Parents all over the world find it easier to teach their children through fear when they don’t listen, commonly scaring the Bejesus out of them with monsters. There are those that hide in the dark, under the bed, in the woods, those that eat disobeying kids, giants, flying monsters and any other type of creature imaginable. What those parents don’t know is that the word monster has its roots in the Latin word monstro, as Cicero mentioned in his first book on Divination (just Google it if you’re interested). That Latin verb translated ad-literam means “to show”, “to indicate”, so it doesn’t have any connections to ugly-creature-that-eats-disobeying-kids. It’s rather an indicative of an error that occurs naturally in the world.
Obviously I was scared of monsters and thought they were the all evil, up to my first encounter with a good one. It was “The Goonies”, one of the most beautiful movies of my childhood, where the “monster” Lotney ‘Sloth’ Fratelli became my favorite character. Sure I had encountered other “good” monsters in books (i.e. Beauty and the Beast) previous to this movie, but the movie made it clear that anomalies are just anomalies, not intrinsically evil.
Modern movies began popularizing the idea of good monsters, starting with the Hulk, Shrek and continuing with the Monsters, Inc. blockbuster. Monsters are no longer evil and I was surprised that even my son wanted a Sully monster puppet to sleep with, a thing that would’ve given me nightmares 2 decades ago.
The point is that monsters can be good, so don’t disconsider them just because they’re different. Instead you should help them get back to their planet as it’s the case in “Falling Monsters”, a game for Android developed by {zeichen}kraftwerk (or ZKW for short), a German creative studio founded in 2010. This is their 10th Android game published so far and they’ve also developed an online game (Aquasim.net) and mobile ones for iOS.
In Falling Monsters there are good, friendly creatures that were trapped in your Android device by evil entities called Blorks (don’t know if they’re the same from the Pokemon series, but you can recognize them as red-colored monsters). You have to help these friendly creatures teleport to their planet, Monstranus, by tapping on them as they fall down on your screen. They prefer to travel with their own kind so tapping same-colored monsters would increase your score more than different-colored ones. Plus you get streak bonuses and unlock achievements. However don’t tap on the red-colored Blorks as those make you lose lives. Below you can see a short video presentation of Falling Monsters:
It’s very easy to understand its gameplay however don’t be fooled that the game is easy to play, as those little monsters start falling very fast and you have to use both hands to advance through the levels. Here’s an overview of its features:
- Tap and teleport. As you’ve seen in the presentation above all you have to do is tap fast enough on the falling monsters (only on the good ones) to increase your score and advance to the next level. Bonuses such as coins fall down too however those are more difficult to tap on since they’re smaller – at the end of the level all your achievements are counted and based on those your score is calculated.
Just tap on a monster to teleport it back on its planet and increase your score
- Achievements and store. The game has an achievements section where you’ll get a badge each time you reach a certain goal. For instance if you tap fast enough to do several consecutive combos, you’ll get an achievement and there are different ones to obtain. In each game you gain coins based on your performance and those can be used to purchase different items from the in-app store – as an example you can purchase extra lives.
- Excellent graphics. You could tell that the company behind Falling Monsters has an in-house designers, as the graphics look very good and fit well on smaller screens (such as an Xperia Mini) or on larger ones (such as on an Asus Transformer TF300). You get to see interesting visual effects as well, from different types of monsters (in various colors) to coins and streak combo announcements, not to mention that some of the artwork has a retro style.
- Soundtrack and sound effects. You’re accompanied by music through the game and also each action when actually playing the game has a sound effect attached. These help as a guide through the gameplay too.
- Share your score online. Falling Monsters integrates a third party online score service that will let you share your record and see how well you stand in comparison with other players. Since we’re talking about sharing is also worth mentioning that the game lets you share feedback with the developer directly from the main screen, as well as allow you to tell your Facebook friends about it.
The game is not free but for under a dollar you could consider it being free of charge. You can get it from Google Play here: Download Falling Monsters
