When your catalog consists of some of the biggest, most popular and dominating titles in mobile gaming you could be forgiven for resting on your laurels and continue to milk that money cow. That’s not the case for Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the makers of the Angry Birds series who have released Amazing Alex for iPhone and iPad into the App Store.
Amazing Alex uses previously successfully implemented techniques, it’s a physics based puzzle game with usually 3 star per level rating system for each level, and as those features have worked before there’s no reason why they shouldn’t work again…..right?
Alex is a young boy with a taste for creativity and problem solving and in the style of toppling a chain of dominoes, only on a much larger scale, you are challenged to help Alex produce a daisy chain of events to clear each level.
The initial levels get you started on how you play the game, even showing you where you should place the range of objects that you are given to utilize on each level, and because of this you may be fooled into thinking that Amazing Alex is going to be a simple game that you can rush through in a matter of minutes.
However, that is soon to be shown as a wrong assumption to make as when the placement guides disappear the levels immediately get more complex and as you continue to the Classroom, Backyard, Bedroom and finally onto the Treehouse the levels become more and more challenging, especially, if like me, you want to get three stars on each level.
There are over 30 objects at your disposal across the levels and as these become unlocked they are also made available to build your own levels which has the potential of adding an endless number of levels for you to play with.
Creating your own levels is very easy. You have all of the objects that you’ve unlocked and can place them anywhere on the screen with guidelines for legal and illegal placement. The final step is to place the 3 stars on the screen which act as the measure for other players to complete the level.
The ease of both creating your own levels, sharing them online and then downloading other players levels is amazing. The only issue I have with the custom levels is that there is no rank of them, either via voting or just the number of downloads to help you find the best custom levels available.
As you might expect from Rovio the whole game looks polished, cute and engaging. Something else that Rovio seem keen to do is keep their iPhone and iPad versions of their apps separate rather than universal. Why they do this, especially considering that there are no differences between the two versions is beyond me. Needless to say if you want Amazing Alex on both your iPhone and iPad you’ll need to pay twice and play it twice as there is no synchronisation of your progress between the two versions.
Of course Rovio promise multiple free updates to add more levels and based on their previous history there should be quite a lot of them! Quite what they plan to do with the GameCenter integration with no leaderboards and only one achievement remains to be seen.
[rating: 4/5]What we like
What to know
If you enjoy using explosives to feed crocodile looking Chompsters with little monsters then this 60 level app could be just the game for you. Aaah! Chompsters! is a physics based puzzle game where the premise is exactly as mentioned in the previous sentence.
There is no pre-amble to the game, instead you are instantly taken to the world selection page where you can choose 1 of the 4 available worlds each of which has 15 levels. While you can open each world levels are available only one at a time so completing the first 15 levels of the first world before the 2nd, 3rd and 4th worlds become unlocked.
Each of the 60 levels include at least one of the aforementioned Chompsters with their mouths wild open waiting to be fed. Also on each level will be a given number of small monsters waiting to be fed to the Chompsters. Feeding the Chompsters is done by using one of three bombs, the power of the explosion will force the monsters hopefully into the waiting mouths of the Chompsters. The challenge therefore is to place the bomb in the correct location so that the monsters end up in the Chompsters mouths.
Each of the Chompsters is color coded and this enables you to ensure that you don’t run out of bombs as feeding the Chompsters with the same colored monster will restock one of your bombs. Each level also has a minimum number of monsters that are required to complete the level, sometimes this is the whole number of monsters, sometimes it’s a smaller number and this can be tracked via a countdown at the top of the screen.
There isn’t much variety in the levels other than an increasingly difficult solution but while it lasts the challenge is fun. While the levels can be completed sometimes with a lower number of monsters fed, clearing all of the monsters will gain you a trophy. It doesn’t appear that winning these trophy’s gain you anything more than satisfaction and there is no scoring available so replay value once all the 60 levels is limited.
That being said the game looks good and is enjoyable enough but at 99 cents there may be equally priced alternatives such as Angry Birds or Cut The Rope that offer better value for money. If you already have those titles then Aaah! Chompsters! Should keep you entertained for a while.
$0.99 (View in iTunes)
Category: Games
Released: Nov 24, 2010
Version: 1.0
1.0 (iOS 4.0 Tested)
8.0 MB
Language: English
Seller: Big Blue Bubble
© 2010 Big Blue Bubble Inc.
Rated 9+ for the following:
Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Requirements:Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later