Chain Reaction

In 2020 couch multiplayer games (single system, multiple players) are approaching death. These games were quite popular on consoles and PCs during the golden age of video games, but today publishers would rather have you buy 2 systems and 2 copies of the game to play multiplayer so that they can maximize profits.

On the mobile side of things, these games are rare, as mobile devices are single-user systems. So, when looking for something to review for today I was quite surprised to find Chain Reaction that doesn’t have a single-player mode. It only has modes for 2 or more players.

Graphics & Sound:

The graphics are simplistic. The play area is a rectangular board broken up into squares. Player pieces are little balls. Each player has balls of a particular colour. The board changes colour to match the balls of the current player to place. The only animations displayed are when a player has the limit of balls in a square causing them to rotate and when the balls are spreading between squares.

Sound is mostly non-existent except for when the balls split up. Then too it’s a bop sound so when you cause a chain reaction it gets annoying hearing that sound playing in rapid-fire. The sound for each player can be changed but hearing any of them soo much can make them quite annoying.

Gameplay: 

The point of the game is to be the only person standing on the board.

The board can be either 6 x 6 or 10 x 11 squares. During their turn, a player can either put a ball in an empty square, or add a ball to a square they already control. If a ball is added to a square that is at capacity then all the balls in that square get split up into neighbouring squares. This is how neighbouring squares are captured, if these squares are also at capacity then they too separate causing a chain reaction in favour of who started the chain reaction. 

Most squares have a capacity of 3 and separate on the 4th ball added, except for corner squares with a capacity of 1, and squares on the border who have a capacity of 2. Since you don’t lose a ball in the capture process it makes sense to grab corners and use them to cause a chain reaction to your outermost squares while picking up opposing squares along the way.

Conclusion:

It’s nice to have a game that you can play with your friends over coffee without each of them having to download it. I wish it had a single-player mode against an AI and I’m not sure why it doesn’t since that would give lonely people a reason to buy it. It’s fine at it’s current price of free.

Final Score: 7/10