Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Maze Climber (Game Review)

Some games are simple and some are complex. Simple works well on a phone, and Maze Climber is such a game. The premise is simple. You're in a maze and you must climb.


Why must you climb? Well, something bad will happen to you if you don't! At first you won't know that. You start out in a side view of a maze like Lode Runner or early Mario. But you might notice that there is a pool of red stuff at the bottom. What can that be?

You are that little white character near the middle, and you see red ladders and blue bricks. You can climb the ladders but not walk through the bricks.


Oh, no! The red stuff is rising and it is shooting out little fireballs. I bet it's lava, but I'm not going to sit around to find out what it is. I'm going to climb!


But if I don't climb fast enough, the lava will get me. It is very close. I'm hidden behind some fireballs near the edge of the lava, slightly to the left. You can see my head peeking out.


They got me. You can see me on the left, flying through the air. Owwww!


And I died!


But I can do this again and again. Here are some scores, showing the data, time, and how many meters I climbed.


Here's the home page in case you want more games from Short2Games!


And from the website, here's how to play!


Dig? What's this about dig?

If you touch a nearby brick wall to your left or right, a magic ray shoots out of you and blasts away at the wall. Hadn't noticed it! Makes it a little easier to get to ladders that go up!


By the way, the top right has a pause button. If you touch it, you get these choices.


I like the choices. Give up, play another game, or go back! Let's go back!


Now watch carefully. I'm going to drill a hole in the wall to my right.


I drilled through the wall on my right and climbed up the ladder. But the lava is coming up fast!

In case you are curious, here's a little bit more about the creator of this fun little perfect-for-the-phone game.


The eagle-eyed among you will notice that he lists lots of programming languages, and even my all-time favorite, Forth! It's nice to see that someone still uses it (actually there was some Forth programming in the One Laptop Per Child OS) but it was very popular in the early 80's when BASIC was king and C was barely known.

By the way, there are sound effects for the rising lava and a cool whistle when you die! No music, but the lava noise would drown it out anyway.

Cost: Free
Genre: Arcade
Score: 4 (out of 5)
Tested on: ZTE Open C
Get it at: Firefox Marketplace
Developer:  Short2Games
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/mazeclimber

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