WWDC 2009: Hands on with Star Hogs on iPhone
Eats up time like a pig
Munching on every bit and byte in sight, the last thing you want on your iPhone is a hog. Fortunately, Star Hogs won't drain your handset's resources, but it will chomp down on your free time with its unique tactical gameplay that we went hands-on with during WorldWide Developers Conference.
Bearing a cursory resemblance to Worms, Star Hogs grants you command of a spaceship in turn-based battles punctuated with real-time action. Through the course of a 32-mission campaign, you take turns moving your ship in and firing upon enemies in real-time. Each turn gives you a limited amount of time to move and attack; moreover, an action bar lining the bottom of the screen denotes how far you can move and the number of attacks that can be issued in a given turn.
It's not the methodical battles of a traditional turn-based strategy game; instead, Star Hogs aims for something much more active. Like Worms, battles play out with ships navigating rocky asteroids and space debris to take up attack positions. The difference here comes in the faster tempo and increasingly interactive combat.
Playing a round in Freeplay mode gave us 30 seconds per turn to move and attack. Tactically, that enabled us to either spend time positioning our ship to an ideal location, launching several long range attacks, or a combination of both. The time limit means decisions have to be made quickly. In this particular case, we opted to spend half our energy repositioning the ship to improve the chances of landing an attack.
Once you're in place, launching an attack is done by first setting the trajectory with a slide of your finger. A circular targeting icon surrounds your ship that points in the direction of the shot. When you're content with the angle, pressing the fire key in the lower-right activates the weapon. Holding down the button yields a stronger shot that travels farther than if you just tap the screen.
Determining how long to hold down the fire button depends on several factors: weapon, distance to target, and gravity. From basic missiles and machine gun fire to trickier mines and cluster bombs, each weapon features unique handling. Chucking a mine, for instance, is different than unloading bullets from a machine gun. This also factors into the range of your attacks, which is directly dependent on how long you press the attack button. The gravitational pull of each arena, which varies from stage to stage, influences shots and may require adjustments to your attack strategy.
Victory comes with the reward of ore that can be spent on tech upgrades for your ships. These should prove immensely helpful when progressing through the campaign, as well as engaging friends via Freeplay mode which supports network competition for up to four.
Matches are relatively short, so the prospect of hopping online for a few minutes and finishing a game or two is appealing. It likely won't take long to burn through the campaign, so the inclusion of multiplayer should give Star Hogs a boost in value when it arrives on the App Store later this summer.
