This game will instantly intrigue you with its distinct and clever visual style - a clay world. It has similarities to stop-motion animation, but the fact that the game is an animated brings the textures and forms together into something special that shocks the eyes. In addition to everything, and more or less everything, looking like a product of clay, the direction that the developers took makes it somewhat ridiculous in the best way possible.
The game's premise is one that I love: silly, nonsensical and fun. You are enlisted by a utopia-fairyland of little clay things to recover their lands from invading meanie clay monsters. The ridiculous aspect becomes apparent when you see the clay monsters for yourself, as .... words cannot describe some of the bizarre creatures you encounter. I suppose I could give examples of something not weird in order to compare with the weirdest. The first clay creatures on most levels are little colorful bears, that although look like clay, resemble gummy bears in a way as well. The most bizarre in my opinion is that of a certain boss that is a giant nose (not face or head - just nose) with a leg supporting it out of each nostril. Having mentioned the color of the bears, the game's color scheme is bright and eccentric - again supporting the aesthetic of a world built from toy-store clay.
With the eye-catching design out of the way, how does the gameplay hold up? Each level follows a downhill chute. You begin each level with a small ball of clay, which starts rolling down the hill at the beginning. The only action you control is to drag ditches in the clay with your finger so that the ball intersects these and changes its speed and direction. This simple action of interacting with the world of clay works well, as you see where you dragged your finger create indents in the clay, as if you really were dragging your finger through a completely flat surface of clay. The physics behind the action work too - the clay ball falls into one of these trenches yet maintains its downhill motion. The physics aren't perfect though - you can at times trick the ball to unrealistically gain speed or do a u-turn to roll up the hill briefly. Although these events are unrealistic, they do greatly contribute to your ability to perform.
So what is performing exactly? Well, in the course of having your ball roll down the hills, you encounter many objects. There are basically two types though: animated beings and inanimate objects. With both types there are two things that can happen. If your mass is equal to or larger than an object, you smash into it and gain more clay on your ball. If it is larger, you bounce off and lose clay to the other object. This is the element that keeps it interesting. The larger you get, the larger things you can integrate into your own mass. The game handles the element very well. When you reach a new "tier" size, the screen pulls back to accommodate your growing size, making you realize how the objects that seemed large now pale in comparison. This makes it obvious the influence of Katamari games, but the game does well enough to distinguish itself.
Now, back to the boss. At the end of the hill when you approach the cliff, you swipe quickly to gain a boost in order to smash the boss with your clay ball, which has snowballed through the course into a large object. The larger you were able to make your ball become, the further you are able to smack the boss. This makes progress exciting each time you surpass your previous record distance.
With the essential gameplay understood, the game's progression is simply expanding the excitement of each new round. At first there are not many objects on a course, but after each course you are able to spend your collected clay on new objects for the hill, as well as upgrades to make the hill larger (the hill begins narrow with walls on each side, and each upgrade expands the room between walls). It becomes more difficult with new objects though, as larger objects require you to hit more objects previously to have a large enough mass to integrate the new object. These upgrades are essential in being able to complete the challenges that are the goal of each hill, as increasingly difficult challenges require gaining more mass or having more objects to destroy. Not all challenges are equal though - sometimes it will be to destroy several red objects, or to smash x amount of a particular object. Surprisingly, the most difficult challenges are to get to the bottom of the hill without hitting ANY object. These ones took me a while to get good at.
After a hill is completed, you gain access to a new hill with a different aesthetic, different boss, and new objects. This also means you start again on a small hill, but this is fine, as it lets you adapt to the new challenges that the new hill presents.
Finally, power ups make the game very interesting when going for a new best distance. The power-ups can be purchased with clay. When activated at the beginning of a level, power-up balls are scattered down the course. There are four power-ups, each of which gives you power to smash more than you normally would, making them essential for creating an enormous ball.
To put everything together, this game is simply fantastic. The detail and care put into the visuals make the game unique and beautiful, and the entire theme and presentation is silly and enjoyable. The game elements are constructed with the same level of detail, easing you into the challenge and allowing you to make a level more interesting on each play through. The experience of making a ball bigger than you ever have before, and subsequently knocking the boss further makes getting better a very rewarding experience. However, despite these excellent features, the challenges do become tedious after you get good at the game. Each hill has more of less the same challenges, and I found them distracting me from just enjoying the game for what it is. I feel the game would deserve a better score if the challenges were fewer and each hill progressed a little quicker. Ironically, this would perhaps reduce the replay value, but the game is so rewarding that the challenges aren't needed to add replay value. The challenges seem to artificially extend the game. Not to be misunderstood, the challenges are fun and rewarding to complete... for a while. With my rant about the challenges out of the way, let me stress one last time how well every other element of the game is - this game shows how a mobile device can support a visually stunning experience as well as simple to control but rewarding gameplay.
