What is Reddit's opinion of Pulse?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

(Big post incoming...)

Well so far so good - I think SS&SEP used to appear as "intel only" but now there is a new build alongside that (although I haven't tried it)

The 6 I installed are all hooked into Google Play Games for achievements, one or 2 for saving game data, but none ask for excessive profile stuff. These ~~5~~ six are Alto, Caterzillar, Invert, Pug, Snowball & Vignettes.

Vignettes looks cool, it ticks the boxes I hinted at from first impressions. Imagine if Windosill, Echochrome & even a bit of Monument Valley were distilled down to a single object with few controls other than changing how you view it and occasionally tapping. Did you ever play _PRISM? The (early) controls feel like that.

The intro/orientation (ha point-of-view puns!) level required 4 changes, indicated by 4 dots at the top of the screen, each brought about by seeing the thing from a precise angle. The next level had enough dots that they spilled onto a 2nd row, so I'm guessing it quickly gets complex. Maybe later levels will have branching paths, depending on what view/object you find/choose? Maybe there will be puzzles inside puzzles, becoming more like The Room? I have no idea but I'm glad I've got it :)

Snowball is still great. Tap the left of the screen to trigger left-action flippers/springs, or move the breakout bat to the left (yes, there is a breakout game in your pinball), tap the right to - you get it.

Tap the fireplace to pause. tap either side of the screen to lift the little ^ shaped wedge above the tree field. Hold your finger on the screen to magnetize the Tesla coils. Yes, there are magnetic Tesla coils in your pinball game.

I've got a couple of grumbles that might not bother anyone else. Despite lots of us having decent (rotated) 1080p, 5"+ screens, the camera stays zoomed a little & follows the ball. This means that it can be a bit dizzying when:

• the camera reaches the edge of the play area & stops, but the ball keeps moving to the side of the screen
• you smash a snowman, which of course means you now have 3 snowballs, and the camera zooms out to let you (try to) keep track of them
• any time you go through a "warp" cave/tunnel, and the camera has to rush to the destination so you can keep going

This is all fairly minor, and a quick feature check turned into almost half an hour of pinball. I'd like to see an option to stay zoomed out, or extend the non-playable area far enough that the camera didn't "bump" into the edge; if you're going to follow the ball(s), keeping it in the centre seems the most intuitive, and might even make the multiball-zoom-out less jarring too.

Most importantly, though, it's December, and you can play pinball with snow!

Alto's Adventure, which is a complete lie unless you think it's an adventure to put OlliOlli/Trials on a snowboard and slide it at Llamas, is how I remember it. One button - tap to jump, hold to rotate in the air (hoping you can land a backflip), then later on there will be a couple of extras that you can unlock with in-game collectable coins, that are activated from icons in the corner.

Most importantly, though, it's December, and you can dash downhill through snow!

I bet there will be moments in other games where I could shout "SNOW" in bold, but I think I'll give it a rest. If only Puzzle Agent had been Android-ified, we could all go to Scoggins.

At least one of Alto/Snowball was one of those games (like Duck Warfare) that seems to keep its goals/achievements internal, but urging it to go back to the title screen, or options, eventually (meaning after about 40 seconds) nudged it to bring up the Google Play prompt, whilst all the others I tried were quick to ask about connecting when first launched.

Unlike Duck Warfare, which I don't think uses external achievements no matter how you poke it.

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Finally... thoughts about the dreaded Humble Mobile app.

First off, apart from for that one bundle with Flight Control HD in it, you don't need to use their app so if you hate it, that's fine. I don't love it, but I used it this time.

Next, don't trust the app to update via the play store. It's a bit frustrating, but go to https://humblebundle.com/getapp

If you've had an older version installed, perhaps with problems using Android 6+'s permissions, the newest one still looks like a 2.2 app but it works and will install over a previous version like any other "do you want to update" installation. If you're buying from Humble & other 3rd parties, you'll already need to have allowed apps to be installed from .apk files, so installing the Humble app asks for nothing new there.

Another important point it that this isn't a package manage/device administrator. It puts the .apk files in Downloads/humblebundle, and then opens them from there, so you can leave them or make backups, then delete whenever.

If you do choose to use it, the download progress bars seem pretty much broken and some previous functionality is hit-and-miss. I think I disabled notifications for the app, so that one's my fault, but previously the button to the right of a game would be one of the following (in order):

• Blue with a "download me" arrow, or grey if incompatible/unavailable.
• Yellow with an "upgrade me" arrow, if updates are available
• Red with a "cancel" X, when downloading
• Green with a joystick icon if ready to play

But for each of these, there's an issue!

• I don't know how/why some games are incompatible? I guess Uplink's Tablets >7" requirement makes sense because of text sizes, and Osmos has a >8" version as well as a mobile version so you're not missing out.
  But Spacechem wants a >5" tablet (my phone has a 5.1" screen) and Pulse just says "Unsupported" (the Play version also says incompatible with all my devices, and hasn't been updated since 2013).
• The app wants to update Twofold Inc., which I first bought from the Play Store. I've not looked closely but I doubt the Humble build is newer, so maybe it's using a clumsy filenaming convention to detect this? For example v1.humble being seen as later "alphabetically" than v1.999999?
• As mentioned, progress bars are broken, so the files arrive quickly but games still show the red "cancel" button. However if I hit this button after I know a file has arrived, it turns to...
• The green button! Great, the green button can be forced to appear, and launches the corresponding game. A small point though: the app has a ︙ > Advanced > Delete all downloaded files option. This only deletes installers for games that are showing the green icon, so those broken progress bars can still be a hurdle.

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tl;dr: Good bundle, bad app.

EDIT - I remembered how to count to six.

Pulse is a hot load of fun.