As they say in Britain, 'pigs will fly' before Angry Birds loses the control of the App Store charts. Perhaps to avoid pig and bird references, London-based design studio ustwo has presented its candidacy to reach the top with a mainstream casual game with a cute flying... whale!
Although ustwo is not your usual gaming development, the name should be familiar to iOS users already. Almost two years ago they launched the dotTM series, simple yet aesthetically pleasing games perfect for mobile platforms. In the time of the novelty apps, MouthOff did well and got support from popular kids IPs, but the more recent Granimator, Nursery Rhymes and Papercut are the ones that really gained Apple’s and press recognition. Since freemium apps and 99c games rule the ecosystem at the moment, it seems it's the time to have a shot at it too.
Whale Trail [iTunes Link] is an endless cave flyer where you guide the cute main character Willow on a psychedelic journey above the clouds. Powered by a mysterious fuel in form of bubbles, your goal is to fly through different worlds avoiding the odd angry clouds without loosing your whale trail.
Even if the protagonist looks rather tiny, Willow is a hungry beast that needs constant supply of those magical rainbow pearls that populate the sky. The gameplay mechanics force the player to collect those fuel ’blubbles’ at any cost since Willow is a whale after all and will plummet when the reserves run out.
The game plays with a single high score mode where you are teased with power ups and multipliers to keep you trying over and over. Other than the scores and the natural curiosity to explore the more advanced levels, Whale Trail is also a delight for fans of speed runners, since the scenarios aren't randomly generated and can be learned with some practice. Seasoned players will find this and the transitions between world very similar to the huge jumps in Tiny Wings, but the mechanics are very different.
No comments:
Post a Comment