DodgeDot - fun iPhone game

My daughters and I have been fighting over my iPhone all night because we want to play DodgeDot, a new iPhone game that currently costs 99 cents. My friend and old school bOING bOING contributor Jim Leftwich co-created DodgeDot with his partner Steve Doss. He told me, "When I first thought the game up I was trying to come up with something that was a mix of the best qualities of classic and timeless games. Part skill, part strategy, part randomness, and something that was also calming and pleasant to look at."

The object is to drag colored dots of various sizes to matching colored rectangles around the perimeter of the screen. When dragging a dot you aren't allowed to bump into a dot or rectangle of a different color, or you will lose health or lives. There's more to it, of course, and the game becomes more challenging each level. The nice thing is that you can learn the rules pretty quickly by just playing it. My six-year-old caught on to the object of the game and its rules faster than I did.

DodgeDot works with the Jampaq Network (free, and accessible in the app), which gives players the ability to Follow and be Followed. Most importantly, it gives the game a new round each Sunday at midnight before Monday. All of the levels get new starting patterns (dot sizes, positions, and speeds), which really makes a huge difference in keeping the game fresh, and then we have new rankings for each Round," says Jim.

Now that my kids are in bed, I have it all to myself until morning.

DodgeDot | Follow on Twitter here

• [stefan_gruber]

  It’s like an eliss jr, without quite as much care in the feel and design. It sort of feels like a prototype of eliss.

• [Melissa McNamara]

  Fun game, thanks.

• [remmelt]

  That sounds and looks like Eliss. How do the two compare?

  http://www.toucheliss.com/

• [nemofazer]

  Well that took care of my saturday afternoon. A time vampire.

• [octopod]

  wtf is a shine a light prize? and wtf is sacred winds communications?

• [Rob Beschizza]

  If you’re complaining about the ad in the rss feed, sorry about that. We’re working on it now.

  • [octopod]

    yeah I was, cheers. this seemed an appropriate place.

• [josh909]

  just noticed that this is now free in the iTunes app store :D

• [Anonymous]

  yeah, it looks just like eliss, but with worse art and fewer gameplay mechanics. still, eliss is the best game for the iphone, so dodgedot is probably worth a try.

• [stefan_gruber]

  It’s like an eliss jr, without quite as much care in the feel and design. It sort of feels like a prototype of eliss.