Circulate Prologue Game

[TimothyB]

http://europe.lemonquest.com/sites/circulateprologue/#

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=285100093&mt=8

Something new, but only a tease to the full version. But this one is only $1.

Go to the first link and on the bottom left is a video of the full version.

It appears to be a puzzle physics game. A sphere, which you rotate by hand, to cause balls to move around to an ultimate goal. Don't think you need to rotate the iPhone. But it looks like it will control nicely with the touch screen.

Downloading it for a $1, which I don't mind, I get a taste of the game without having to spend a $10.

 

[TimothyB]

EDIT: Some instructions from the game, which so far has a quality presentation and music. Besides some translation issues.

""""Use the iphone's motion sensor to rotate the screen. Join 3 or more balls of the same color to make them disappear. The more balls you join, the more points you'll get. Try and make combos by exploding larger groups of balls and one after the other to get time bonuses. To destroy color balls group 3 or more of the same color. To destroy metal balls, us bombs. To activate a bomb, a simple touch will suffice. To destroy bubles, join 3 or more. Fire and ice balls are destroyed by joining them. If you get to 20,000 points you will receive a unique reward."""

Sounds like that one game where you shoot balls from the center to cause them to disappear. But the full game trailer is a lot different.

Ok, after playing for a few seconds. The balls pop into existence from the center. Falling slowly to the bottom of the sphere. You can cause the sphere to rotate with simple tilt of the phone, to aim the falling ball on the colors you want. Even rolling the sphere to be upside down will cause all the balls to fall back to the bottom.

 

[TimothyB]

Further examination. It seemed like there wasn't much point to it. The balls come in so fast after another, and you don't know the color before hand.

But as time goes on, each new level as you go, a new color or type of ball is entered. Making it less likely to match 3 up. You'll try to match them as they fall, but often you'll be rotating the screen to jumble them up and as 3 or more touch, you have to keep them together for a few seconds. And you'll find yourself attempting a balancing act with the tilt to keep them from moving apart.

Once you have too many on screen, it will stop dropping balls in, which is bad. If you don't continue to explode them, your time will run out, as it adds seconds to the time as you match them up.

Bubbles seem to float to the top of the screen. And metal ones need the bombs, which you touch.

I find the controls very good. You won't have to turn your phone upside down. Just holding it with my left hand, just a slight tilt will do. Just holding the phone on my thumb, and using my index finger to tilt it back and forth is enough.

As you tilt, it will make the sphere rotate forever, the more tilt, the faster. As it rotates, you can cause the balls to toss around like a clothes dryer too. So you have to return to level to stop. Keep your other hand free for the bombs. I also found the screen on my iPhone dimming after a while.

Each new level changes the background, so it has a fresh look constantly. I just hit some extra mode that reversed the gravity, with flashing background too.

But look at the full game trailer for October, the game has a lot more than that.

My best score after a few trys is 4520.

Edit. While the bubbles seemed useless at first. When you find yourself in a mess, fliping everything upside down will cause the bubbles to go through the pile, giving it a good new mix. This can be unwanted sometimes when gravity reverses.

Also, the music is very soothing, and the more I play it, it's very calming. The balls seem to behave as if in water, so even if they are not touching the edge of the sphere, every sort of moves when it spins. This also makes everything very peaceful and slow, matching the music.

 

[TimothyB]

Huh, so no one liked this?

I find myself playing it often. I finally hit a high score of 6850. I don't know if it's possible to get 20k to find out what that unique surprise is.