It is fun to get caught up in a perfect mobile game every once in a while.
Ollie soars is part of Ollie's arcade, a collection of games created by the Iconfactory. Ollie soars is free - without any silly asterisks - and the other two games are very nicely priced as well.
Honestly: I have not got to the other two games because Ollie soars is just such a perfect quick-play experience.
Ollie flies from left to right.
Tap the right side of the screen to make him soar.
Tap the left side to dive.
Avoid obstacles, collect gems.
That is it.
Hit something, and the game is over. But starting over takes one tap and zero waiting, because this is a game which is not trying to squeeze money out of you. Just you, playing the game, enjoying the side-scrolling pixel graphics, for as long as you feel like.
I usually do not enjoy touch controls for arcade-ish games. They tend to feel to imprecise for my taste. Ollie soars somehow gets them just right, not even once have I wished I had physical buttons to press, or felt that I crashed because a touch did not register the way I expected it to.
The problem
My one problem is that I have become pretty good at the game. After one shocking episode of flight flow, I now need to spend more than ten minutes to even begin to approach my highest scores. That in turn puts a bit of a damper on the pick-up-and-play-in-little-breaks mentality. Do I have fifteen minutes to focus right now? What if something else needs my attention?
It would ruin a bit of the beautiful simplicity - probably more than would be worth it - but I almost wish there was a pause button just to remove that nagging thought.