FiveADay review (iOS / Universal)

♫ “And we’re talking about…
Quark, strangeness and charm”

10 word description: Epic New Age fruit-em-up. Relax while shooting. Game Center.

10 word review: Time Pilot goes bananas in a sky full of Zen.

You will like this if you enjoy: Relaxing, meditative shooters with a lot of fruit and ambient, chilled out sound effects. I’m probably missing my target audience by a small margin here, but this game occasionally feels like the old Williams game, Sinistar, particularly when circling the end-of-level boss characters.

The good news: You’ll probably enter a blissful trance state while playing this game. Lovely graphics, incredible ambient soundscape. Simple, perfect touch-control method. Amusing and often deeply philosophical end-of-level text comments.

The bad news: There is no spoon.

Arcadelife verdict: I bet I’m not the only reviewer who does this: Every time I have a Llamasoft iOS game for review, I immediately start comparing it with the previous Llamasoft iOS games and rarely consider how it shapes up against any other game on the app store. Judging FiveADay as a pure shooter doesn’t feel right, although at its heart there is a great retro shoot-em-up and there are definitely plenty of things to shoot. To fully appreciate what you are experiencing in this game, I thoroughly recommend reading the very insightful and often laugh-out-loud funny blog entry for the game.

What will surprise many players is how long they last on their first go. If anything, and this isn’t a criticism, the game is rather easy for the first 10 or so levels, encouraging the player to paint the pastel skies with rainbow trails, bullet sprays and long chains of bananas (and many other types of fruit) while marvelling at the chimes, whale noises and ambient synth sounds. It’s bizarre, relaxing and very different; a  Bullet-Zen shooter if you like.

Arcadelife rating

Visuals – 9/10
Audio – 10/10
Controls – 10/10
Content – 8/10
Fun – 8.5/10
Final rating – 91/100

Rating categories explained here.

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 0001.00.00

Llamasoft website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
4th gen iPod Touch (OS 5.0.1)
iPad (OS 5.0.1)