[rating: 4.5/5]
Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure Review: The game is like a virtual pop-up book as each screen is virtually exploding with beautifully hand-drawn action that you get to drive around as you race to the chequered flag hunting for hidden objects along the way.
If you can imagine a game made up of the best parts of the TV show The Amazing Race and the children’s book Where’s Waldo (or Where’s Wally depending on which continent you live on), you will be somewhere near what this game consists of.
Before you start the game you’ll need to create a profile, this is a simple enough task, just enter your name and then choose the color of your car. With multiple profiles it means that you can have multiple people play the game on a single device.
With your freshly painted car you are now ready to launch yourself into your a-MAZE-ing adventure. You start in the bottom right corner of a 4 by 4 block of maps that are all interlinked by roads, rivers, bridges and paths. Starting with the first square you’ll zoom into a more detailed level where you will be able to start driving around the map.
Each map includes 5 parts of a star and 5 mystery objects that you can find. The 5 mystery objects can simple be hunted down using your eyesight and tap upon when you see them. Be warned though the pictures of the 5 objects are always the same as what you are looking for so you need to be creative in your solutions.
To collect the 5 pieces of the stars however you need to drive to them and with the numerous one way systems, road words, broken bridges and other such obstacles it’s not always that easy. This is where the maze element of the game comes in and you’ll even find yourself having to drive off the edge of one screen, on to another only to come back onto the previous screen in a different place that wasn’t previously accesible.
Each of the 16 maps are beautifully drawn and full of detail, some of which is animated. It would have been nice for there to have been more sound effects to go along with all the animated actions but other than that the game is great fun to play for adults and children alike.
It won’t take you too long to complete all of the 16 sections but it will take a little longer if you insist on searching for all the objects on your journey.
Hopefully Roxie’s a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventures will include additional maps via future updates as I would love to go on another vacation with Roxie.
Pros
Cons
Tiny Invaders Review: A disgusting little game where it’s your mission as an alien to unleash a virus to infect the humans, all the humans, until you reach the President. Take me to your leader!
Your spacecraft crash lands on Earth and you quickly go about selecting a victim. You work your way into the maze of their circulatory system and navigate to make sure the whole system gets infected. A couple of germs are sent out from the host invader to spread the infection. They must scoop up the white blood cells and return them to the host alien. When all the white blood cells are consumed, the infection is complete.
The mazes look simple enough, until you learn that you can only carry so many white blood cells at a time and you have to return to the home-base alien to drop them off. You’ll need to plan ahead to throw the switches in the tracks to allow you to return to base and then back out again to get the rest of the cargo. Only when all the white blood cells are consumed and brought back to the alien is the infection of that level complete. There are 60 levels and it would take quite a bit for the game to get repetitive. Changing just one switch changes the whole strategy for a level.
Each of the mazes is timed. Before you begin you are shown the time you will have to beat to earn one, two, or three stars on the level. There is a clock in the corner of the screen you can keep an eye on if you’re gunning for a specific time. You can push your germs along the track to make them go faster. And you can work to improve your times, as these are what mark your standing on the Game Center leader boards.
The cartoon characters and sickening colors give this game a comical appeal. And while there is 50s-style-scifi spacey music, the game is mostly silent when you get to the mazes. I’m not sure sound effects would be a good thing there anyway given the setting of the game (intestines, brains, and the like).
Tiny Invaders {$0.99} is a quirky take on a track-style game. It’s amusing story and exciting game play keeps you spreading the fun level by level. A great game for casual gamers and youngsters, and also for folks who want to test their strategy skills and push for better and better times.
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Playing with wooden blocks, no longer child’s play!
You will need to exercise your brain, imagination, your reflexes and dexterity to complete all 120 levels. For unlimited replay value, unlock the Arcade Mode, which puts you in the middle of a frenetic machine where the challenge is to survive and beat the top score.
Cross Fingers, the latest game from Mobigame for iPhone/iPod touch may look like a simple game of fit the block into the target but I assure you it isn’t, mix of shape making and block escape puzzle genres makes this game as fresh as it is fun to play. Your goal is to fill the target shape with smaller shapes dotted around the level, now what makes this tricky are the levels, some are mazes, some are cramped block management athons and others have red blocks that spring back to their original positions making for some wicked gameplay as you struggle to wrap your fingers around each other and move pieces around while keeping others in place. With 120 levels spread over 4 difficulties you won’t find yourself getting bored any time soon unless, like me, you get completely addicted and blitz through them which took me around 24 hours if I had played solidly.
Once you’ve cracked all the normal puzzles arcade mode is unlocked, while following the same premise of the puzzles, it has a single level and 4 gaps in the walls, though these gaps shapes are pushed through and you now have to use them to fill up the central square to make them disappear again earning points for the simple score board found before you start playing. Take too long about it and your screen starts filling up and shapes shaking under the strain until finally they break and it’s game over.
Everything is made of wood, looks like wood, sounds like wood with accurate wood colliding sounds that vary with the speed of your input, except the blocks glow when you touch them which isn’t particularly wood like unless you were say Gambit from X-Men. Even the non gaming interface is made of wood making an all round seamless and solid interface albeit a little on the quiet side with the level completing whoosh breaking up the sounds of wood colliding as there isn’t a soundtrack to speak of.
While this game’s use of multi touch is exemplary I find that it could do with tightening up as blocks sometimes track behind my finger and the app sometimes forgets that I have my finger on a block, particularly noticeable on the red blocks that keep moving back to their original positions, making for some frustrating gameplay on more complex levels. Minor niggles I have here is the target shape is rather dark, making it hard to see on a dark background in certain conditions and there’s no progress save so one ill timed call on your iPhone could blow your hard work away.
With lots of challenging and unique gameplay, making great use of multi touch at a fantastic price, what more could you want? Buy this game!
Price: $0.99 (iTunes Link) (free version, iTunes Link) as of 21/12/09
Version reviewed 1.0.1
The Good
The Not so Good
Reviewed by: @TylerDurdan
Cross Fingers by Mobigame – iPhone Game
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