Snowferno (iPhone)
iPhone integration (About)
- Save state: No
- iPod music: Yes
- Status bar: No
- Version: 1.1
- Price as reviewed: £1.19
- by escapeFactory
With a quirky name like Snowferno, we were expecting some kind of snow throwing game. Instead, we got a title that has you rolling a ball of... (any guesses?) snow around a course before it melts. Colour us... excited?
It's a shame but no, Snowferno isn't particularly exciting. The gist of it is an environmental puzzle game that requires you to grow your snowball (find a snow pile on the ground) or shrink it (find a some burning wood). Gaps in the ground will drop a smaller snowball off the course - the larger ones can navigate over those, but can't navigate around the intricate smaller paths. Additionally, there's various boxes you can push, or switches you can pull to affect the environment directly. One level named "The Wall" uses this to great effect, with a confusing array of switches that you have to trigger in exactly the right order.
The controls feel a little clumsy. You control speed with a thumb slider on the left hand side of the screen, allowing you to go fast forward but not very fast backward. You tilt your device left or right to adjust the direction you're going in. This system is prone to stop and start a lot, especially on the smaller pathways. Most games like this capitalise on creating a sense of speed to generate excitement - here the controls severely affect the pacing of the game.
Therefore it's easy to lose interest in the game early on. As it's difficulty doesn't really ramp up until around level 10, where things get a bit more challenging, you can find yourself loathe to wanting to complete more. Truth be told, it's not a very fascinating premise - a lost dog trying to find it's owner? We can understand that, but a snowball trying to find it's way back to winter?
Elsewhere, the graphics are average but not up to the latest standard of 3D on the iPhone. The environments can look pretty generic and we didn't like the way that the ball can get stuck in the midst of the terrain on occasion. We did like the assortment of music tracks that were played as background music, and these change every level so that you're not hearing the same thing over and over again.
As a game, Snowferno is average. The problem is that for us, it's not terribly compelling. Even after playing for an hour or two we weren't convinced that it was going to last us for much longer than that. We're not going to cite difficulty or presentation or price - the reason we're going with a D grade is we think that the concept needs more work.
Grade: D, Mediocre
The concept for this game needs freshening up - it's unfortunately not one that we can recommend.
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