Game Reviews

Forest Home - We're never going home

Star onStar halfStar offStar offStar off
|
iOS
| Forest Home
Get
Forest Home - We're never going home
|
iOS
| Forest Home

There's a puzzle game you've probably seen and played a bunch of times. You connect coloured points, using snaking paths, without allowing the paths to cross. All of the grid's squares must be filled, adding complexity to proceedings.

This, in a nutshell, is Forest Home, only the paths are traversed by cute little animals.

Oh, and the nutshell is glued to a boxing glove with 'IAP' scrawled across it in marker pen, which repeatedly punches you in the face until you beg for mercy.

Running towards nothing

The basic game isn't too bad but it is dull. You drag paths about, getting a rabbit to its burrow, or a bee to its hive. The visuals are jolly, with the coloured paths being distinct and relevant - the bee flies above a carpet of purple flowers, for example.

Over time, new elements are introduced, like food for animals to collect en-route, multiple animals to get to the same home, and bridges that enable two animals to use the same grid square.

To three-star levels, you must complete them rapidly, and in as few moves as possible. The problem comes when you - through error or the interface not recognising what your fingers are doing - don't manage this.

Trunk route

Use too many moves and a life is lost - and lives are replenished by a timer. Oddly, puzzles when retried also happen to be somewhat randomised, shuffling the layout, but with the same number of objectives.

This might boost replay value, but it means puzzles aren't static challenges, and it makes the going harder should you get stuck.

During early levels, this is unlikely, although you will slam up against 'roadblocks', which offer stern tests to be completed within very strict time limits.

You can bug friends of Facebook for 'help', unlock the roadblock using acorns (i.e. money), or play through three puzzles. These can only be tackled at the rate of one per day, though. So you get to twiddle your thumbs for 48 hours, pay, or play something else.

For a game seemingly aimed at kids (given its visuals and general level of challenge), this approach is distasteful in the extreme.

You'd be better off buying RGB Express for a cute, fun, rewarding pathfinding game, or arming a youngster with Flow Free: Bridges and telling them to pretend the green dot is a frog and the blue one is a hedgehog.

Forest Home - We're never going home

A run-of-the-mill puzzle game that could have been OK for kids had it not been buried under eighteen tons of IAP
Score
Craig Grannell
Craig Grannell
Craig gets all confused with modern games systems with a million buttons, hence preferring the glass-surfaced delights of mobile devices. He spends much of his time swiping and tilting (sometimes actually with a device), and also mulling why no-one’s converted Cannon Fodder to iPad.