Animal Ark Africa is the first iPhone game from Slovakia, a massively overlooked gem of a country in Central Europe with mountains and a society thriving rapidly as it plays catch-up from the old Soviet days.
A severely limited encyclopedia, to be sure, and furthermore only 13 of the 28 entries actually work in the initial release. That’s probably a good summary for the game as a whole, since as a sympathetic reviewer my way of phrasing things kindly is to say buying this is a well-invested contribution that will allow the programmer(s) to finish the game.
Animal Ark Africa splices elements of Tetris, Bejeweled and a trivia quiz into what looks like a modestly interesting puzzler. It’s hard to say for certain because I never made it past the first two or three waves. It wasn’t due to lack of skill, but rather bugs and/or incomplete instructions that made completing the levels impossible.
The goal is to match tiles in threes by stacking them in columns on left and right sides of the playfield. This is done by dragging them in groups of two from the bottom of the center column, sliding them up or down to position them, then double-tapping the screen to send the tiles in their respective directions. Matching three causes them to vanish, which is important since having a stack of tiles reach the top of the screen ends the game. Placement of the tiles is at the player’s pace, but there’s a time limit to complete a specified set of matches for each level.
Most of the titles feature pictures of animals, but a few have question marks. Putting three of the latter in a row results in a question about Africa appearing, which awards or subtracts points based on your answer. Lame as edutainment can be in the eyes of hardcore gamers, I like it in this concept, but rewarding points is pretty weak. Power-ups (maybe a time extender or tile blaster) would be far more meaningful. Also, the question marks seem to appear much less frequently than any of the animal tiles. To the chagrin of the slack-minded, I actually want more emphasis on the trivia aspect.
Still, all well and good for those seeking a diversion in short spurts, except there’s some fundamental problems. First, the instructions neglect to mention the tiles in the pair you’re placing can exchange places with a finger swipe. This is a vital part of the game since the goal involves matching specific animals on specific sides of the screen. Which brings me to a second and more serious problem. The game indicates you need to match, say, two sets of three monkeys in the right-hand column, but when you do there’s frequently no recognition of having done so. I’ve frantically matched as many tiles of anything I can in both columns many times after reaching this point, but the end result is inevitably I run out of time and the game ends. This is either a major bug or there’s yet something else critical missing in the instructions.
I also question the judgement of the programmer(s) about the trivia aspect. When a question appears it seems like the perfect opportunity to pause the game and do some research in the encyclopedia. But while you can do this during the regular game action, the feature is disabled while the question is on-screen. Assuming this app is meant at least partially as a fun learning experience, the result is an epic fail since it’s doubtful players are going to memorize all the entries before playing. Thus answering questions is a random guessing process that makes the entire feature largely irrelevant.
The encyclopedia entries themselves are roughly equal to what you’d learn about the geography and wildlife in the main articles on Wikipedia, but kudos is due for not taking the too-common copout of just plunking the Wiki entries themselves in. The missing entries are nearly all of the animal species, which the developer says are coming in free updates.
There’s a number of other things indicative of a product lacking polish. The player’s progress really ought to be saved, rather than forcing a restart from level one every time. The itty-bitty icons in the lower right corner of the screen for navigating, pausing and other functions need to be larger. A lag in some touch-screen actions, such as moving on to the next level when the “complete” message for the current one appears, needs to be eliminated.
There are some good foundational elements in the game, including five nicely animated backgrounds of the jungle, desert, mountains and other environments. The music isn’t daring and the loops are a bit short, but still a fitting contribution to the theme. Providing all the content in an unusually large number of languages is another plus, although it’s probably one of the factors contributing to its rather hefty 165 MB size.
The developer brags everywhere in promo material about overwhelmingly positive reviews, but I didn’t see anything online except in the Slovak press which, sorry to say, can be reasonably suspected of homerism. I’d say it might be a three-star game once the flaws are worked out, but as a reviewer my grades and political sympathies are two different things.
Animal Ark Africa by Sketch Games
$1.99
Platform Reviewed: iPhone/iPod/iPad (Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later)
Category: Puzzle
Languages Supported: English, German, French, Spanish, Slovak
Rating: 4+
File Size: 165 MB
