Pocket God

Pocket God is a cute little app that allows you to nurture and/or torment a small handful of islanders. Your little tribal friends are given multiple habitat options and there are many different "activities" you can do with them (or, if you'd prefer, TO them). Simple and intuitive controls, combined with some pretty entertaining concepts made Pocked God a popular app, but is it worth all the hype?

Well for starters, the developers at Bolt Creative have kept up with their promise of frequent updates. They release them in episode form and each one grants you new things to do! They've released 27 "episodes" to date and most of them have actually been pretty original. You can choose to be kind to your villagers by feeding and protecting them, OR you can feed them to sharks and toss them into volcanos. It's completely up to you! Although I must say that going the "vengeful god" way is usually first choice for most.

The graphics are actually super high quality considering the price of the app. The characters are cute and some of the facial expressions they make are pretty priceless. The soundtrack is charming and fits well with the game, but it does get kind of obnoxious if you play for a longer period of time. It's not a very big deal, however, due to the "mute music" option.

Another one of my favorite things about the app is that about 5 episodes ago, Bolt Creative got together with Lima Sky and made a minigame called "Ooga Jump". Yup, that's right! Pocket God's own version of Doodle Jump! It's the same concept as the original game, the only difference being that your character is an islander (called an "Ooga") and you're jumping on clouds. The speed of your jump is slightly faster than in Doodle Jump, so I find it to be a bit more challenging, but all in all I think it was a top notch addition!

With several different "minigames" to be had, the option to compete against other people's scores has been added. I don't really use this function much, due to the majority of the games being a bit weak and the fact that it's "buddy to buddy" and not a global score list. However if you have lots of friends with iPhones and Pocket God, then this might appeal to you.

Overall, Pocket God has tons of stuff to discover and play around with. I didn't want to go into too much detail because half the fun is waiting for updates and discovering the new things yourself. I would say my biggest beef with the app is that after the initial download of each new episode, you really only have about 15 minutes of play time until you start becoming bored with the new developments. However, with dozens upon dozens of play options and 27 updates in less then 9 months, this is hardly a problem. Pocket God is definitely worth your dollar.