Rogue Sky HD review (iPad)

♫ “Dark clouds are hanging all around me
These dark clouds are hanging all around”

10 word description: Arcade flying game; navigate cloud-filled skies; hand drawn environments.

10 word review: Good looking, smooth controlling, relaxing yet challenging balloon-flight experience.

You will like this if you enjoy: Lunar Lander / Thrust style games, with some shooting and fairly forgiving controls. Thoughtful shooters with more emphasis on negotiating tricky levels.

The good news: Lovely hand-drawn graphics, amusingly evil looking player character (kind of a Halloween pumpkin hot air balloon), responsive and instantly intuitive controls, good level design, nice effects, fun and challenging gameplay. Unlockable characters with different strengths/weaknesses for tactical choices on later levels.

The bad news: As usual, I’d ask why we need on-screen buttons for basic left/right movement? Why not just have the screen sides as the controls instead of on-screen buttons? Come on, at least add this as an option, or have the buttons fade away after a few seconds. Ok, I know that other buttons become necessary later in the game, so maybe a total lack of buttons won’t quite work in this case.

Arcadelife verdict: This is a fairly unusual game, sharing some obvious elements with other games yet still looking and feeling very fresh. That in itself is an achievement on iOS devices, but this game is also immensely playable and a good deal of fun. There are many features that stand out for me; the player character, environment design, the arc of your shots as you lob them towards an enemy, lightning crackling from dark thunderclouds…

Overall it’s a cool and polished package, one of the better games I’ve played recently.

Arcadelife rating: 89/100

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0.1

Chillingo / Rogue Sky website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
iPad (OS 4.3.5)