Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Having never played Blue Dragon 360, I’m at a bit of a loss during the First Thirty of Blue Dragon DS. The game starts out with a plot that presumes the player is carrying some emotional weight from the events of the original game. I’m sure Blue Dragon fans are thrilled, but it makes for an odd start to a sequel that is showing up on a different platform with the potential for an entirely new audience.

Blue Dragon Plus is a tactics game that pulls no punches. Although the first few missions are largely in the get-to-know-feature-A style, the interface is thick and initially a bit confusing. The level of detail involved in managing skills and levels and archetypes is daunting. I mean, I just learned how to kill dungeon rats; I’m not really ready to comprehend the optimum strategies for character position and filling item slots.

And this game is talky talky talky. One thing games need to get past is this ancient 16-bit habit of giving a character a useless generic dialogue box, like “We accept the quest!”, then jumping back to have the sprite animate one block forward, and then throwing up another dialogue box of something equally useless like “And we will do our best!” Blue Dragon Plus does this all the time. I love cutscenes and I love plot, but in the year 2009 we should be at the point where we make smart design and script editing decisions, to smooth out these weird spots.

The actual gameplay seems solid. Completely stylus-controlled, each level is a real-time race to direct your team, activate their skills and kill the enemies. The hook is the magic-based Shadow attacks, where a cool-looking 3D genie unfurls from behind the 2D character sprite. For much of the early levels, I was leading my strongest guys directly into the fray, firing off a Shadow attack, and then jockeying the squad around to rotate in the guys with less damage. The Shadow attacks can have a elemental nature that requires mastering a Pokemon-style system of resistance and weakness.

From the context clues given in the cutscenes, I’m gathering that not EVERYBODY in Blue Dragon 360 had an accompanying Shadow… but now they all do. This is more than a little convenient, but I do like the increasingly absurd Shadow designs. You’re probably familiar with the muscled dragon who gives the series its title, but there is also a scary unicorn and one of those giant rafflesia plants.

Although I’m a little put off by the dense beginning, I think once I master the intricacies of the interface I’ll find a rewarding experience. I can see the light just over the hill, perhaps in the Third Thirty of playtime. If the game wasn’t so chatty, I may have gotten there already!