What’s App-ening: Shake up your spare time

When players beat a level without missing a goal, they receive a perfect score and some confetti for their trouble. (Screenshot by Leah Higginbotham) Photo credit: Leah Higginbotham

Welcome to What’s App-ening, your weekly source for the latest and greatest in mobile apps.

Mobile gaming is not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people have smartphones for strictly utilitarian purposes, some people’s storage is taken up by photos and some of us have too much homework to play games.

But everyone gets stuck somewhere with nothing to do at times, and that is why the video game gods created mobile games.

This week’s app is called Slide the Shakes, a game whose description is in the title.

Players slide and release their finger to send their milkshake across strange counter tops in an attempt to land them on the green goals.

Each level has 1 to 5 sublevels within it. If you miss the goal but remain on the counter, you’ll reset at the beginning of the sublevel you are on.

STS 1.PNG — Levels feature a number of challenges, including moving platforms, zany countertops or the ever frustrating friction-increasing slime. (Screenshot by Leah Higginbotham) Photo credit: Leah Higginbotham

However, if you miss and break the shake, you have to start over at the very beginning of the level.

Occasionally, the app offers to let you watch an ad to have three chances to start on your sublevel even if you break your shake, but it only lasts through the one level.

The countertops can be either normal or covered in ice or a strange purple goop, both of which change how the shake slides.

In later levels, there are moving platforms, portals and wind to make gameplay increasingly challenging.

When players make it through one set of five levels, they unlock a new shake and the recipe for the shake they were just sliding.

When players beat each level, they will unlock the recipe for a shake. The Cherry Topper is my personal favorite. (Screenshot by Leah Higginbotham) Photo credit: Leah Higginbotham

There are a total of thirty shake recipes to unlock and 175 levels to slide through.

Slide the Shakes has an art style unlike any I’ve ever seen in an app (in a positive way).

The art is bright, boxy and generally aesthetically pleasing.

There is no background music, but the sound effects match the art style and do their job of emphasizing the moments in the game that deserve it.

Whether you regularly indulge in mobile gaming or mostly use your phone for calls and emails, Slide the Shakes is, at the very least, a time killer and, at most, an addicting game with a delicious twist.

All in all, I give Slide the Shakes five out of five stars for having a unique concept, a refreshing art style and for providing users with new dessert recipes to try.

Slide the Shakes is available for free in the App Store and Google Play.

Thanks for reading, Wildcats, and until next Friday, you know What’s App-ening.