Last weekend was the 35th anniversary of the original Game Boy, the fat little grey rectangle that was the first console to let you play decent games on holiday, assuming you could find enough AA batteries and exactly the right amount of light for its grey-green screen. The Game Boy was a coveted item in the school playground for me, but these days we all carry around super-powered gaming devices in our pockets. Playing something fun on the bog has never been easier.
And yet, what often happens when you innocently try to download an entertaining game for your phone is often no fun at all. You open your chosen app store, stare at 4,000 options all with practically identical thumbnail images, and choose something with a decent user rating, which then turns out to lock all of the actual fun behind paywalls. Either it’ll try to stealthily sign you up a £34.99 annual subscription after a five-day trial, or it’ll stop you playing more until you cough up to remove a timer, or – possibly worst of all – it’ll make you watch endless baffling video ads for other, even more horrible games.
