Nukleus: circling down the drain – Review

I have a question for everyone: if you see everything that a game has to offer in less than sixty seconds, burrowing through to its heart and soul in less time than it takes to microwave a packet of rice, what the hell are you supposed to say about it?

Nukleus is a small indie title that sits somewhere in the pile of free puzzle games that I think make up eighty percent of the app store by now, and it acts sort of like the bargain-bucket version of that Osmos gravity physics puzzler that came out several years ago. It’s certainly a simpler premise than Osmos, a feat which is impressive in itself. There’s a big blob sitting in the middle of the screen that’s one colour, and other blobs are moving towards it as though gravity were pulling them in. Your mission (should you choose to accept it, because there’s nothing else better to do at the local bus stop) is to tap Big Blob so that he cycles through his available colours and matches the shade of whatever blobs are about to smash into him. Get it wrong, and you have to start again. That’s it.

No, really. That’s it. The only thing you can pay for is the option to get rid of the advertisements, and considering that a) they’re not really a problem, and b) I can’t imagine anybody playing this for more than ten minutes, I doubt the developer is making much cash that way. I presume the intention was to aim for the simple-yet-addictive Flappy Bird model, but I’m getting a lot more of the simple and a lot less of the addictive.

Actually, it wasn’t entirely true when I said that was it. There is a second game mode where you have to rotate Big Blob instead of changing his outfit, making sure that all the fans who’re rushing to meet him crash into his best side, but again – seen it and gotten over it in less than a minute. I played longer just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, but I wasn’t. It’s just… What it is.

I’m actually kind of glad I don’t have to give Nukleus a review score, because it hasn’t even inspired enough motivation to have an opinion of it. It would be like trying to review oxygen. I guess I can’t think of any reason not to download it, because it is free, completely inoffensive and marginally more entertaining than staring at the ceiling, but I can’t say I’ll be deleting anything to make room for it on my phone.

You know what? Just download it regardless. It’s doing fine for the marginal amount of what it’s attempting, and it’ll make the developer happy to see his name getting out there, if that’s not too patronising a reason. Besides, it’s not badly made. Unflavoured rice isn’t bad either, I just don’t have the stomach to keep going back for it, not when there’s high-quality steak available. By the way, in this analogy, the enjoyable Hector: Badge Of Carnage series is probably the steak. Go download that afterwards. There’s prostitutes and everything.