AquaInvadersLite
by Eric March on November 11, 2008 at 12:12 pm
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App Name: AquaInvadersLite
Developer: Vega Mobile
Category: Arcade Games
Another Space Invaders clone, this one with an undersea motif. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it — I mentioned how the genre has been done to death a million times over already and thus it’s hard to make the game interesting anymore, but AquaInvaders manages it.
Aside from the usual Space Invaders gameplay, there are powerups that can be obtained by shooting the passing jellyfish at the top (in much the same way the alien ship in the original passed overhead). Powerups can be shields (ship-based or screen-based), extra wepons, extra lives, or point values.
The action is quite fast, too — Vega Mobile make a point of pointing out the 60FPS frame rate, and it shows. There’s penty going on on-screen, too, including the wavy undersea background, so it’s clear they’ve optimized their code pretty well, and I respect that. Movement is accomplished with the accelerometer, with screen taps to fire. Sensitivity here is pretty good with an adequate dead zone that’s neither too wide nor too narrow — I found it quite comfortable, actually, and I’m really picky about accelerometer control. (I don’t like it in general, but it can be decent when it’s done right, and this is done right.)
The graphics an animations here here are distinctly late-80s retro, harkening back to the SNES and Genesis days with a clear 16-bit flavour. I am undecided about the effectiveness of this approach however; in the world of retro styling, the 16-bit era suffers from middle child syndrome, being neither retro enough to induce a sense of bittersweet nostalgia in old schoolers, nor modern enough to be current tech. To be honest, the net effect is that it comes off a bit “meh.” It’s fairly cool, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t wow me on either end of the spectrum.
The sound here is fairly sparse, but what exists is decent enough. My biggest gripe here is that once again, ringer volume is used to control the game’s volume, when it should be using the app volume controls so I can leave my ringer where it is. I hate it when I reduce the volume and it effects my ringer because if I forget to turn it up again I may miss a call because the ringer is too quiet. This sort of thing should be mandatory for all developers — heck, it should be the default in the SDK.
Anyway, apart from that AquaInvaders is a surprisingly good Space Invaders clone. This lite version features 15 levels to play, which is plenty to get a good sense of the game. Unfortunately the full version doesn’t seem to be available yet, and there’s no word on when it will be or what it will cost, but when it’s out it will additionally feature 100 levels and 2 bosses to fight.
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Posted in Games: Arcade
