Dino Survival is a new tilting arcade game from SomeHand. There’s two different game modes Meteor Garden, and Last Place. In Meteor Garden, it’s your job to collect as many fruits as you can, while avoiding randomly falling meteors. You’ll need to grab fruits as fast as you can, back to back, in order to get big combo bonus scores, and one hit from a meteor, or go too long without any fruit, and it’s game over. In Last Place, you’ll face more pattern oriented meteors, all falling at once. While trying to get out of the way of the meteors, you’re given one fruit, for each pattern, to try and collect. Get hit once, or miss out on too many fruits in a row, and it’s game over.
The controls in Dino Survival are nice and responsive, but you’re only able to choose between three different calibration options, and no sensitivity options. Almost every tilting game in the AppStore should have calibration and sensitivity options, because, of course, we all like to hold, and play, our iDevices differently. Also adding a joystick for gamers with iPads would have been a great idea, as it can get pretty tiring tilting your big iPad around for any length of time.
Graphics-wise, Dino Survival is cute, and polished. The animations are good, and the shadows for the falling meteors get bigger and bigger as the meteors get closer to hitting the ground. The addition of fruits makes the game more vibrant, as do the 5 environments. There are 2 unlockable dinosaurs, but they don’t have different playing mechanics. There’s no movement difference between any of them, and no special attributes for the unlockable characters. Having this would have made a big difference in the game.
GameCenter leader boards exist for both game modes, but there are no achievements. In a game like Dino Survival, where you’re collecting items and dodging things continuously, achievements are always nice to have. But the lack of them doesn’t hurt the gameplay too much, and the leader boards help add replay value to the game.
In the end, Dino Survival is a solid casual arcade game, and SomeHand has shown that they can put a good game together. However, it does feel like there’s a lack of content here, and if SomeHand had spent just a little more time adding little different mechanics, and maybe some power-ups, or more modes, Dino Survival could have easily been a must buy game. Right now, Dino Survival is free, but the price will go back up to $0.99 soon, and if you miss out on the free promotion, you can rest assured that this game is worth the $0.99 you’ll spend on it, especially if the developers keep adding to the game, and making it the best they can.
In the end, Dino Survival is a solid casual arcade game, and SomeHand has shown that they can put a good game together. However, it does feel like there’s a lack of content here, and if SomeHand had spent just a little more time adding little different mechanics, and maybe some power-ups, or more modes, Dino Survival could have easily been a must buy game. Right now, Dino Survival is free, but the price will go back up to $0.99 soon, and if you miss out on the free promotion, you can rest assured that this game is worth the $0.99 you’ll spend on it, especially if the developers keep adding to the game, and making it the best they can.
I’m giving Dino Survival a score of 6 out of 10.
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