Every night at 12:15 AM Pacific, Amazon gives away a free paid app through their Amazon app store. As I am usually awake at 12:15 AM Pacific, why not let you know if today’s app is useful or just more clutter in your app drawer?
Today’s free app is Pocket Ants (Ad-Free) by Concrete Software, Inc., who have already had their game Aces Bubble Popper and Fast Food Calorie Counter given away as free apps. Ordinarily, Pocket Ants clocks in at a whopping $.99, which makes it the cheapest app they’ve given away for five days.
Pocket Ants isn’t quite a game. It’s more of an ant murder simulator. You are given an overhead view of an ant hill and you get to kill ants using a variety of tools, from magnifying glasses to flame throwers to the ability to call forth the storm from the heavens above! You can find out what happens when an ant is struck by lightening.
There’s not really much of a point to the mayhem. There isn’t a goal. You aren’t given any points for killing ants. You don’t open up new weapons – you start off with 14 different tools, you finish with 14 different tools. There is a lot of variety in how you can kill ants, just not much purpose. In theory, there’s a race mode, but you’re just seeing if you kill more red ants than black ants.
This isn’t to say the game isn’t well done. The graphics are pretty enough. It moves smoothly on my OG Droid. If you can get past the inherent sadism in the app, it can be kind of fun for short stretches. That said, Pocket Ants is kind of hollow. We all know the reason to build up a town in Sim City is so that you can destroy it, but the point is you build the town first. This is just the last part of Sim City. Except with ants. It could be worse I guess – you could be murdering koalas or manatees.
Assuming you have no issue with murdering pretend ants, Pocket Ants is worth the free download. It may not be a part of your regular app rotation, but it might make the line at the bank feel a little shorter, if you imagine the tellers are ants.
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