Design Love: 7X7

The last year or two has seen a sea of change when it comes to the design of Android apps. Unless the developer has provided exceptional functionality, he can no longer expect success if the app doesn’t look good. In the Design Love series, I’ll share some of the best examples of the growth the platform has seen. So far, I wrote about Camera Zoom FX, Ovo Timer and Flib.

While I am not a fan of casual games, as I mentioned last week, every now and then a title comes that gets me addicted, at least for a little while. 7X7 is my latest time-drain, for two primary reasons: one is that it requires just the right amount of thinking, not too much like chess (which I suck at) and not too little like, say, Paper Toss. The second, and the reason for this post, is that it’s minimal design is really gorgeous.

Like Flib, 7X7 also uses flat design. However, unlike Flib, the looks really works well here and, more importantly, it has the right amount of animations that don’t slow you down. When you open up the game, it offers you an option to either start a game, or learn how to play it. There’s nothing else at all on the screen. Forget advertising, there isn’t any branding either. In fact, now that I think about it, I wish there was a way to have a new game launch every time after having seen the “How to play” screen once.

The game itself consists of a seven by seven grid of boxes, with different color squares filling them up every turn. Your job is to get four or more of the same colored squares to line up in a line by moving one square per turn, which would make the line of boxes disappear. You need to plan ahead, since the entire grid being filled up would result in the end of the game.

There’s a lot developers can learn from 7X7, such as how animations, while important to the experience being offered, shouldn’t take too long. The game also uses some other tricks well, such as the ActionBar also being an indicator to display your progress in that particular level. The color of the progress also changes for the last line that you built.

7X7 costs nothing, and there isn’t even a “donate” version. Which only makes me want to buy the team at KIIP a drink even more. Do give it a try by following this link.