Game Reviews

Sprinkle Islands

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| Sprinkle Islands
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Sprinkle Islands
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| Sprinkle Islands

Whoever designed the villages in the islands and archipelagos that you visit in Sprinkle Islands clearly has no understanding of fire prevention or safety.

These wooden shacks are hidden from the blasts of your water cannon by curves, boulders, lifts, and all manner of other obstacles.

The residents aren't too smart either, standing idly by on landmasses surrounded by water while you struggle to reach their burning huts before they're incinerated.

Still, moronic inhabitants aside, there's a lot to like about this fire-quenching sequel.

Everything burns

The game casts you as a podgy blue firefighter with a terribly designed fire engine. This vehicle drives around on its own, pausing when it's close to a fire so that you can shoot your water cannon at it.

You just choose the height of your cannon and then let loose by tapping a button - thankfully, the fiddly hose- angling of the original Sprinkle is gone.

You've only got a set amount of water in each level, and if you run out before you've soaked all of the flames then it's game over and you have to go back to the start of the level. This means you need to learn to control your gushing and not waste water.

As well as using the water to put out fires you use it to solve simple puzzles, pushing boulders and boxes around so your flow can get to the flames. Few of the puzzles require much brain power, but sometimes the game asks a little more accuracy of you than it can actually deliver.

There are also some boss fights that involve putting out flaming creatures before you run out of water. Some of these are pretty tough, and require a number of tries before you figure out the perfect way to douse the flames.

Flame war

The main problem with Sprinkle Islands is its insistence on a single way of doing things. It's rare that puzzles or fires are open to experimentation, and straying from the one true path usually results in your water running out and the game pushing you back to the start of the level.

If you don't mind the stringent linearity then there's a lot to like in Mediocre's sequel. It's not perfect - it sometimes feels a little underdone, and there are some difficulty spikes that will test your resolve.

But the Sprinkle series still feels different on an App Store populated by clones, and that should ignite your interest, even if the flame sometimes flickers.

Sprinkle Islands

Simple and linear, Sprinkle Islands never allows room to think, but it's reasonably entertaining all the same
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.