Game Review: The Higher Lower Game (Mobile – Free to Play)

The Higher Lower Game is a novel idea for a mobile, game. It is simple, fun, addictive, free, with no ads and no requests to pay money in game. It even states in game “Made for fun”. Imagine that.

The premise is simple. Using reports on the most searched for terms on Google in the whole of the year 2015, the game gives you a phrase or a term and tells you how many average goggle searches there were per month for that phrase or term. Below it, you also get a second phrase and your job is to decide if that second phrase had more or less Google searches on average per month by pressing Higher or Lower. Get it right and you get another phrase as you try to build a chain and a high score, get it wrong and you lose and have to start again.

Made by Code Computerlove, The Higher Lower Game is filled with nice touches to add gloss to such a simple idea. There are background images for every single phrase or term you see and there are background GIF’s running to show either success or failure depending on what score you have achieved. There are little statements to inspire you to have another go when you fail. They are kinder when you fail after doing well and a little more critical of you, comically, when you fail instantly.

The music and sound effects are fine though I often play it on silent but probably my favourite part of the game are the little insights you get into the search history on Google and what is more popular than another. Seeing the amount of searches footballers get compared to charities is quite eye-opening I guess or how many people looked up Lionel Messi compared to Jesus is again interesting.

Interesting or not though, the point of a game is fun and The Higher Lower Game is fun and I find myself hitting play again many, many times as I try to beat my score. Getting a high score is pretty much luck based as you can’t really know the answers in advance. While you can take an educated guess on some, there are questions that you just have to gamble on. I mean, who actually knows whether hay fever was googled more than Winston Churchill?

For all the positives, I do have a negative though and that is that while I have played it maybe 30 times, I am already getting a few repeat questions. I am still getting a lot of ones I haven’t seen before but also the odd repeat so I don’t know exactly how large the database of questions is. Maybe there will be too many repeats in another 20 or 30 goes, maybe not. I am happy to find out though and, after all, it is free. Actually free, not pretend free like most of the mobile games out there. I am also expanding my pointless knowledge while playing. I now know the answer to who is more popular out of psoriasis and Wayne Rooney and we all need to know that right?

 A near perfect mobile game which is clever, fun and honest with its claims to be free. It is well made, smooth and slick and it also entertains with its content. The downsides are small. It is pretty basic, though glossed up enough to not look basic. I am getting a few repeat questions quite early on too but for me, The Higher Lower Game is one of the better games available on mobile platforms.