Jezz
by Eric March on March 26, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Rate it:
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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App Name: | Jezz |
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| Developer: | Menial |
Version: | 1.0 | |
| Publisher: | Menial |
Size: | 2.0 MB |
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| Category: | Arcade Games |
Price: | $1.99 | |
Last weekend I reviewed Jezster, a Jezzball variant and one of several on the App Store. In doing so I checked the App Store to see what other Jezzball clones there were on the App Store, just out of curiosity and to see how it stacked up, at least visually. Jezz was proably the only one I came across that looked like it could compare or even exceed Jezster on purely graphical grounds, but having never played it I couldn’t form a proper basis for comparison, thus I simply didn’t mention it.
As it turned out, Ben Barnett of Menial caught wind of the review and contacted me to see if I’d like to review their Jezzball game, so I thought it would be nice to compare and contrast and obtain that proper basis for comparison after all.
As I suspected, Jezz does feature smoother graphics. I can’t say definitively that they are necessarily better, because Jezster does have its own moments, too, but Jezz features softer lines and makes use of some effective shading here and there. It isn’t in your face about it, but it does kind of appeal to be a bit more and displays a greater sense of styling overall. Where the two differ most noticeably however is with momement and animation. Jezster features tile-based movement which is more in-line with the original Jezzball style. Jezz however features smooth movement across the board, from the balls moving around to drawing lines, which appear as thin wispy things until they make a solid wall. Filled-in areas appear as a darkened translucent film over the play area bordered by a wall, which is kind of a nice touch.
Where the two tend to diverge is with gameplay elements. Where Jezster featured bombs, time bonuses and extra life tokens, Jezz focuses mainly on straight gameplay. There are two types of balls in Jezz, starting with your standard ball, but within a few levels introducing a spiky metal ball that can crack and eventually break walls, reducing your coverage percentile and potentially escaping the area you’ve trapped them in. That aspect starts playing a serious role in your strategy as you progress to the higher levels, as it becomes harder to trap balls and keep them trapped; you have to keep mending walls and maintain the barriers that separate balls from one another and makes it easier to wall off chunks to pass the level.
The sound in the game is relatively elementary, though pleasantly muted — again kind of soft like the rest of the design. I was particularly pleased about that because it went and pushed that button. Yes, that button. The “not cool” button, the one that gets pressed when a developer uses default volume controls instead of making the effort to have their game use application volume. I’m guessing most of these developers are developing on an iPod Touch, because if they were developing on an iPhone they’d know that the default volume control on the iPhone is the ringer, and nobody likes having to adjust their ringer to turn down a game’s volume. Some people, like me, might forget to turn it back up again when I’m done with the game. More importantly though you have to adjust it every time instead of having the current application volume automatically set when the game loads — if it used application volume. Then again, I don’t know why Apple doesn’t make application volume the default API used in the SDK when developing a game that plans on employing sound. But anyway, I can’t get too worked up about it here because the sound effects didn’t annoy me at all and didn’t alert the rest of the office to the fact that HEY, ERIC’S PLAYING A GAME ON COMPANY TIME. (Yes, I’m allowed to blog. No, they probably wouldn’t think playing a game was quite as acceptable.)
Control of the game is about what you’d expect: Tap the arrows to switch wall direction, tap on the screen to set the point to draw the walls from. There’s one nice feature in that you can rotate your device to change direction, too, just in case tapping doesn’t do it for you.
Despite that one button-pushing issue, though, Jezz is actually a pretty slick game of Jezzball. It doesn’t have the bonuses or added dangers of Jezster, opting for a slightly purer form of gameplay instead, but it’s got a gentle and understated style about it that appeals to my senses, and has a trick or two of its own up its sleeve. The two games share the same pricing and each offers a little bit of its own thing, but I think if I had $2 to spend and it had to be on one Jezzball game, I’d have to go with Jezz. Part of it is the styling that personally appeals to be a bit more, but the smooth movements also play a large factor and fit well with the overall style. I’m certain there are those who like the brighter and more colourful face of Jezster, too, so it’s your call, but my call here would have to be Jezz.
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Posted in Games: Arcade, Paid Apps
