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Silkworm Freebie

by Eric March on October 17, 2008 at 9:46 am

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App Name: Silkworm Freebie
Developer: GFX Consulting
Category: Games: Arcade

Just in case you thought the Snake genre had run finally out of steam, GFX Consulting would like to show you how totally incorrect you are.

Silkworm Freebie is the “lite” version of Silkworm 3D, and it takes the whole Snake genre and plunges it into its own virtual world. The game takes place on a planet-like sphere, and you use the accelerometer to steer your worm around the planet.

There are two modes of play: Classic, and Excite. Classic is as you would expect; move around and eat a certain number of apples per level without running into your own tail. Excite adds some interesting bonuses, such as obstacles, bonuses, and black holes which can alter your course if you get too close to them.

There are some differences from the traditional Snake genre. First, you are not limited to the four cardinal directions here; you can move any which way you want. Second is a jump meter, which, when full, allows you to shake the device to jump over your tail if you find yourself in a situation where you can’t avoid it. Third is that you don’t grow when you eat apples — you grow constantly. This places a little more emphasis on speed and accuracy, lest you take too long and thus grow too large to be able to avoid your tail easily.

The graphics here are quite nice, with cool objects and OpenGL-ES effects. This is strangely in complete contrast to the title screen, textual menus and status display below the play area, which are as totally boring and basic as you can get, and certainly don’t bespeak the otherwise enjoyable and nice-looking game within. There must have been two different people handling each part of the game, because it sticks out like someone trying to jam clunky Duplo blocks into someone else’s artful Lego design thinking no one would notice.

The control scheme might take a bit of getting used to, and the handling feels a bit dodgy at times due to the way it’s managed, but for the most part it’s pretty easy to wrap your mitts around. Shaking or flicking to jump sounds logical and fits with the whole accelerometer thing, but since the action can also cause you to veer off course, it would have been much better to impliment jumping via screen tap instead. This further becomes evident when you’re playing with the device on a table and you’re tilting around, then set it back down with a soft “clunk” causing the accelerometer values to spike and your worm to jump when you didn’t want it to.

This lite version is limited in the number of levels, though it does give you a taste of both play modes, which is cool. The full version will soak you for $4, which actually isn’t that bad — menus and such aside — for a game as well-designed as this.