Invaders from Uranus & Aaah! Chompsters! Review(s)

Big Blue Bubble Double Bill

Big Blue Bubble, the creators of Thumpies and the smash-hit Fighting Fantasy series, recently posed a rather interesting challenge to their employees. The deal was, six teams were given a Friday and the weekend (that’s only 72 hours!) to whip together an with an app that could be launched onto the App Store. The first two projects to be given the green light by discerning CEO, Damir Slogar, are Invaders from Uranus and Aaah! Chompsters!.

The burning question is, given the tight time frame imposed on teams and the super-fast production cycle, are the resulting games actually any good?.

First up is the cheekily titled Invaders from Uranus (out now, $0.99). A fast-paced shoot ’em up, the game sees you defending a space craft and wiping as many, ahem, evil Danglors off the screen as you can while striving for a high-score.

Your ship hovers at the center of the screen while all manner of space debris – asteroids, satellites, and, um, cows – is lobbed at you from every angle. You’ve got to quickly tap on enemies to blow ’em to smithereens before they breach your force-field. It’s that simple. While the game is fairly easy to start with, the longer you last, the faster the action gets.

Okay, it’s really nothing revolutionary, and the graphics and gameplay are rudimentary at best, but, trust me, flushing out those pesky Danglors from Uranus does get pretty addictive as you attempt to beat your best score again and again!. All in all, an amusing little distraction with a (very) unique soundtrack.

[xrr rating=3/5]

Slightly less impressive is Aaah! Chompsters! (out now, $0.99), which aims for the physics-based puzzling brilliance of Angry Birds and co., but sadly misses the mark.

Each of the game’s 60 levels tasks you with feeding the titular Chompsters a set number of multi-colored little monsters. Armed with a number of bombs, you must trigger well-placed explosions to knock these cute critters off their platforms and into the waiting mouths below.

It’s a simplistic premise that’s quite fun for the first few levels, but ultimately this game lacks variety, and, indeed, the necessary charm and sense of humor to compete against the likes of Angry Birds and Saving Private Sheep.

Aaah! Chompsters! does boast a great visual style (kinda reminiscent of Thumpies actually) and I can see it growing into a more enjoyable game with a few tweaks and updates, yet as it stands, there are plenty of much more accomplished physics puzzlers already available on the App Store. Still not half bad for having been made in 72 hours…

[xrr rating=2.5/5]