There's a good reason I hate games like this. And I forgot it long enough for me to purchase it. The reason is this: Games like this assume you're an idiot. They have such an impossibly shallow learning curve that the most idiotic of losers will beat each level on the first try. Guaranteed. The whole point to video games, and games in general, is that you can lose. One misstep and you'reThere's a good reason I hate games like this. And I forgot it long enough for me to purchase it. The reason is this: Games like this assume you're an idiot. They have such an impossibly shallow learning curve that the most idiotic of losers will beat each level on the first try. Guaranteed. The whole point to video games, and games in general, is that you can lose. One misstep and you're toast. One less life, or back to the last checkpoint, or whatever. You're supposed to be on your toes, at least slightly, when playing games. There are notable exceptions to this rule, but in general that's how it's supposed to go. You need to design a game with a well-balanced learning curve so people don't find it too easy or difficult. The learning curve here is ridiculously shallow, to the extent of annoying you. Very few levels in the first half hour of gameplay make you think at all. And for the ones that do require thought, your first attempt always works.
Second comes the gameplay. How you interact with a game should be a rewarding process. For a platformer, if you press left, the guy goes left. Maybe even with some cool sound effects depending on what sort of surface you're walking over. And a nifty walking animation. Here, there's very little reward for input. You tap and drag to magically destroy dirt. That's it. Forgive me if I'm underwhelmed. The particle effects are mediocre at best, and the noise the game makes when removing dirt is nothing more than white noise with a filter or two applied. Very cheap-sounding. The last game I played with dirt destruction was an old DOS game back in the late 90's, and there you had tanks nuking other tanks and blowing up huge sections of earth with satisfying explosions. This tapping and dragging lamesauce is a far cry from that. Next comes the sound, which is also sadly lacking. All the voiceovers sound like they're sampled at a really low frequency, and they sound awful. Nothing creative with them, either. Just the all-too-predictable "OHMYGOSH YOU SOLVED AN INSANELY SIMPLE PUZZLE! THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!" Music is only mildly irritating, and that has a decent bitrate for a change, so that's ok.
Next up is puzzle design. The mechanics don't lend themselves well to good, challenging puzzles, but there is some puzzle complexity if you're getting all the gnomes. I only wish you had to think to actually beat the vast majority of the levels, but thinking is probably too much to ask of the typical iOS crowd. Lastly comes the physics. The fluid mechanics are halfway decent, and you can tell they did a good job striking a balance between realism and framerate. However, I've seen fluid mechanics from indie games (Vessel, for instance) that are ten times better than this, so I'm not exactly wowed here either. Slightly slow water animation speed, but maybe this is so your slow, stupid players can keep up. Whatever. In any case, physics is ok. Overall, I'm displeased. But this is what I've come to expect from iOS games. Stupid, toned-down gameplay with little or no game design packaged into a shiny box on the top 25, making a killing while I shake my head and wonder how worthless garbage like this even sells. Though I guess people bought into Amway for a while too. Enough blabber about stupid games like this and the people who post five stars on the App Store with no reason other than "I love this game." Time for me to play some games that are actually worth my time.… Expand
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