Developer/Publisher: Imangi Studios & Critical Thought Games
Genre: Action
Price: $0.99
Acquired: Pre-release beta version provided; review based on the initial publicly-available App Store release (version 1.0), purchased by the reviewer
Verdict: Buy It. Now. This game is fantastic in every asepct.
Pros: Gameplay is intense, addictive, and exceptionally fun; music, graphics, and overall design are all astounding
Cons: Game doesn’t immediately explain everything, but this is in part a design choice to get you to discover just what things do.
Brilliant. That’s the word to describe geoSpark. The collaboration between Imangi Studios and Critical Thought Games is just brilliant. This is a game that is addictive, challenging, heart-pounding, beautiful, and ingenious in its design. That you only pay $0.99 for this absolute gem of a game is absolutely unfair for just how incredible it is.
The gameplay is, like any great game, immediately basic, but has layers of depth once you dig in to it. There are a bunch of objects flying around the screen, known as sparks. You can get rid of sparks in two ways: one, by simply tapping it and destroying it for 10 points. You can also hold the spark, and drag it around on other identical sparks to increase your chain, each spark in the chain giving you an additional 10 points. Dragging sparks around on to other sparks is the key to getting high scores, as long chains grant you much higher point values than just detonating one spark at a time. So why would you ever want to detonate just one spark? Well, with lots of sparks flying around, you run the risk of crashing into an errant wrong spark or having two different ones crash into each other while you’re holding down the chaining spark, so detonating single sparks is a great way to basically just clear obstacles. Also, as you chain sparks together, a gravity well forms around the spark being dragged around, which causes other sparks to be pulled in, making the board more chaotic and more likely to end your game. As such, success in geoSpark comes from balancing your spark chains and keeping things from getting far too chaotic.
All of this might not be readily apparent to you – in fact, if you just try to jump into the game without having any clue as to what you are doing, you are very unlikely to do well at all. This is where the game’s brilliant tutorial comes in – click the question mark icon, and a tutorial pops up showing you how the game works. It doesn’t tell you, like I have attempted to do, but it actually shows you. No words are used at all, which is actually one of the most interesting parts of the game’s design – there are little to no words used here at all. The only words you see in the game (outside of the OpenFeint implementation) are the words geoSpark, and maybe the numbers that represent your high score if you’re picky. But everything in this game is action-based, and represented by representative objects, not words. Even the local top score display works by moving your new top score from the ‘current score’ side over to the right where it is now displayed. Everything is designed to make sense, but to maybe require you to discover what they mean if you’re not sure. The powerups in the game work in a similar way – in the initial release, there are 3 powerups available – I will not spoil how to use them, as part of the joy of the game is figuring out how exactly to use them yourself, although once you learn, then you will think “wow, that was obvious” – but the discovery is something that is worth experiencing for yourself.
This game just has a great design to it, not only in the gameplay and the options, but has great visuals and sound. The graphics share a visual theme with the geoDefense series, and are simple neon shapes, but everything is crisp, and there are great explosion effects when you large chains of sparks get broken. The soundtrack is basic, but fits very well with the atmosphere of the game, and you can always use your own music if you wish.
But it’s everything that comes together to make this game great – the graphics, the sound, the design, the gameplay itself – everything is working on an exceptional level. There is nothing quite like having an extended session going, your heart beating out of your chest, knowing that one mistake leads to heartbreak. You’re just transfixed on your device, trying to keep chains going and frantically detonating sparks as they are about to collide with one another. It is when you realize just how intense the experience can get, when you start to see new sparks that you couldn’t have imagined were in the game. It’s the amazement of discovery, and the intensity of the gameplay, of perpetually living on the edge knowing of the thin line between success and failure, that makes this game one of the best iPhone games, if not one of the best games period, released this year. Few if any other games on the platform have are so refined, or provide such an intense, visceral experience like geoSpark does. If you own an iPhone or iPod touch, then buy this game. Do not hesitate. You will not regret it. This game is an exceptional experience that sets the new benchmark for iPhone games to be judged by.
David Whatley, Critical Thought Games - David came on The Portable Podcast to talk about geoSpark a feww months back, and it was tons of fun to listen to his well-attended GDC Talk. His main point was to focus on the things that you are good at, as a developer, and outsource the rest. His priority in developing a game is game design. We think it’s worked out pretty well for him. Using examples from his own game sales numbers for geoDefense and geoDefense swarm, he showed how a good PR company, Triplepoint PR in his case, can make a great game make tons of cash. He didn’t talk about geoSpark numbers, so I’d be interested in comparing those numbers as well.
Canabalt Post-Mortem – The indie darling of the iPhone and indie games scene, Canabalt was developed in about 5 days. Its theme and look was inspired by other media, such as District 9, Half LIfe 2, and some older 8-bit games. The developers talked about the decision to release the game on the web for free as a Flash game, and how that helped sales and word of mouth. In addition, they announced that thier rapid flash-based development tool, Flixit, will soon be available to developers who want to rapidly develop this type of 2D game for the iPhone.
