Flik
cskimbrell | Jan 30, 2009 Games
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Flik by myCodeStudio, LLC takes the game “Breakout” or “Bricks” or “Half-Pong” (Yea I made that last one up.. meh :P) and stands it on its head, which is a good thing. I’ve been playing this game the past few days and can say that is something that I’ve ben enjoying in my spare time. After loading the game the first time, I figured I was going to be playing a Breakout clone, but I quickly found out that the game controlled a bit different.
At the bottom of the screen you control a device (Gun) that can be moved left or right. You can choose from your arsenal of weapons (Bubbles, Bouncy Balls, Rockets, Etc.) along the bottom of the screen then with a flick of your finger you fire off a shot in the direction you flicked. If your weapon strikes a block or target, the object will disappear from the screen, although some blocks take multiple hits before they will vanish from the screen. As you destroy blocks some of them will grant you with more ammo, or more time to complete the level with. Ultimately, the object of each level is to destroy all the targets before the time runs out. Bubbles pop upon impact, Bouncy balls continue to fly around the screen until they finally fall off, and rockets blast through everything in their path. The game seems simple, but with varying difficulty modes and 30 levels it may take you some time to reach the final board.
If I had to find some flaws in the game, it would be that sometimes you’ll send a large chunk of your time playing waiting on a bouncy ball to fall off the screen or disappear. Also, if you are not careful you can flick too lightly and your ball will move very very slowly across the screen. With time being such an issue, you can easily lose a level due to these small details. Also, There are three difficulty levels, but they are the same 30 levels repeated. As you choose a higher difficulty, you just get less ammo and time to complete each level. Id love to see more levels, and possibly a game mode where you don’t have to start over after 3 lives. Unlimited Play?
There really isn’t much to say about Flik, but to tell you to try it out. Its an enjoyable game that is easy to play in quick bursts and fun at the same time. For those that want to try it out, there is a Flik Lite version on the app store for free and is definitely worth checking out!
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- Flik! A Game of Fliking!
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- Title Screen - Nice and Spacey
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- Ready? I was BORN ready!
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- This screen was nearly empty 3 flik's later!
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- Must Destroy Targets!
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- Crafty... *nods*
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- And Alas, it is over.
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- $$
Tags: $0.99, cskimbrell, Games
Duck Hunting
cskimbrell | Jan 21, 2009 Games
User rating: 
(3 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5) Loading ...
Virtual Hunting, a sport taken for granted by most. Just imagine, there you are bored at work, home, or sitting at the doctors office. Your virtual shotgun at your side, and your trusty virtual dog that never does wrong accompanying you on your outing. You enter the wilderness, use your trusty duck call, take aim, and *BOOM*. Your score increases, and you continue to obliterate all ducks in your path.
Duck Hunting, an app by developer iDelux, is a simple retro style hunting game that you can pick up and play for a few minutes when you have a spot of free time in your day. First, to get it out of the way, yes… there are similarities to the original Nintendo game Duck Hunt. You Hunt Ducks. The graphics are retro. After that, thats about it. (There is no dog to laugh at your misfortune, sadly….)
Gameplay is as follows: Each level you are given 45 seconds to shoot as many ducks as possible. Avoid shooting the doves because they deduct points from your score. You hold three shots at a time, and you can reload as many times as you wish. The further you make it into the game, the faster the ducks fly. When you finally lose, you are given the option to save your score locally and online.
One problem I did notice with the game is that when the ducks turn away from you to escape, they spend a few seconds flying off into the distance. At this point, they only fly straight, and are very easy to shoot. Since there is a time limit, constantly waiting for the ducks to leave the area just to ensure a perfect shot would result in a loss, but it does grant the user with some easy points as you play if a duck does survive long enough to fly away. Also, Accuracy doesn’t help or hurt your score, so you can just go crazy and ignore misses if you wish. Both of those factors are slight flaws in the games design.
On the good side, iDelux has provided multiple backgrounds for the levels and the offline/online leader boards are a nice plus. They also have tiny, average, and super fat ducks which adds a bit of diversity. In the future I would love to see more levels, some other obstacles to affect your score, and maybe some more game modes (An Expert mode with limited bullets?) It would also be nice if your accuracy affected your overall score. Honestly though, I can’t complain much. The game costs a dollar, and it works how it is supposed to. Its a good simple game to waste a few minutes on every once in a while.
Oh, and guys, add a dog!
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- Hey Ya'll Watch Dis! *Kills Dem Ducks*
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- And So It Begins!
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- Doves are all white. Ducks come in all sizes!
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- Victory!
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- Hunting at Night, My Night Vision Rocks
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- Ducks cannot escape me in any climate!
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- Breaking the law, killing in the city.
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- Not a great score, but here is a score.
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- Submitted for the world to see.
Tags: cskimbrell, Games, Hunting
Pencil Pusher
cskimbrell | Jan 20, 2009 Entertainment
User rating: 
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5) Loading ...
Part of my “process” writing these reviews is that I do not do any sort of inquiry about the app that I choose to review. I avoid all other reviews so that the opinion I give is my own and I try to be as fair as possible. I chose an app called Pencil Pusher by SpinVisions solely based on the fact that the name caught my eye and sadly to say…. I ended up disappointed.
Don’t get me wrong, Pencil Pusher has a decent idea behind it. It is a drawing app, but from what I could gather it is trying to be a more “precise” drawing app. In most iphone drawing apps, you draw with your finger, but in this app you control a pencil that does the drawing. The problem is that the app seems unfinished, with a complete lack of direction and instruction as to how to use it. To make matters worse, the controls feel awkward and take some a lot of getting used to. I literally spent the first 10 minutes of my time with this app wondering why my pencil wasn’t producing any lines at all. Finally, I felt like man discovering fire as I drew my first line, then proceeded to wonder how in the heck I had actually done it.
