Mediocre Games is the name of a company that makes really good games. It can get confusing, but it also makes sense. Most of the companies that flood the App Store with crappy shovelware are named “Best Top Games Flappy WhatsApp Kim Kardashian Company Limited" so I guess there’s an opposites effect in play. Anyway, the company that brought us such gems as Does Not Commute (Free), Smash Hit (Free), and the Sprinkle series are back again with an interesting new puzzler called DIRAC that’s like a game of fast-paced connect the dots. Red and blue protons slowly emanate out from an atom and it’s your job to connect as many same-colored ones as you can together without an opposite-colored one touching the line you make. In addition, if you can connect enough to create a giant circle, you’ll be awarded points for all the protons of either color that get trapped inside that circle. It’s a bit tricky to explain, so check out the brief trailer to get an idea of DIRAC.
Like many of the greatest games, the concept behind DIRAC is simple to grasp but deceptively complex and challenging. You feel compelled to wait for there to be many dots on the screen so you can create the ultimate giant circle and watch the poins rain down, but you also run the risk of having your mega circle zapped into oblivion if you aren’t careful and you’ll end up walking away with nothing. There’s also the strategy of clearing out opposite-colored dots by making shorter connected lines out of the ones that are in your way to make more room to create a giant circle out of what’s left. Additionally, there are special multiplier cubes which offer yet another wrinkle as you want to wait for them to approach close enough to your atom that you encircle them and increase your multiplier, but wait to long and it will hit the atom and actually drop your multiplier down. This might as well be called Risk vs. Reward: The Game.
As with all of Mediocre’s releases, DIRAC has a certain polish from top to bottom and also has a lot of personality, as the “theme" of the game is you’re working your way up the corporate ladder at a lab and everything is presented as such. DIRAC sounds like another non-mediocre game from Mediocre, so look for it to arrive next Thursday, March 10th and check out the forum thread for some discussion before then.
