Parents' Guide to Dolphy Dash

This game is visually interesting, but the controls and constant ads leaves this game floundering in the water. Dolphy Dash features rich graphics -- the dolphin wiggles his tale and soars above the water, and coins shimmer in the light. Tapping to make the dolphin jump and pressing down to make it zoom through the water is fun, but the touch functionality seems to be overly sensitive. It's hard to get the dolphin to swim just a bit higher -- even moving your finger an incremental amount slowly results in Dolphy jumping out of the water -- which makes it hard to successfully avoid the fish and other obstacles you encounter. When you hit one, the game's over, so players may end up playing a lot of brief rounds, unless they use gems to keep playing. Without spending real-world cash on a gems package, it's hard to earn enough to do that often.

Because ads are shown between virtually every round, and some are pretty long, it starts to feel like you're constantly waiting to be able to briefly play again. That's frustrating -- and the app doesn't clearly explain a number of game aspects, which also takes away from the experience. Some fish, for example, you can run into and get points. If that happens with other fish, though, it'll end the round. Players also see information about challenges they've been given, such as swimming 300 meters, before rounds, but the game moves fast, and there isn't a dedicated section of the app they can click on to view how they're doing, so it's hard to tell what kind of progress they're making toward those goals. Dolphy Dash definitely has potential -- it includes great imagery, and the premise isn't bad -- but with directional aspects that can be challenging and way too many ads, gamers may lose interest in playing fairly quickly.