Game Reviews

Tumblebugs (iPhone)

Star onStar onStar onStar offStar off
|
| Tumblebugs (iPhone)
Get
Tumblebugs (iPhone)
|
| Tumblebugs (iPhone)

As any good advertising guru will tell you, in a mature market brands are massively important. Coke versus Pepsi, Nike versus Adidas, Microsoft versus Apple.

Technically, there's little to choose between them, but the fact that fights break out over such allegiances tells you all you need to know about the subjective nature of human psychology.

And so it is with the massively successful and competitive match-three marble-popping genre. What's really surprising is it's taken this long for anyone to get around to releasing games such as Tumblebugs and rivals Luxor and Zuma on iPhone and iPod touch.

Indeed, it wasn't until May 2009 that the previously unknown PlayCreek stole a march on the competition, releasing its dinosaur-themed marble-popping clone StoneLoops! of Jurassica, which has sat in the App Store Top 100, raking in the cash ever since.

Three months on and Connect2Media, together with originator Wildfire, and developer Tag Games, has come out with an iPhone version of Tumblebugs.

As is the way of the marble-popping world, however, MumboJumbo and Plus+ Publishing are simultaneously launching an iPhone version of Luxor, which is now out. No doubt PopCap's skunkworks will soon have a version of Zuma out too.

It's a bit of a history lesson to swallow at the start of a review for sure, but the context is important. You probably have played one of these game before. You probably have a favourite. It probably is the first one you played. You probably hate the others.

As it goes, though, Tumblebugs is different in one major way: instead of moving your ball-throwing unit along a linear left-right track, in Tumblebugs you operate in the round. This means you have to tap on the screen where you want to aim. It makes complete sense in the world of mouse control but on a touchscreen somehow it doesn't quite work out snappy enough in comparison.

The situation isn't improved as as a game design choice Tumblebugs doesn't use the otherwise standard option of showing you with a ghosted line or icon where the coloured balls you're going to fire into the chain of incoming coloured balls to make a match-three are going to end up.

Again, this is fine in the world of mouse control but on a touchscreen, where even thin fingers suffer from fat finger syndrome, it's more of a necessity.

Throw into the mix a seeming random retracting top-of-the-screen menu that on occasions obscures the playing area and you have a game that's best described as an iPhone version of Tumblebugs, rather than a good iPhone marble-popping game.

Frankly, it's a shame, because Tumblebugs does provide interesting variation in the genre, and there is a lot of game here.

There are 78 levels of marble-popping action and if you've upgraded to OS 3.0 you can play your own music while you pop. You can also send your score to Facebook. Bizarrely, what I like best about Tumblebugs is that you can play the game for kicks on the menu screen.

This attention to detail matters but in a competitive world and without a solid foundation, these touches are not enough.

Sadly, then, Tumblebugs on iPhone tastes a little more like a generic own store cola brand than the real thing. But, hey, that's exactly what some people like.

Tumblebugs (iPhone)

If you've enjoyed Tumblebugs on the web, you'll enjoy this iPhone version, but it's not honed enough to convert fans of rivals such as Luxor or Stoneloop!
Score
Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.