Bag It!
Platform: iPad, Android
Eating food is fun. Making food is fun. Growing food is work, but it's fun. Buying food can even be fun. But what part of obtaining noms is the least entertaining? Bagging your groceries. (We would have also accepted "paying for food".) With Bag It!, a game we originally mentioned when it was released for iOS, stuffing packaged foods into a paper bag finally has some reward to it. You still have to be careful, though, because crushed eggs in a mobile game are even more disappointing than in real life!
The basics of Bag It! are somewhat similar to Tetris: shapes come in from the top of the screen, and you have to make them fit snugly together. Here, though, those shapes are foods, each with its own personality and durability rating. You have to arrange everything so the sturdier items are on the bottom and the more delicate items on top. It's a bad idea to set a watermelon on top of a breadstick, for example, but you can usually get away with orange juice on top of milk. Rotate and slide items to fit them in, then wait nervously as everything settles and you (hopefully) move on to the next level.
Bag It! is a gorgeous mobile game, and the HD versions scale everything up to size quite nicely. There's plenty of content to enjoy, with dozens of levels and even more challenges to complete. Nice little touches such as bonuses or penalties when pairing "friendly" or "unfriendly" foods really make you think. You won't have an easy time with Bag It!, and it demands perfection instead of sloppy "close enough" moves, but stick with it and you'll be rewarded with plenty of groceries and plenty of unlockables!
This was recently the free app of the day. I'd say it's one of the best apps that I've tried and this isn't even the type of game that I go for. There is a "Lite" version that's free so that you can check it out before you buy.
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