Review: Crumble Zone

Score:
75%

Author: Rebel Twins

Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0

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Developed by Rebel Twins, Crumble Zone is a mix of Space Invaders and Asteroids with a topographical twist. Your job is to defend your planet at the centre of the screen from the asteroids that are descending towards the surface. If they reach the surface, then they will explode, and take part of the planet out (much like the bases in Space Invaders). If you lose all of the planet from underneath you, then it's game over.

To act as the defender of the realm, you have a cannon in your head (I assume that's why he is an alien and not Robert Downey, jr.) which can fire an explosive projectile into the sky to take out the aforementioned asteroirds. Of course the big asteroids won't simply vapourise, they'll fracture into smaller and smaller rocks until the smallest size remains on the screen, which can be totally destroyed by the cannon (and there's the 'Asteroids' influence). While you can't escape from the surface of the planet, you can walk around it to shoot out other rocks as they get close.

Helping you out are special asteroids that turn into black holes when you hit them to attract and destory close-by rocks. A number of asteroids have diamonds hiding at their core, which will fall from the sky as you chain together consecutive hits on the asteroids. These jewels allow you to upgrade your weaponry to help you cause more destruction, with more accuracy, and with more bullets, generally improving your offensive potential so you can make it further through the levels of the game.

Crumble Zone is controlled through four virtual buttons on the touchscreen. Controls to let you run to the left and right on the planet's surface sit under your left thumb (the game is played in the landscape view), and under the right thumb you can find the regular fire button and the 'special weaponry' button.

Everything moves fast in Crumble Zone. With the speed of the graphics on offer, it's a delight to see that they are as smooth as they are, even on the lower specced Windows Phone handsets. While the asteroids do not carry a huge amount of detail on them, they are well defined, with some lighting effects lending a solidity to them when you play. As they move towards the centre of the screen my claustrophobia did kick in alongside the urge to shoot everything. With changing background colours to show different states of play, colourful diamonds falling from the sky as little points of hope, and the tilting cannon on your head, everything you need to see to understand the game is clear without feeling cheap. The on-screen look illustrates that the developers have spent as much time thinking about the visual design as well as the mechanical design of the game.

This is a well designed package. The 'Asteroids' game principle of clearing up debris and watching it get smaller is not an easy one to get right - there are a number of physical attributes that need to 'feel right' to the human eye, it needs to play fair with the gaming experience in the fracturing, and it needs to find the balance between panicking that a level is impossible while keeping the level within the realms of possibility.

Crumble Zone happily manages all of that. While a letterbox ratio might not be the best screen to run a game with a central point to defend, I never felt that the screen edges were hiding trouble. That's down to the smaller scale allowing a lot of gaming space to be seen, and to have the range of your initial weapon not quite enough to reach the physical edge of the screen.

It's a shortish demo version, but it's more than enough to understand the concept of the game and fall in love with it so that you buy the full version. Any gamer looking for a new twist on a classic should be reaching for the hyperspace button to get them to the Windows Phone Store as quickly as possible.

Reviewed by Ewan Spence at 16:14 UTC, November 13th 2013