Archibald’s Adventures

Making its way to the stage now (watch that last step) is our next contestant, Archibald’s Adventures from indie developer Rake In Grass.  How about a 1 sentence review?  This game is freaking good.  If that’s not enough for ya, read on as I wax syntactic over this superb retro-licious 2D platformer.  First the backstory:  Our young protagonist Archie is dared by his pals to skate a radical ramp in a dump behind the creepy Dr Klumpfus’ mansion.  Oh ya, coincidentally the same dump where the mysterious DrK happens to have been effusing waste from his crazy experiments.  Archie ollies right into a secret underground entrance to Klumpfus’ cellar and in a fluke of coincidence one of the Doc’s gonzo genetic experiments goes awry at the same time, locking down the whole place and trapping them both.  Now it’s up to Archie, with help from the good Dr and his experiments and gadgets, to unravel the situation and free them both!  The game is divvied into 8 chapters consisting of 16 levels each.  By my crude math that’s 128 levels but the game lit advertises 114 so perhaps the first 14 are just so easy (and they are) they don’t count ‘em.  The levels are presented as bite-size logic puzzles in a 2D game world that you solve through a mix of interaction with the environment, arcade dexterity, trial and error and using yer noggin’.  At strategic points on each level are time warps that serve as save points and I found them all thoughtfully placed to keep the game flowing.  The game’s format happens to be perfect for the iPhone as you can play a few levels for a gaming fix and easily put it down feeling refreshed and not overwhelmed.  The graphics are crisply drawn with superb detail in a whimsical cartoon style that is reminiscent of something you might see on Adult Swim.  The sound fx are on the money and the music score is fab (more on that later).  There is no time limit or penalty for dying so you’re encouraged to explore the solution to each level for as long as your heart desires.  There is plenty of content here to keep you entertained so don’t worry about finishing it in one 1 evening.

Where AA really sets itself apart from the crowd of other platformers is in the playable vehicles/objects:

• Special intelligent remotely controlled plastic matter! (a purple bubble to us plebs, this is your most enduring ally throughout the game)
• Maintenance pod (like a giant hamster ball)
• Jet-powered armchair (piloted by DrK!)

Each of these elements introduce entirely new play mechanics which keep things dynamic and interesting as you progress.  This is a must by the way for that ‘dangling carrot’ quality that keeps you wanting to play ‘just 1 more level’ to see what new stuff is waiting around the corner.  For example the bubble can be guided just about anywhere on the level but it has momentum and bounce which makes it challenging to manipulate in tight spaces.  Then there’s the maintenance pod that can grapple to and scale metal surfaces and crush certain objects.  The game gets just hard enough to challenge without being so impossible you put it down in frustration and never finish (so don’t worry).

Neat features:

• You can play with the iPhone status bar present and keep track of time, your cell signal, battery charge,  etc.   This is a really thoughtful feature and I applaud its inclusion.
• Portrait or landscape orientation
• Russian and Czech localizations (I have no idea how to interpret these but I applaud the effort)

Problems encountered:

• The music (infrequently) drops out and the only way to get it back is to quit all the way back to the main menu and restart the level.  This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the music wasn’t so good.
• The D-pad control can be fairly temperamental.   I often experienced control ’sticking’.  For example I would press the down arrow once, let go and Archie would start jumping repeatedly as if I was continually holding the up arrow.  The bubble was especially frustrating as I could recreate a situation where if I veered slightly out of the ‘hot zone’ of the D-pad, instead of just going idle the bubble would inexplicably go west (life is peaceful there) as if I was holding the left arrow.  In still other situations the D-pad would become completely unresponsive for a short time.  Even though these issues led to some frustrating moments, it’s not enough (not even close really) to tip the balance away from the overall excellence of everything else.

Suggestions:

• Allow us to play landscape mode in either orientation aka headphone jack at the bottom left or (preferred) top right.  The only game I can recall that lets you do this is Rick Rocketson (another most excellent plaformer) and it’s a great feature as some headphones can really get in the way.

The bouncy soundtrack by Vojta Nedvěd can be downloaded from the RIG website but every time I tried the file was corrupt.   I notified the game’s producer and he graciously provided an alternate download link if you’re interested (but having the same problem on the main site).  I cannot stop listening to track ‘aa3′; it’s completely stuck in my brain!

I wholeheartedly recommend this game at its initial asking price of 7.99.  However, over the last few days of putting this review together, the price is now reduced AND there’s a free demo available (a ‘lite’  version in Apple-speak).  Put this into perspective people!  We can’t get every app for 99 cents and expect the kind of sweat and polish that obviously went into the development of this game.  Personally I’m growing weary of dollar apps that you play with for an hour then delete, never to be seen or cared about again.  The PC version of this game is $15 so you’re getting every nibble and byte of the full product here now for less than half price, plus throw in gratis geek cred for having one of the coolest games in existence for the iPhone!  Word.  /slams mic down Chris Rock-style

• Version reviewed – 1.1
• Lite (demo) version available – yes
• iTunes music supported – no but who cares the music is great!