JellyCar

by Eric March on October 21, 2008 at 12:31 am

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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App Name: JellyCar
Developer: Walaber
Category: Games: Casual

I am amazed at the sheer number of games that have been released in the App Store lately — and not just the number, but the quality.  There have been so many good freebies released in the last week that quite frankly, heaping this much praise on so many titles in such a short period of time feels … alien.  I mean, I’m having to be nice more than nasty.  What a world, what a world…

So that brings me to Walaber’s JellyCar.  Fans of casual games everywhere almost certainly remember this one.  It ranked right up there with Crayon Physics in terms of casual physics games, but this one went in the opposite direction and aimed for a soft-bodied physics model to give players the feeling that everything was made with … well, jelly — and therein lay its charm and addictiveness. No longer were you sure of the rules of physics where rigid body models acted predictably.  Now you had a vehicle and objects that wiggled and wobbled and bounced all over the place.  In that regard it shares some genes with the classic Bike or Die on the Palm platform, which was one of my favourites.  (Which, I should mention, got its cues from the originator of the sub-genre, Elasto Mania, but I enjoyed Bike or Die much more.)

In JellyCar, as with all of these sorts of games, the object is to get to the goal as quickly as possible.  No, it’s never that simple, don’t be silly.  You’ll have to navigate soft-body obstacles, bridges, loops, trees, and more in order to get there.  To aid in the race, your JellyCar has the ability to enlarge itself for a short period of time (timer is in the upper-left, and it regenerates after a while) for greater momentum and weight to push larger or more numerous objects out of the way — or sometimes just to help you get out of a jam.  Ha!  Jam.  I kill me.

The graphics are deliberately very cartoon-like — almost surreal, with the abstract animation permeating all of the objects in the game as though watching an animated film drawn with crayons so that the texture is never the same from one frame to the next.  The physics engine is robust and performs surprisingly well under the circumstances — of all the physics models one could employ, fluid and air dynamics, particle, and soft-body physics are the most taxing on processors, but Walaber’s JelloPhysics engine pulls it off beautifully.

The gameplay is quite simple.  Tap the left side of the screen to reverse, right side to advance, tap the car to enlarge or shrink, and tilt the device right or left to lean in that direction for more controlled jumps and to perform rolls.  You can also use pinch gestures to zoom in and out, which is cool.

All in all Walaber has managed a perfect iPhone and Touch port of their most excellent Windows-based casual game — and it’s still free!  Fans of JellyCar and physics games in general will love this one.  My only complaint?  It needs more levels.  Lots and lots more levels, because 12 is never enough for a game as fun as this.

Five stars and a hot dinner date with Bill Cosby.

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Posted in Games: Casual