There are so many great games in the AppStore that don’t get nearly enough attention, and are highly underrated. Miss Claire Garden, iDaTank, Space Tripper, Fractal Combat, Magnetic Baby, Up And Up!, Jelly Pops, Light Guardian, Eve of Impact, Awesome Saucer, Cubes Vs. Spheres, I can go on and on and on and on. It really is a shame that all of these fantastic games get buried under hundreds and thousands of other games that don’t even compare. So is the nature of the AppStore. One such title happens to have been released last month. Developed by Wales Interactive, not really known for anything, they have put out 5 other releases; Kitten Calculator, Jibs Jump, Mrs Sprat Next Doors Cat, World Torch Challenge and Mr Frog the Neighbors Dog, all of which have basically tanked. But Wales Interactive has pushed on, and finally developed one outstanding game. Combombo.
Combombo is a retro inspired arcade shooting game with some obvious influences from Pang. You’re put in control of a little character named Bombo. No one really knows where he’s from, or why he’s here, but one thing’s certain; he’s addicted to coins. And his top-hat, of course. Controlling Bombo is easy; drag your finger along the screen to move him. That’s it. While he’s moving, he automatically fires purple blobs of goo that turn green orbs red. Once you stop moving, Bombo produces a shield that will protect him from the orbs for a short time. If you get hit by an orb, you loose a life. Now, here’s where it gets incredibly fun – the goal of the game is to turn as many green orbs into red orbs as you can, by automatically shooting them, so that you can bank your points and collect your coins, a lot like Flip Ship’s scoring mechanics. If you get hit before you bank all your points, you’ll loose the points you’ve built up. The more red orbs you have on the screen, the higher your combo, and the more points you’ll receive.
There are 4 separate gameplay modes in Combombo; Waves Mode, Speed Mode, Timed Mode and Lives Mode. Waves Mode starts out slow, only spitting out one green orb at first. But as you progress through this mode, more and more orbs are added to the mix, and soon, it’s one hectic free-for-all. Speed Mode requires that you bank at least 10 red orbs before you cash in in order to speed up. You start at 1, but for each set of 10 red orbs that you bank, the speed goes up. Timed Mode gives you 90 seconds to bank as many points as you possibly can, while Lives Mode gives you the chance to bank as many points as you can with only one life and one shield.
Graphically, Combombo is extremely colorful. The environments all contain nice details, but the colors are dulled down a bit to make the incredibly vibrant orbs stand out against it. As you can imagine, this helps quite a bit, especially when the game gets hectic, and you’ve got 20+ orbs flying around in all directions. The animations are well executed, and add to the overall polish of the game, while the sounds and background music complete the picture.
Originally priced at $0.99, you can pick up Combombo for FREE right now via DailyAppDream.com. Being Universal, it looks, and plays great on the bigger screen as well. However, there is one fairly big downside. There is no GameCenter integration. This means no achievements, and, since no leaderboards are contained within the game, no scoreboards. This does put a fairly big damper on the otherwise fantastic score-chasing drive of the game, and does take away from the long time replay value. Hopefully GameCenter can be added in a future update, but like almost every other title, I can really only see this happening if the game sells well. But with it FREE for the time being, you should definitely take the opportunity to download the game, and write up a review in iTunes, as well as help spread the word about this fantastic title. Otherwise, it’ll just fade away like so many before it.
