This is a pretty weird game.  It’s made by Q Games’ PixelJunk division, so if you’re familiar with them, that should perk up your ears.  In the game you play as a little sprite critter who can latch onto plants and swing from them.  It’s up to you to collect pollen in the air to make more plants grow so you can have more places to swing as you try and find the exit core before time runs out.  It’s available to download for free on iOS devices, but reviewed on iPad here.

To control your sprite, just flick the screen in any direction and it’ll fly there.  When it latches onto a plant, it’ll swing around and around until you flick in another direction again.  Collect pollen scattered about the level and if there is a circle nearby, it’ll fill up with the pollen that you’ve collect and when it’s full, fly over to it to make a new plant grow.  Now you have something else to swing around.  If you get hit by an enemy or fall off the screen, you aren’t penalized other than not being able to move for a few seconds.  But you must find the core exit before time runs out to finish the level.  If you fail to find the exit five times, you lose that garden forever, at least as far as I could tell (which is annoying).  You can unlock different sprites that can do things like swing farther or fly more if you play as them.

To make your search easier, you can equip spices that you earn by finishing levels, although they don’t explain very well how you can equip them again after using them once.  These spices do cool things like increase the pollen you collect, or provide you with a handy compass point the way to the exit, which is very useful.  The game can also use your camera to do weird things with the background, but I found this more distracting than anything.  It’s an interesting game, especially for free, but annoyances like not being able to replay gardens after five tries and some confusing gameplay choices kept me from being too interested.

Kid Factor:

Nothing objectionable or violent here.  If you get hit, you just flash for a bit and that’s it.  Kids might get bored or confused by the abstract gameplay, though.  One good thing is there are no in-game purchases that I could find, which is unusual for a free game.

Tags: Game Reviews