I heard that when you turn 23, you die. And so now that I approach my deathbed, my eyes fail me and tint rose-colored as they do. The thoughts that fill my mind are an old man’s thoughts: Flappy Bird, Tiny Towers, and Clash of Clans. These games once transfixed the youths at my esteemed middle school and made my parents limit my screen time. But now they are mere relics of an ancient golden age, and we are left with barbarous slop.

For one, the advertisements for these games have grown ever more heinous and irritating. The only two ways that mobile game companies can conceive of garnering your attention is either through disturbing imagery of mothers freezing to death in the winter, covered by foot fungus that you need to click to scrub off, or of some invertebrate, barely sentient simulacra of a player fumbling through some elementary puzzle until their character dies. Not once has the foot fungus beckoned me successfully, nor do I feel the great urge to do the puzzle better so the little king man survives. Who is the target audience for these? It is clearly not me, an old man of the elderly old man age of 22. I remember back when I was a youth of twelve years, sitting with an I-Pad of my room watching 30 second unskippable ads. But those ads were cool: animated characters fighting one another, armies marching on distant lands. They actually looked like an artist had a hand in their creation. Not so much. 

And best I can tell, mobile game companies have concluded that two types of game need to be made and made in great abundance: the base builder and the puzzle game. I’m surprised that this genre has been so enduring to be honest. Back in the ancient 2010s, this formula had already been perfected, and there has been shockingly little innovation on the genre since then. I’m surprised that there are any untapped playerbases that have not committed their livelihoods to Clash of Clans or Mobile Strike by now. Are there any more non-aligned brainrotted basebuilders left to trap? 

Nor do the puzzle games match the quality of those from the early 2010s. I have had the pleasure of listening to the lectures of game designers behind games like Candy Crush and the other classic puzzle games. The amount of thought that goes into their design, story, and art direction is enormous. But these new puzzle games, the asset flips with the same generic set of characters hardly seem to have the same appeal. Given all this, I’m left to wonder why these modern brainrot games are able to succeed, when it is clear that the bare minimum amount of effort is put into them. They seem like strict downgrades from older games that have all the same addictive mechanics, but a far better coat of paint. 

So I beg you, fulfill an old man’s dying request and answer me this: Do you think brainrot games of the present hold up to those of the past? Let us know on the Boss Rush Discord. 

Featured Image Credit: Pandhuya Niking