iPhone Game Reviews

Developer: Rake In Grass
Price: $7.99 [Buy]

Rake in Grass (where do they get these names?!) has come out with Archibald’s Adventures, a 2D platformer closely comparable with Rick Rocketson Pro. The game is enormously long and is loaded with features.

Archibald‘s Adventures offers gameplay mixed of action and puzzle elements with gradually rising complexity. The player starts as a boy on skateboard, but soon he will roll in robotic vehicle capable of riding o walls and ceilings, fly on jet device or remotely control mysterious floating bubble able to switch distant mechanism or transport objects.

Archie and crazy Professor Klumpfus are stuck in the professor’s mansion. The latest experiment of the goofy scientist went all wrong, and weird lifeforms escaped from their containment. Now a paranoid central computer locked both heroes up!

Each 2D game like this one manages to come out with a unique concept, to avoid monotony. The game does away with accelerometer controls and features on-screen controls, which (don’t!) work well. Archibald’s Adventures sometimes puts you furiously in great frustration, when you have figured out the exact solution to a level but you still can’t manage the controls to get things working right. Accelerometer controls are good in some games, and not in other games. Providing an option for switching to accelerometer controls would have been a wise decision.

When I said the game is enormously long, I might have misleaded you. Each level is very short and you can get through it within a minute or so. The only extra time you’ll take would be because of the controls’ failure.

Some features as listed by the developer,

- Go through 114 levels in this mind blowing action puzzle platform game
- Experience innovative gameplay with many unique features of the hero: transportation of objects, riding on walls and ceilings, flying with a jet armchair and more
- Use your wit and fast reaction to avoid nasty dangers of the mad scientist’s mansion
- Use the professor’s device pod to climb the walls or his artificial intelligence matter to solve riddles
- Encounter lots of weird and funny lifeforms running loose in the levels!

I was expecting one good arcade game, and was deceived by the beautiful screenshots. At $8, the game is surely overpriced. $4 would what this game would be worth. See the gameplay video for a closer look.

Controls: 5/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 6/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Value for money: 5/10

Overall: 5.5/10