatement.

This game is not ultra-sexy in that sense, but that's what is amazing about it. A child could play it, an adult could play it, and both would still have fun.

The Interface

It's basically tap, drag and release, to connect dots. And once in a while, you may use special bonuses and apply them to any dot on the board. That takes an extra tap or two, but other than that, that's it! Beautifully simple!

Connecting a closed loop of dots (they call it "forming squares", which isn't geometrically accurate) causes all dots in that color on the board, to "explode".

What I liked

No time-based requirement. You can take the entire day to make a move, and there would be no penalty for your indecision. That said, that kind of defeats the entire purpose of playing this game. It's not a chess match. Suffice to say, there's no pressure to make a move right away, which is great. Less on the reflexes, more on the thinking.  

Color-blind features. This is very considerate. I approve!

Preview feature. Sometimes you just need to see the possible ramifications of your moves, and this game obligingly provides that. You just try the intended move without lifting your finger at the end, and the app lets you see the immediate outcomes.

The achievements in this game are pretty creative. I got quite a kick out of seeing these.

Treasure Hunt is nice, though a bit simplistic.

The Flip is great. I really like the concept. You complete a row or column, and you get bonuses. You complete an entire grid, and you get cool prizes!

While most of the special tiles are pretty cool, there are some that are my absolute favorites. The crystals, for one - the sound effects when they get activated are so awesome.

The water tile stages rank among my favorite.

The flower tiles are really beautiful once you activate them. Look at the way the petals burst! So poetic!

Mushroom tiles are so random and chaotic and I utterly love them.

The bird tiles are cute and make nice sound effects.

Meteors have a special place in my heart. You let them touch the bottom row, and they clear the entire column!

Sunstrike tiles are very useful and fun to play. Absolutely love the stages that feature them. Once you build them, you release them at a spot and kaboom!

What I didn't

Sometimes when an event expires while you were in the middle of playing it, and you turn off the game and come back, the game attempts to resume where you left off. That's certainly useful, except that when the event has expired, a glitch occurs. Probably a simple thing to fix.

Arcade mode. It's cute, that's for sure, but it gets old real fast having to replay from Stage 1 after failing a stage.

The music was charming at first, but quickly got annoying. Thankfully there was an option to turn it off.

Crabs and monkeys. I hate the damn things. Not in real life - I adore crabs (as food) and monkeys are lovable, but in this game, they are such a nuisance.

Fire tiles can be annoying too. They just spread and you can waste a lot of precious moves putting them out.

And the circuit tiles... they're a mixed bag. Sometimes they're easy and sometimes they are hellishly hard and not in a fun way.

Conclusion

Two Dots is not edgy. In fact, it's almost painfully kid-friendly. But the cool thing about it is that it doesn't need to be edgy. It's got a solid gaming mechanism and the graphics to back it up. And ultimately, that's pretty much all it needs.

My Rating

9.5 / 10

Two good to miss!
T___T