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Hands on with Canabalt on iPhone

Canabalt? Yes, it can

Hands on with Canabalt on iPhone

If iPhone meets any particular criticism, it's that it can't provide the kind of dedicated, immersive, console-quality gaming experience on a par with PSP. The iPhone adaptation of web-phenomenon Canabalt doesn't so much as answer that argument, as prove it right.

Beginning life as a five-day test for the Kyles' Experimental Gameplay Project, the team behind Canabalt spent two weekends designing the gameplay, writing the code, drawing the graphics and creating the music and sound effects.

Naturally, only the smallest and simplest of games could emerge from such a project and that's precisely Canabalt. It's incredibly simple, placing you in the shoes of a free-runner who legs it at full pace along the rooftops of a dystopian city.

Tapping the touchscreen is the game's only control, jumping your fast-moving fellow over gaps between buildings. Running as far as you can is the goal.

The retro style serves a couple of different purposes. It gives the game a superb, pixelated chic, but also means that a games system like iPhone (or an in-browser Flash game) can maintain the essential speed of play.

Canabalt might be simple, but it's equally fast. At times it's advisable to let your free-runner pile into a box, rather than leap over it, just to slow things down and give yourself breathing room on the jumps. You need it when it comes to crashing through the narrow orifice of a window and running through the floor of a tall building.

The powerhouse musical accompaniment and booming sound effects contrast the simplicity of play and stark visuals beautifully; pushing you on, giving you the enthusiasm to start the run all over again when you finally plummet to your virtual death.

It's the ultimate quick play twitch game and serves to prove the argument that iPhone isn't a game system that provides the console-like experience of the PSP.

It proves iPhone can take bite-sized distractions and explode them into gaming heroin. The feeling is PSP and home consoles can't compete with the iPhone in this realm, now that Canabalt is coming to the platform.

Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.