Procrastinators, Stay away.
This iPhone seesaw game may draw you in with retro graphics that look like they should be screen-printed on an Urban Outfitters t-shirt, but start playing Stay and the app’s name gradually shifts from a literal description of the game objective to a hypnotic command coming straight from your iPhone: Try again. You can do better. Stay. Stay. You don’t want to like it, but can’t help but play.
Each game starts with a red object that slides (or rolls, depending on the difficulty level) across a hovering, wobbly seesaw as it totters back and forth. Keep the object from falling off as long as possible by dropping blocks to stabilize the beam. Too much weight on either side and everything tumbles topsy-turvy into an unknown underworld.
But different blocks behave in different ways and appear in random order—though like Tetris, the app shows you what’s on deck. Some blocks shrink, some double in size, the ones with skulls on them explode and hurl everything into an nonredeemable mess if you don’t knock it off in time.
The game is as frustrating as it is fun, one of those endless arcade apps that you will always lose, where your score is determined by how long it takes you to fail. In fact, the game’s designers recently had to make Phases 4 and 5 easier to reach—a carrot dangling close enough not to waste an unattainable obsession, though I can’t say as much about your afternoon.
