Fun Little Things: Ant Smasher and PenCatch

Sometimes you want to be entertained for exactly 1:30. That's why the Droid market is flooded with little casual apps, ranging from minigames for the train to.. well, minigames for the train. That's really all they're good for. I've detailed a couple below.

Ant Smasher

A bit of Raid would sort that right out.

The premise of Ant Smasher (or, to give it its full name, Ant Smasher Free Game Best Fun) is a fairly drôle example of something "doing what it says on the tin"; in effect, you smash ants. Not actual ants of course- that would have PETA chasing after you (probably). Your job is to 'smash', or in real terms, touch, as many of the scuttling bastards as possible before they get to the end of the screen. You progress through stages as you do so, with each subsequent stage more difficult than the last (by way of the ants being faster or sneakier). As you progress, interesting things start happening. Touch a tennis ball before it hurls past and you gain a life. Accidentally 'smash' a bee on your travels and it's game over. Pretty simple stuff, but irritatingly addictive. A bit like crack cocaine, really. Is it worth the bother? Well, the developer claims that it is somehow "physics based" (it's not) and that it is "optimized best performance among all Android apps" (again, it's really not), and the blurb works hard to convince you that is, though at a base level, it's another simple "______ Smasher" minigame, and absolutely nothing more. Though a read through the user reviews suggests that it's a particular hit with the kids, and surely you'd rather they killed ants this way, no?

PenCatch

As difficulty increases, pen size decreases. It's
like that with penises, but the other way round.

Fed up with catching the same old boring pencil? Wouldn't you rather catch something else? Well thank God, because here's PenCatch, a game from Japan where you catch.. a pencil. There isn't a great deal to say about this one, because it literally is just tapping the screen to grab a falling pencil (the goal isn't to touch the falling pencil, just to catch it in an on-screen 'hand'). There are two different modes; one where you select one of the ten 'stages', one of the three 'difficulties' (one read of the reviews on the Market reveals that this game is horrendously difficult no matter which one it's set to), and then catch the pen(cil); and a second where you can set up custom stages (custom stages go as far as setting the drop time, difficulty and stage). In conclusion, if you catch the pencil, you win; if you don't catch the pencil, you lose. Being so difficult, you'll probably lose a lot. In short it's a fun little game, but the game's lack of complexity seems to have been balanced by the developer making this game too hard to enjoy. It's okay once you get the hang of it, mind.