Allgaeu-Orient-Rallye
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| Allgaeu-Orient-Rallye

Allgaeu-Orient-Rallye is a game all about timing. It's the same kind of timing those of us who drive are called upon to display on a daily basis whenever we encounter a busy roundabout. With each road leading onto it loaded with cars, the concept of right-of-way becomes irrelevant, and the manoeuvre degenerates to spotting a gap and nipping out into the stream of traffic without causing an almighty pile up.

This slightly odd little game from Baby-Soft, which aims to raise money for charity rally team CarCamel, effectively makes you traffic controller over the roads surrounding a desert oasis. Unusual as the concept may seem, it will take you less than 30 seconds to grasp both the controls and the point of the game.

Viewed from a simple top-down perspective with the roundabout – sorry, oasis – placed centrally, assorted cars cue up automatically and await their turn to join the flow of traffic. It's up to you to give each vehicle the signal to proceed by pressing the thumbstick direction corresponding to the way they're facing.

This would be simple but for the fact that each car will eventually begin to flash, signalling that you have a brief time left in which to send them on their way. The game ends if you cause a collision or if you leave a flashing car waiting too long.

Once you get into the rhythm of the game it's really quite fun. When you're in the zone, controlling a steady flow of traffic, you'll experience a surprising level of satisfaction. Each car slots into a neat conga line of traffic, snaking around the oasis and on their merry little way to wherever.

However, when we mentioned that the game was simple we were perhaps understating things a little – Allgaeu-Orient-Rallye is practically skeletal.

The game possesses no alternative modes outside of the main high-score-attaining one, offers graphics that can barely be classed as functional, and delivers little if any variation to the gameplay. Like the daily commute, it soon becomes a monotonous loop of a journey – the same actions performed in the same context again and again and again. Familiarity soon breeds, if not quite contempt, then certainly a numbing of the senses as your thumb starts working on autopilot.

One possible source of longevity is the facility to submit your high-score to an online leadership board, thus allowing you to compare your congestion-busting skills with other mobile gamers. For those with a competitive edge and a hankering for old-skool one-upmanship, Allgaeu-Orient-Rallye may well hold some appeal.

Without wishing to sound patronizing this is clearly a small game made by a small team on a small budget, and in fairness it makes no pretensions to being anything grander. It's just a shame that the decent concept at its centre couldn't have been fleshed out a little more. Instead developer baby-soft, having spotted a gap in the market, has stalled at the junction without adequate means to drive the idea forward. It would be interesting to see what the team could do with a better motor.

Allgaeu-Orient-Rallye

A fairly bright idea that doesn't seem to have been fleshed out into a proper game. It's diverting for a while, but there's really not enough here for us to recommend a purchase
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Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.