Game Critique: Frantic Architect

Frantic Architect for iOS and Android is a great casual game by Will Kwan/BulkyPix in which you have to build as tall a tower as possible, with the kicker being that you have limited control of where exactly the next building block will go. A video will help explain better:

The game has a high degree of polish and the user interface design and screen layout is excellent. However, play of more than a few minutes will lead to frustration, which is something that really needs to be managed by the developer. Too much frustration and the player will go away and never open the game again.

I think there’s one change that could be made that would make the game easier and less frustrating to play:

The block should lock into place on the “touch up” event, rather than on the “touch down” event as it is now.

This simple change would enable the player to reduce their reaction time by keeping their finger on the screen until they exact moment they want to lock a block in place.

The physical movement of lifting the finger off the screen is a lot faster than the the double movement of first touching the screen followed by lifting the finger off again.