Flying Kritters review (iOS / Universal)

♫ “Baby, I’ve seen it all before”

10 word description: One-touch endless flying/sliding game. 9 characters, 3 worlds.

10 word review: Lazy Tiny Wings clone. Feels rough and unfinished, also crashes.

You will like this if you enjoy: Weak imitations of established iOS classics.

The good news: I’ll be as fair and objective as possible … and I still can’t really think anything good about this. Ok, I’ll admit that the graphics are tolerable, but the rest of the game just lets them down.

The bad news: It’s boring, badly derivative, slow, occasionally jerky, has adverts at the start, Game Center failure messages, all the characters and worlds are available immediately (that is bad, trust me) and when you scroll through the character list it eventually locks up and you have to close it down and restart it. Music is a repetitive, forgettable tune; sounds are limited to plinky-plinky noises when you collect coins. There are vertical lines where some of the landscape graphics join up; don’t ask me what the technical term for that is, probably something like “couldn’t be bothered to get it right”.

Arcadelife verdict: People need to try harder. If you’re going to blatantly copy a good game, at least try to make your version at least half as good as the one you’re imitating. There are coins to collect, but no record of how many you have collected and nothing to spend them on. The app store blurb mentions collecting coins to unlock characters and worlds, but they’re all available right at the start. There are no objectives beyond travelling as far as possible, but there’s no record of your best score/distance because the Game Center connection is broken and local scores aren’t held anywhere. The “flame” graphic looks like a place-holder. The game is not much fun.

In this case, I’m ignoring the mathematical way of calculating the final rating.

Arcadelife rating

Visuals – 5/10
Audio – 5/10
Controls – 7/10
Content – 2/10
Fun – 1/10
Final rating – 10/100

Rating categories explained here.

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
4th gen iPod Touch (iOS 5.1.1)
iPad (iOS 5.1.1)