It’s incredible how thin the line is between a great game and utter trash. And incredible how even the most tired gaming concepts can shine in the hands of a creative programmer.
RPG Snake takes one of the world’s oldest and most copied games – something so simple it was among my first projects in the archaic language of BASIC – and makes it fresh and fun by meshing it with another old genre. This is something many try and fail horribly at, so it’s hard to say why even the mere title of this one appeals.
It is, in short, the greatest retro hybrid since Joust Pong.
The player, resembling a kid wearing dad’s combat gear, roams diagonally around a single-screen grid viewed from an overhead 3D perspective. Vulnerable creatures appear magically and encountering them head-on adds another fighter to your marching line (the tutorial claims it’s just multiple versions of you, since reality isn’t all that vital in a video game). Your procession, which starts slowly, speeds up as it gets longer. A boss appears once you’ve got enough warriors to defeat it and colliding with it head-on results in an amusing animated sacrifice of all your alter egos except one before your enemy meets his demise.
There’s “over 11 stages” on a map divided into several themed areas, with each stage requiring the defeat of several bosses. Waves get increasingly complex as deadly obstacles start appearing and vulnerable creatures acquire increasingly elusive movement. There’s also unlockable bonus maps and 23 “achievements” as you seek to complete your unoriginal quest of rescuing a princess.
Arrows at the four corners of the screen provide good response and are large enough to keep fingers from straying out of position. The 3D perspective makes pinpoint navigation difficult at first, a vital skill along edges and in a crowd of objects, but is overcome with a reasonable amount of experience. Graphics and sound are simple, but cute, in an eight-bit era way.
Learning the game is a cinch with a tutorial that launches automatically the first time you play, but I couldn’t figure out any way to repeat it, which obviously is desirable if anyone else is allowed to touch your precious device. One other thing that seriously bothers me is it’s very easy to touch “start” instead of “continue” once a quest is underway, and when I did I found my previous progress wiped out. I’ve been too paranoid to try this again and see if it was a glitch, but I’m guessing one of these days it’ll happen again by accident.
This is developer Slime Marmalade’s first game and they do a better job than most of making a good impression by paying attention to the little things, which gives one faith they’ll patch up the few deficiencies. More games are promised and the only real worry is complacency or a sophomore jinx. Otherwise there’s obviously no shortage of concepts that can be spliced, diced and warped in wonderful ways.
Score: 8 out of 10
By Mark Sabbatini
RPG Snake – The Adventure of Akua by Slime Marmalade
$1.29
Platform Reviewed: iPhone/iPod (Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later)
Category: Arcade/RPG
Languages Supported: English
Rating: 4+
File Size: 18.6 MB
