Rabid Gophers for iPhone is a fun filled reaction game

Rabid Gophers_2

Rabid Gophers Rating: ★★★★☆

Rabid Gophers is a well designed reaction puzzle game. It is a game that is a lot similar to whack- a-mole and Smack it that are already available in the app store. The type where you have animals popping up out of holes and you have to hit them on their heads in some shape or form. The game itself is easy to follow and understand, you are a farmer protecting your farm from the eerie rabid gophers terrorising it, you have to kill the gophers to protect the farm.You do this through the different levels.

There are three mini-games within the actual game. The first is Gopher Blast, an ugly gophers head pops up out of the ground and you have to tap it with your finger to shoot it. This kills the gopher dead and you will know if you aimed well because you see the blood splatter everywhere and hear the squelching sound effects. You have a minute to keep this up without missing any. If you do miss one, the game is up and you start the level again.

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There are three levels to each mini-game. The first level is very easy and at that point I was beginning to think maybe its more for a child rather than an adult game. The next two levels though did get a lot harder and by level three they were popping up fast but I still managed to complete it first attempt.

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The next mini-game is Gopher Bombs. It is the same layout with holes in the ground but now there are bombs attached to the holes that you need to detonate. To do this there are six coloured buttons and they will light up in a particular sequence and you have to copy that sequence before the time runs out. If you manage to copy the sequence then the bombs will detonate and kill the gophers, if you don’t then you fail and have to restart the level. Again there are three levels to the game each a minute long and each gets harder. By the time it came to the third level it was a lot harder and it took me a good few attempts to do it and at one point I thought I was never going to do it!

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The final mini-game is Gopher Sniper and the gophers pop up out of the holes and you shoot them with the sniper gun. To do this you drag the target button to the hole then tap the screen and it fires, again with three levels each getting harder. The target button is the same size as your finger tip and the controls for this I found a bit hard to enable you to aim and shoot. You have to be quite exact with your aim but it was hard to see if you had it correctly lined up because your finger was covering most of it. By the final level and many many attempts at completing it I figured out if you press the target button at the bottom it made it slightly easier to aim.

After the three mini games I was getting into the game so was quite disappointed that I had completed all the levels and completed the game. So basically you have only 9 levels of games to do and that is it! There are two modes to the game. Campaign mode which is 1 player and you do the 3 mini-games and achieve awards for your high scores and Survival mode which is powered by OpenFeint and you attempt a particular mini-game and achieve awards for high scores and best times with other online players.

The game is far too short otherwise it was beginning to be quite enjoyable and a fun game. Once you have played the campaign mode and got all your rewards there isnt much left for you to do and probably not a game I would replay. I would say the game isn’t for kids firstly because the levels do get quite hard but if you fail the level, each time you do a huge gophers face with snarling teeth jumps out and fills your screen and makes a very loud scream. This I felt was maybe a bit scary for a younger child. I was playing next to my eight year old and she really didnt like the game once she had seen this.I feel because of how short the campaign mode was that the developers are aiming for it to be more popular towards gamers that use openfeint and play the survival mode.

There are some good points about the game, before each mini-game starts in the campaign mode you have a little animation showing the farmer and the gophers which I thought was a great unique idea. Although it can not be skipped so once you have seen it I imagine it would get annoying that you have to watch it every time you restarted the game. It is not a long lengthy clip but an eager player doesn’t like to wait!

The graphics for the game are very good and clear and the instructions to play are easily explained although there is not much to do on screen except hit the holes. The sound effects fit in well with the eerie and gory graphics. There are lots of squelching, blood splattering noises and haunting screams through out the game.

Mini games themselves are also very good but I just think the developer could have done alot more with this. If they increased the number of levels and add more puzzles it would make this game well worth playing. It has a lot of potential to be a unique and popular game.

The Good

  • Great animation before each mini-game and well presented graphics.
  • Can play online via openfeint with other players
  • Great puzzles to complete

The Not So Good

  • The game is far too short, needs more levels and new puzzles.
  • The animation before each level needs to have a skip button.

Rabid Gophers – Gopher Sniper (gameplay)

Price: $1.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Updated: Mar 04, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.1
1.1 (iPhone OS 3.0 Tested)
Size: 51.0 MB
Language: English
Seller: QuantumSquid Interactive, Inc.
© 2009 QuantumSquid Interactive, Inc.
Rated 9+ for the following:
Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 2.0 or later.

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2 Comments on “Rabid Gophers for iPhone is a fun filled reaction game”

  1. Jane

    Hi, Thank you for your comments and clarifying those 2 points, I didnt notice first time round about the option to skip in future games.
    thanks again
    Jane

  2. QuantumSquid Interactive

    Hello. I am one of the developers @QuantumSquidDev, creators of Rabid Gophers.

    Thanks for the review of our game!

    Just a couple of quick things that were mentioned in the review that I wanted to point out. The cutscene movies can actually be skipped once you have seen them once. We made it this way so that the player could not accidently “skip” it the very first time.

    For Gopher Sniper, you can actually control the aiming reticle from anywhere on the screen, not just “on” it. Once you are moving the reticle, you can then fire by touching anywhere on the screen.

    Just wanted to clear that up. :) Thanks again for taking some to post a review.

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