App Review No. 80 One More Line

Strong Points:
Great, retro graphics
Nice feel to it
Some drawing capabilities (if you like circles that is)
Addictive
Interesting point: lag changes the drawing you make - making it jagged etc.
Soundtrack is cool

Weak Points:
Hard to learn, harder to master
Only one mode
Frustrating
Can lag quite a bit
Can sometimes grapple the wrong circle
Buttons are not labelled very well
Amount deaths are displayed, plain to see, on the front page

Rating: 80%

In-depth Review:

Release Dates:
World Wide: 18 November, 2014

Controls:
Tap and hold to grapple, let go release it.

Most apps go with the simple premise of being very easy to pick up for five minutes and still being able play through a large chunk of it. This app is no different. Once you've played it for a while, that is.

The gameplay is simple yet complicated: press the screen to grapple onto a circle and then let go to release the grapple and continue in the direction you were headed when still circling. However, then you've got to take into account the size of the grapple which also determines your speed (a smaller grapple = a faster speed) as well as the placement of the other circles and the walls. You can pass through the walls and survive outside them while grappling but as soon as you've let go you will die (if still outside them). The other ways you can die is by hitting a circle or by propelling yourself back to the beginning. But why would you even try to go backwards (after all, you only get points for going forwards)? For two reasons: the first one is to so that you can re-aim/get a better sized grapple and the second one is so that you can draw a picture.

This is because of another interesting point of the game: the ability to draw your path. The drawing appears continuously behind you and changes colour while playing and, so far, cannot be turned off (but can be shortened if you are experiencing lag). One interesting point about lag in this game is that it affects your drawing and makes it jagged. Not very important but interesting all the same.

The graphics and soundtrack are both really nice and have a retro-y feel about them which, when combined with the trail mechanic, can make it really beautiful. However, the menus are not as nice. They are just bars with a symbol on and, until you've pressed them all and figured out what they do, don't really tell you much about their function.

Overall, One More Line is a great little app which could be made even better with more helpful menus and a new mode or two. Definitely worth getting for a quick five minute game (after an hour of practice, of course).

Goodbye for now, Harry 

Update: Australia Day theme added as well as amount of deaths display feature

Update: Chinese New Year theme added as well as an option to disable themes. Also, more performance tweaks

Update: version two brings unlockable trails, custom themes and unlockable hats to One More Line!