Good game with a fatal flaw – Spout: monochrome mission Review

At its core, this is a really good game for the reasons others have given. However, despite improvements in this version (most importantly, iOS 11 compatibility), it has a flaw that makes it unplayable in the long term: The controls. In previous versions the “thumb stick” was at a fixed location on the screen, and small movements could be achieved by just tapping around that point. Now it is wherever you put your finger down, and doing so immediately propels the ship in one arbitrary direction (left). This creates four related problems: 1. The lack of a fixed control point makes the game feel differently in the hand. It’s hard to get a consistent feel necessary for high scores. It’s sort of like a PS4 controller that weighs slightly different each time you pick it up. 2. The loss of the ability to direct exhaust or movement by tapping makes it very difficult to move around when you’re higher up and the screen is filled with obstacles. 3. It is useful sometimes to lift your finger and use gravity to take you where you want to go. However, now there’s a momentary reorientation necessary when putting your finger down on the screen which is caused by the need to avoid moving left and by the awkwardness of an inconsistent control location. 4. The crashes caused by the aforementioned reorientation discourages me from lifting my finger when I should, which results in risky flying. I like challenging games, but not when the challenge is caused by a broken control. As it is, the control is fine if you just want to kill a few seconds (literally), but since the control makes play at an advanced level nearly impossible such that I can’t achieve higher and higher scores, I’m losing interest in what is otherwise an excellent game.
Review by AlpacaLips on Spout: monochrome mission.