Hey! It’s a new regular feature on SideQuesting! We all have smart phones now, so it’s obvious that the most important feature of smart phones is probably the games. We often receive several iOS apps for review, so we felt that instead of doing separate reviews for each one we would do a weekly look at a few at once. We’ll showcase games that fit across all ranges, from casual to core, short to lengthy.
This week, we have SnuggleTruck, The Day the Music Stopped, and Imaginary Range.
SnuggleTruck
Owlchemy Games
You might remember when we previewed SmuggleTruck back in March at PAX East. Thanks to Apple’s strict iOS content rules, the game had to be slightly changed to make it onto our idevices. SmuggleTruck became SnuggleTruck, and the illegal immigrants became… stuffed animals? Well, it may not be as controversial, but it still works extremely well. SnuggleTruck plays a little like Tiny Wings, in that it’s super easy to control but takes precision to master the slight nuances. The goal of the game is to deliver a truck full of furries over rough terrain to the zoo. By tapping on the right side of the screen the truck speeds up; doing the same on the left slows the truck down to a stop. After launching off of hilly jumps, the game requires the player to tilt the iOS device to land properly and spilling out the least amount of stuffed toys. Save enough and you earn medals, which are redeemed to open up more levels
I noted above how simple the game is, and that’s both a positive and a negative. On the plus side, it’s very easy to pick up and play, and at least one or two medals can be attained each level without much hassle. On the negative side, it’s pretty bland. There’s a small variety of locales — forests, deserts, caves — that provide visual changes, but the game play is exactly the same each time. To top it off, the game is built on speed runs that are somewhat finite, in that there’s a definite “best time” on each level. This makes it difficult to compare against friends on Gamecenter’s leaderboards, as each level is tracked separately instead of a collective score.
As a time-waster the game is fine, but without the controversy it doesn’t seem to stand out as much as it used to. Hopefully future updates address my competitive instinct better, and add in a few more modes and variety to keep me coming back.
SnuggleTruck iPhone: $1.99 iPad: $2.99
Juno Jr.’s The Day the Music Stopped
Juno Jr
Now that I have a daughter, I’m much more interested in (read: forced to play) games aimed at children on my iPhone and iPad. Up until now, she’s been happy with the sights and sounds of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, but I knew she’d need a little more than that. Juno Jr’s The Day the Music Stopped is an animated, slightly interactive children’s book that teaches motor skills while entertaining Preschoolers. Or, perhaps it’s better to say that it tries to teach motor skills.
You see, as a simple “push the button to make the screen go” I would have hoped that it was more obvious to a child as to what to do on each “page”, but it isn’t. On my iPhone, the buttons not only render too small, but nothing sets them (or selectable objects) apart from the rest of the scene. It might take more than Preschool level to know that the game was asking the child to tap the train in the image above. The story is fine as far as children’s books go, but the overall experience isn’t designed for the small screen (or even the iPad screen, for that matter). It may frustrate kids playing it on their own, and will definitely require an adult to proceed the story.
Juno Jr’s the Day the Music Stopped iPhone/iPad: $2.99
Imaginary Range
SquareEnix
SquareEnix is known for some pretty quick cash grabs on iOS devices, often resorting to collections of wallpapers and expensive GBA ports sprinkled throughout Chaos Rings iterations. With Imaginary Range, the publisher tries another tactic: copying other iOS minigames. Imaginary Range is a digital comic that has a few minigames mixed in, from “spot the difference” to “circle this thing fast”. There isn’t any failing in the “game”, but missing a hidden item — icons that can be circled throughout the comic lead to items required to progress — can be frustrating, especially when the app doesn’t read the circular swipes correctly. The story is pretty bad, dealing with an alien invasion and a couple of super heroes.
Look, the app is free. It doesn’t mean that it’s okay to have a sub-standard app-sperience if it’s free, but at least I don’t have to feel bad for downloading and then deleting it with a vengeance.
Imaginary Range iPhone/iPad: Free
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