Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team. What a name for a development studio. Creators of Pro Zombie Soccer, and including team members who’ve worked on Plants Vs. Zombies and Worms, it’s fair to say that Mega Team knows exactly what they’re doing when it comes to creating video games. Their newest title, Supermagical, launched in Spain’s AppStore back in June of this year. Wanting to include a CO-OP Multiplayer Mode before releasing the game worldwide, the game hit a little bit of a snag. Well now, 2 months later, Mega Team is still struggling with getting all of the bugs and issues worked out with the CO-OP Mode, but they’ve decided to give the world the Single Player Mode now, saving Multiplayer for a future update.
Supermagical is a bubble matching game along the same lines as Bust-A-Move, Bubble Burst, Spaliens and Snorbies. As already stated, the game only contains a Story Mode, but with 3 continents and 71 stages, there’s loads of content to keep gamers busy until the CO-OP and Verses Modes are added. You’ll follow along the story of Nina, a young witch, who, while trying to make a super powerful spell, wound up releasing her 7 evil witch sisters and thousands of little destructive creatures. Once the other witches find out what happened, they teleport to the heart of destruction to banish the evil from their world. Little Nina, unfortunately, can not teleport and it’s up to you to guide her on her journey, defeat her evil sisters and the creatures along the way to help the other witches take care of the evil for good.
Now, not only are you given some unique special powers at the start of the game, but you’re also able to purchase items and gain friends as you progress. Starting off, you’re given lightning strikes, which automatically take care of any critters which are let loose by destroying the enemies behind them. As you take out groups of critters, they leave coins scattered about the playing field. Collecting these help you to gain enough currency so that you can purchase power-ups as well as helpful friends in the shops that are next to each stage. You can also collect 3 bags of currency that are hidden around each stage, but only show up after you complete the level. This little bit of interaction with the Map Menu is a great addition to the game, and is a prime example of just how much work has gone into each and every aspect of the game, minus the boss battles, which we’ll get to in a second.
Every stage has it’s own shop. Here, there are 3 items you’ll be able to purchase. Once you purchase these 3 items, the shop will be empty for the rest of the game. These items range from coins which you can use to play a spiffy little memory mini-game where you match up two like cards without picking skull cards, candy that lets you change the color of your bubble shot, friends that stay with you permanently and help take out critters along the way, and more.
You’ll also save various ferries as you defeat your sisters. The ‘boss fights’ with your sisters are a little disappointing though. Once you reach a sister, you’re required to answer questions with multiple choice answers until you answer correctly, and then you’ll ‘battle it out’ by playing a typical level. There is no real interaction with your sisters aside from the dialogue, which kind of stinks. I was really hoping for some extreme boss battles where you would have to injure your sister until she was so weak, you could send her back to the Underworld. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and in a game with this much polish and the crazy amount of work that you can clearly see went into making the game, these ‘boss battles’ do not fit in with the gameplay, and are pretty disappointing.
Graphically, the look and feel of Supermagical is great. It’s very clear that loads of time and effort has gone into the creation of each and every environment, character model, and menu, as well as the animations, all playing out smooth as butter and adding immensely to the enjoyment of the game. The music and sound effects are also a huge plus, and compliment the graphical feeling of the game perfectly. Along with 3 star rankings for each stage, based on how quickly you can complete them, there’s GameCenter support with 35 achievements, adding quite a bit to the replay value.
For $0.99, being Universal, supporting Retina Display for the new iPad, and with more content on the way, Supermagical is a great buy. Even though there’s only one gameplay mode, and the boss battles are disappointing, I can’t think of one other reason not to recommend this fantastic bubble matcher. It’s clear in just about every single aspect of the game that Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team has put in an insane amount of time, effort and work into the game, and once Versus and CO-OP Modes are added, it has the potential to be the best Bubble Matching game available for the iOS. If you’re a fan of the genre, it’s a must buy.
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