There are some good things about this app that show it has some potential. There is a large supply of palettes to choose colors from, it has the ability to import pictures from your iphoto library and save your drawings as well, there is a large selection of paper (backgrounds) to draw on, and the overall layout is very simple and clean. The options are there, but sadly after that, the app goes sour.
There are no instructions of any kind anywhere within the app to tell you how to operate it. What I figured out, I figured out through trial and error. After a while I discovered that drawing requires two fingers placed on the iphone screen spaced pretty far apart (Closer together allows you to rotate the pencil.. kind of.. It doesn’t always seem to work… I may be doing it wrong?) Really, the controls just seem very awkward to me and at times proved to be quite frustrating. I found myself accidently drawing lines multiple times, and the app just wasn’t giving me the freedom to draw like I wanted. I’ve used other drawing apps, and this one just left me frustrated and with a headache.
Maybe with some updates, some instructions, some tighter controls, and maybe some additions to the pencil (Calligraphy pens? Paintbrush? a sponge?) this app could get a better review, but in its current state, I cannot say that I would recommend it to anyone.
Tags: Art, cskimbrell, drawing, Entertainment
SlideRules
cskimbrell | Jan 20, 2009 Games
User rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I am a sucker for puzzle games, and I’ve found me a new way to pass time on my Iphone. I’ve spent some time playing SlideRules by AntHill Games and have walked away pretty impressed (Note: SlideRules Lite is in the App Store. Go play the demo…. after you finish reading my review). The game takes a simple objective, adds in some obstacles, and challenges your mind to complete a puzzle while keeping the number of moves you make at a minimum. (Sure.. you could finish a puzzle in over 1000 moves.. but whats the fun in that…)
Upon entering the game for the first time you are presented with a title screen with a 5 options/game modes. There is a quick tutorial that does a good job at explaining the game and all the different challenges you may encounter, a practice mode that will let you play any of the games 60 levels so you can try to beat your Classic Mode scores (Yes, the game does keep a record of all the levels you complete. Yay!), a Classic mode, an Expert mode in which you are challenged to complete puzzles in a certain number of moves (these can be very tricky… trust me..), and a Survival mode where you are given a time limit to complete 12 objectives one after another on the same board in a 5 minute timeframe.
Gameplay consists of reading an objective at the bottom of the screen, and sliding your numbers around to achieve the goal. Some rows and columns can only be moved in certain directions, which makes you plan your moves so that you get all your numbers in the correct positions. Also, the objective for each level is different, which keeps the levels fresh as you go (Also.. to the dev.. Thanks for all the small touches, like showing the sum of the numbers in the circles in the levels where you are trying to reach a certain Sum with your numbers. Bravo!) The puzzles are challenging, and the addition of ghost tiles, magnets, keys & locks, and raised tiles all alter the gameplay as you play. Also, if you are trying to get the lowest number of moves possible, you are going to be repeating puzzles multiple times.
Overall the app is solid, the puzzles are fun and challenging, and with all the game-modes this app will keep you entertained if you enjoy a good puzzle. The developer is creative with all of the games puzzle elements, and the levels progress in difficulty pretty steadily. Also, if you’re into beating your own scores and perfecting your moves, this game will keep you busy for a while. I know I’ll be playing it for a while!
Note: Now….. go get the demo I mentioned earlier! The lite version contains 10 levels from the game. These are not just the first 10, but taken from throughout the difficulty range. Now go I say! and play!
Tags: $2.99, cskimbrell, Games, puzzle
FingerMingle
cskimbrell | Jan 20, 2009 Games
User rating: (4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5) Loading ...
For my first review on the site, I chose the game FingerMingle. FingerMingle is a game that’s basic premise is to use your finger (or fingers.. depending on which level you are on) to move a colored disk from one location to another. The premise is simple, but becomes more difficult as the game continues by adding more disks and obstacles that you must avoid as you play. After each level you are presented a percentage that notes how well you did. For the most part the game does the job that it intends to do, but there are a few bugs that exist that can make gameplay difficult.
Upon starting the game you are presented with a title screen that offers two modes of gameplay and an about screen. You have the option of playing the game alone or with a friend, and each mode seems to work pretty well. There are 25 single player and 26 multi-player levels and as expected the difficulty increases as you play the game.
Gameplay is simple, you place your fingers on the disks on screen and move them to their destinations by sliding their finger and rotating the phone as you go. Removing your finger from the screen before reaching the destination, bumping into certain objects, or stretching your disks too far apart result in a failure. Reaching the destination results in Success and opens the next level. Multiplayer is the same as single player, but the levels are designed around having two people (which is cool, just make sure you play with someone whom has hands that you desire to touch…)
Sadly, this game is not without its problems. I ran into multiple situations where I would fail a level because the game thought I had lifted my finger from the screen when I had not. Also, in multiplayer, sometimes upon a Successful completion of a level, it would instantly turn to a failure as we lifted our fingers from the screen.
There is plenty of room for improvement, but the app does preform well. In the future I would personally love to see more levels, and a better scoring system (for each level, and one for overall score). In its current state, the app is average at best, and perhaps priced a bit high, but with some improvements this could be worth its price.
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- Simple and to the point!
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- Level Selection Screen Indeed
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- The dotted line isn't in the later levels.
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- YOU'RE A WINNER!
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- Once you win them, you can view them!
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- Pins = Instant Death.. Grrr.. Damn Pins..
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- I = Fail...
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- Instructions & Credits.. for all
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- $$
Tags: $2.99, cskimbrell, Games
