Camel Games are one of our favourite Android developers. They’re the team responsible for some of the most popular Android games on the market. Titles such as Space Physics and Flight Director have been downloaded tens of thousands of times and are rated highly by the community. Because of this, we were looking forward to trying out their latest offering, physics puzzler Blow Up.
Official Android Market description:-
“Blow it up! Flatten buildings with limited bombs is your task. With this fantastic game, you will get bombs in different sizes; set the bombs to function at different times; see the building sway and fall with real physics; even more, blow the panda up…
More levels are coming. Stay tuned!
was developed for Android by Camel Games.
The premise is pretty straightforward. You must collapse a building by placing explosive charges at various points on it’s structure. If you flatten the building so that none of it’s constituent parts poke above a pre-set goal line, you win the level. To add a little interest, each building also contains a little ragdoll panda which you have to try to both avoid blowing up and steer towards a star which will also be placed somewhere in the building. Bonus points can be had should the panda touch the star as the building collapses.
Graphically, the game looks decent enough, ceratinly nothing spectacular, but it’s a simple puzzle game, it doesn’t need stunning 3D graphics. Camel Games have yet again demonstrated a good handle on the physics side of things, and the ragdoll panda flopping around inside the building works well. The only complaint I can level at the game’s look is occasionally the animations felt a little sluggish. In fairness, this may have been a deliberate ploy to allow you to keep track of how any given building is collapsing so that you can further refine your charge placements if need be, but I suspect not.
Gameplay is enjoyable, and the fact you can replay any level you are on, or even skip past any given level by choosing a later one from the main menu, means it’s pretty forgiving too. The difficulty progresses nicely too, with early levels being pretty straightforward and graduating up to the extremely devious later levels. The physics engine does occasionally introduce an element of luck in to proceedings. I felt that I solved some levels purely through a lucky twist of a plank and other levels I was denied from completing because a rogue beam had just not shifted far enough. This doesn’t in any way detract from the game, but hardcore puzzlers may prefer not to rely on chance to get through. Any given level can be replayed if desired though, so if you’re a stickler for getting things done just so, you can replay until you achieve demolitions perfection.
Overall, I’d say this is yet another solid addition to Camel Games’ catalogue of games. It’s nothing particularly original, just an Android version of a theme that’s been used in a number of online Flash games in the past, but it’s well implemented and I didn’t come across any frustrations at all. The game has 70 levels, each of which can be played on Easy, Medium or Hard settings, but, as it doesn’t necessarily take very long to get through each level, some folks may find they complete the game pretty quickly. Hopefully Camel Games will release additional levels, or even an editor in the future, given their record with Space Physics, I’d imagine this is a distinct possibility.
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