Holiday fun: Monster Mash Saga and Christmas Invaders app review
RELIVE childhood simplicity this holiday season with retro arcade games for your smartphones! Fedora Gracia reviews two new contributions from Australian indie developer Hovel Games.
Monster Mash Saga Game Icon
“Get 100 points in 30 seconds!”
“Clear the slime in 15 moves!”
These lines pop up with every new game of Monster Mash Saga, the brainchild of Australian indie mobile developer Hovel Games, a two-person team comprising Kurt Rathjen and Emma Carter.
A simple click on the green monster icon brings you to a new journey, starting from Episode 1, Level 1.
For first-time players, there is a pop-up tutorial before commencing the actual game.
The Available Levels
Once you select the level you want to play, the screen is filled with colourful monsters, ready to be terminated by swiping and matching monsters of the same type and colour, with a minimum of three of the same kind.
How to play
Players are allotted five hearts for each game, with the hearts representing the lives and the number of times you can play. With every loss, the game gobbles a heart up.
Once all the hearts are gone, players must wait for them to regenerate before playing again.
Colourful monsters waiting to be eliminated
Not great at games? Worry not: the quirky design and user-friendliness of this game means that audiences of all ages can become professional monster-extinguishers.
Christmas Invaders
Hovel Games’ Christmas-themed take on arcade classic Space Invaders brings players through stage after stage of shooting down barrages of oncoming attackers.
Players obtain bonus points and lives after every shot that lands on Santa Claus and his reindeer.
Image: Hovel Games
The vivid Christmas design and catchy sound effects truly bring home the spirit of the season. Fire up your phones and get ready to shoot some invaders!
Hovel Games is an independent Australian development studio, run by animation expert Kurt Rathjen and entertainment publicist Emma Carter. Since 2012, they have developed a total of 7 free games for Android and iOS. Visit them on Google Play for more games.