App Review No. 31 Tasty Planet

Strong Points:
Different, innovative gameplay
Interesting and different premise
Nice graphics
Good soundtrack
Lots of replay value (although, could get boring)
Lots of levels
Funny story (if short)

Weak Points:
All levels are more or less the same
Longer levels can be boring as you are just eating the same things over and over again
Sizing is accurate for some objects and not for others
You can go from metres in length in one level to centimetres the next

In-depth Review:

Release Dates:
World Wide: 1st February 2011

Controls:
Tilt the device to move the grey goo
Tap the device to move the grey goo
Use a Joystick to move the grey goo
Use a Track Pad to move the grey goo

I'm hungry. Now what should I eat? A grape? A person? The very fabric of the universe? Perhaps. But I'm not big enough just yet.

That, right there is basically, the whole premise of the game, for this is a game of eat or be eaten. Or is that absorb or be shrunk? I don't know. You play as the lovable grey goo, who was created by a scientist as he sought to make an automatic bathroom cleaner. However, you develop a voracious appetite and decide to go rogue, eating everything you see. You start from the very bottom (and by that, I mean, microscopic) and work your way to the top, through laboratory, outside, picnic table, ocean, park, city, sky, orbit and, finally, cosmos.

You eat things by touching them and this makes you bigger, shown by the ever-increasing size o meter in the top left. Get big enough and you can eat something bigger and so on. While this premise is a great idea, and works really well, with that many levels to play through, it can get rather boring. Interspersed between the normal levels of just eating to get bigger, are levels which target you to eat a certain amount of one thing or find all the puzzle pieces etc. And while these add a bit of variety to the game, there simply aren't enough of them.

The storyline is simple and follows the plotline of the world (and eventually aliens) realising that you pose a real threat. It is shown through a series of comic strips at specific points in the game and are quite funny if short and far in between. They also don't detract from the cartoony graphics of the game like a cut-scene might have. The graphics and names of the objects show where the detail of the game has been put it, with every creature and object named, some of them better than others (if I see one more generic fish, I swear I'll...).

The music is jolly and, together with the graphics and funny storyline, detracts from the, actually rather dark premise. I mean, a science experiment gone wrong has gone on a rampage, eating everything in its path, including people and animals...

Overall the game is a nice little time waster but can sometimes go on too long with the comedy short and far in between.

Rating: 62%

Goodbye for now, Harry

Update: bug fixes and compatibility fixes for new iOS versions