My rating: 95/100
Photo from Google Play Store
http://www.fatpebble.com/
The game's premise is one that I love: silly, nonsensical and fun. You are enlisted by a utopia-fairyland of little clay things to recover their lands from invading meanie clay monsters. The ridiculous aspect becomes apparent when you see the clay monsters for yourself, as .... words cannot describe some of the bizarre creatures you encounter. I suppose I could give examples of something not weird in order to compare with the weirdest. The first clay creatures on most levels are little colorful bears, that although look like clay, resemble gummy bears in a way as well. The most bizarre in my opinion is that of a certain boss that is a giant nose (not face or head - just nose) with a leg supporting it out of each nostril. Having mentioned the color of the bears, the game's color scheme is bright and eccentric - again supporting the aesthetic of a world built from toy-store clay.
With the eye-catching design out of the way, how does the gameplay hold up? Each level follows a downhill chute. You begin each level with a small ball of clay, which starts rolling down the hill at the beginning. The only action you control is to drag ditches in the clay with your finger so that the ball intersects these and changes its speed and direction. This simple action of interacting with the world of clay works well, as you see where you dragged your finger create indents in the clay, as if you really were dragging your finger through a completely flat surface of clay. The physics behind the action work too - the clay ball falls into one of these trenches yet maintains its downhill motion. The physics aren't perfect though - you can at times trick the ball to unrealistically gain speed or do a u-turn to roll up the hill briefly. Although these events are unrealistic, they do greatly contribute to your ability to perform.
So what is performing exactly? Well, in the course of having your ball roll down the hills, you encounter many objects. There are basically two types though: animated beings and inanimate objects. With both types there are two things that can happen. If your mass is equal to or larger than an object, you smash into it and gain more clay on your ball. If it is larger, you bounce off and lose clay to the other object. This is the element that keeps it interesting. The larger you get, the larger things you can integrate into your own mass. The game handles the element very well. When you reach a new "tier" size, the screen pulls back to accommodate your growing size, making you realize how the objects that seemed large now pale in comparison. This makes it obvious the influence of Katamari games, but the game does well enough to distinguish itself.
Now, back to the boss. At the end of the hill when you approach the cliff, you swipe quickly to gain a boost in order to smash the boss with your clay ball, which has snowballed through the course into a large object. The larger you were able to make your ball become, the further you are able to smack the boss. This makes progress exciting each time you surpass your previous record distance.
With the essential gameplay understood, the game's progression is simply expanding the excitement of each new round. At first there are not many objects on a course, but after each course you are able to spend your collected clay on new objects for the hill, as well as upgrades to make the hill larger (the hill begins narrow with walls on each side, and each upgrade expands the room between walls). It becomes more difficult with new objects though, as larger objects require you to hit more objects previously to have a large enough mass to integrate the new object. These upgrades are essential in being able to complete the challenges that are the goal of each hill, as increasingly difficult challenges require gaining more mass or having more objects to destroy. Not all challenges are equal though - sometimes it will be to destroy several red objects, or to smash x amount of a particular object. Surprisingly, the most difficult challenges are to get to the bottom of the hill without hitting ANY object. These ones took me a while to get good at.
After a hill is completed, you gain access to a new hill with a different aesthetic, different boss, and new objects. This also means you start again on a small hill, but this is fine, as it lets you adapt to the new challenges that the new hill presents.
Finally, power ups make the game very interesting when going for a new best distance. The power-ups can be purchased with clay. When activated at the beginning of a level, power-up balls are scattered down the course. There are four power-ups, each of which gives you power to smash more than you normally would, making them essential for creating an enormous ball.
To put everything together, this game is simply fantastic. The detail and care put into the visuals make the game unique and beautiful, and the entire theme and presentation is silly and enjoyable. The game elements are constructed with the same level of detail, easing you into the challenge and allowing you to make a level more interesting on each play through. The experience of making a ball bigger than you ever have before, and subsequently knocking the boss further makes getting better a very rewarding experience. However, despite these excellent features, the challenges do become tedious after you get good at the game. Each hill has more of less the same challenges, and I found them distracting me from just enjoying the game for what it is. I feel the game would deserve a better score if the challenges were fewer and each hill progressed a little quicker. Ironically, this would perhaps reduce the replay value, but the game is so rewarding that the challenges aren't needed to add replay value. The challenges seem to artificially extend the game. Not to be misunderstood, the challenges are fun and rewarding to complete... for a while. With my rant about the challenges out of the way, let me stress one last time how well every other element of the game is - this game shows how a mobile device can support a visually stunning experience as well as simple to control but rewarding gameplay.
My rating: 95/100
Photo from Google Play Store
http://www.fatpebble.com/