The appeal of this game does not lie in its inventiveness or originality. We’d played games like this before. We’ve even seen elements of the visual style before. But rarely do they come together in a single app that delivers exactly what it should.
Mokis are little Kirby-like blobs with happy face that turn suddenly surprised when then find themselves in the proximity of a bomb. These bombs are your primarily tools for blasting Moki into a swirling vortex, which is almost always located in the most inconvenient spot on the screen.
When you place a bomb near a Moki, a little arrow gives you an idea of the trajectory that Moki will follow once the bomb detonates. You can also turn a dial on the ring that surrounds a bomb in order to delay the time until it explodes. Using these tools, you set up chain reactions that push the Moki towards the exit and victory.
Bombs are also useful for clearing away objects and triggering action and reactions, such as starting an avalanche or opening a gate. After the initial levels, balloons, ropes, and bridges enter the equation, and the potential variables for each puzzle grow exponentially. Some environments (such as water) also work under different gravitational rules, so you may find objects floating off rather than falling down. All of these factors keep the challenges in iBlast Moki continually fresh and interesting.And if you thought 70 levels was the end of it, you thought wrong. iBlast Moki also comes with a full level editor and set of sharing tools. You can create your own level, or download new ones. Hundreds of levels are already floating around out there for download, and the tools make it easy for you to create and share new ones.
Yes, it has elements of Loco Roco, Lemmings, Kirby, Bomberman, and a number of other games, but so what? It takes those elements and makes them its own, creating something new and entertaining in the process. Of all the physics puzzlers I have on my Touch, this is the most polished, and the one I come back to again and again.
3 comments:
Downloaded it based on your review, and am pleased so far. It certainly ranks among the better physics games I've played. I especially like the need to think ahead with respect to timing, which adds considerable depth and challenge.
By the way, I'm assuming you've played Archibald's Adventures? I think that easily takes the title of best puzzle-adventure game on the App Store, and in my opinion it's not even close.
Archibald is a great game, but I'd say it's more of a puzzle-adventure with platforming elements than a pure single-screen puzzler like iBlast Moki. They both use some elements from The Incredible Machine, but do it in very different ways. I like them both.
Oh, I agree. I wasn't trying to suggest they were the same genre. I just meant to say that of all the games on the app store that are puzzle games of one type or another, I found Archibald the best. It's true that it's a platform puzzler, but (with the exception of the small handful of levels where you play the professor) it's far more tilted toward puzzling than dexterity.
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