TightWire: Why the obese and gravity don’t get along

by Eric March on August 2, 2009 at 1:58 pm

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	App Name:	TightWire
	Developer:	Wasted Pixel	Version:	1.0
	Publisher:	iBright Studios	Size:	8.0 MB
	Category:	Casual Games	Price:	$0.99

iBright has some interesting timing.  Just last week my wife downloaded a game called Sky Wire [lite] (iTunes links) which I thought was a pretty unique little tightrope walking game, though the graphics and sounds left a lot to be desired; it was quite plain overall, and not really worth a review.  It wasn’t bad enough to be full of FAIL, but it wasn’t really good enough to say very many good things about.

But then along comes Bryce Katz of iBright Studios to submit a very similar concept called TightWire, developed by Wasted Pixel, and one look at it told me that this is how you do a tightrope walking game.  It adopts a very whimsical, amusing theme, featuring an overweight bloke in suspenders as the star of the highwire act trying to pull it off over a variety of cityscapes, making the walk from building to biulding with no nets and no airbags, just cold, hard concrete.  You can probably already see where this is going, can’t you?

The game tasks you with using the accelerometer to keep your pudgy player balanced and walking across the tightrope.  Tilting left and right is used to maintain balance, while forward and backward controls your speed.  The faster you walk, the more points you get and the better time you get at the end of the level.  However, if he loses his balance, down, down, down he goes, screaming all the way until he blows a crater in the pavement — and yes, you get to see and hear it in all its glory, unlike Sky Wire, which just ends the level the second you reach an unrecoverable angle.

The graphics and animations in TightWire are spot on with an incredibly shiny coat of polish.  The animations of your character seem to be motion captured (or else incredibly well animated), so they’re extremely fluid and natural and bring to mind the sort of thing you’d expect to see from Pixar.  There are a variety of animations and sounds to go along with it; falling to the ground can trigger one of several camera angles from which you can witness the plummet, and your character features several different scream sounds in addition to periodic sounds of worry and relief as you walk the wire, which adds a good deal of variety just to keep you engaged and wanting to try again. There isn’t a lot of music to the game — mostly just ambient city noise so you can concentrate on walking, but there are some great acoustic and electric guitar licks when you fail or pass a level, along with a brief (and admittedly somewhat poorly looped) acoustic guitar melody for the main menu. Options exist to adjust sound and music volume, as well as full calibration for the accelerometer, complete with bubble level.  The controls are quite responsive and work very well.  It’s actually quite challenging — you don’t have the inclinometers that Sky Wire has so gauging balance is done by a combination of watching which way your character leans and a warning meter at the bottom center of the screen that ramps up the more off-balance you are, though it’s about as accurate as gauging the exact signal strength of your cell phone based solely on the number of bars you see.  But that’s part of the challenge and makes it a lot more realistic.

The concept and game itself is pretty entertaining and addictive in that “just one more go” sort of way.  You get unlimited lives with which to do so, but let’s be hones here: While completing a level to move on to the next higher stage is of course your goal, what you end up really being interested in is the schadenfreude of listening to your dude scream all the way down and watching him destroy the pavement, which is a good indication of how much attention to detail went into the game as a whole, but particularly that aspect of it.  The game’s primary downfall is that it only has 5 levels, ranging from 3 storey buildings all the way up to 50.  It really needs more levels, and as some have requested, an “endless” mode.  Fortunately, both Wasted Pixel and iBright Studios are keen to keep updating the game and adding new features, so more levels (among other things) are a distinct possibility down the road.

Even as it is though, TightWire goes for a mere dollar, which is an excellent price for a game of such high quality even taking the limited number of levels into account; it’s clear Wasted Pixel know what they’re doing and they do it very well.  TightWire is one of those games that you’ll want to whip out and show people just for the impressive graphics, animations, and hearty lulz on top of the entertaining gameplay.  Given that it’s the same price as that other tightrope game, it’s crystal clear which is the one to get.  Check out the screenshots and watch the video below.  Be sure to watch it in all its HD glory for maximum impact.  Yeah, I went there.

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Posted in Games: Casual, Paid Apps