The AppStore is a place where, with all the clones of clones and ‘safe’ titles hitting the ‘shelves’, finding new, original, unique, and interesting games is getting harder and harder. However, they’re still being released, and can still be found. If you’re willing to look. With all of the great releases this week, one of the titles that almost got shoved under the rug, and missed out on is Slick Entertainment’s Shellrazer, a side-scrolling action shooter with great graphics, addictive gameplay and plenty of special power-ups and equipable items to keep you glued to your device for hours.
Shellrazer contains one gameplay mode, a single player campaign., but even though games like this generally include multiple game modes, once you dive in and take a look at the map, it becomes pretty clear that completing the game will take quite a few hours. There’s 50+ levels to make your way through, all found along a path that twists and winds through pastures, hills, mountains, jungles, beaches and more, and includes quite a few branching paths. Here, on the map, you’ll get your first real idea of how much time and effort has gone into making Shellrazer an extremely polished iOS title. The vibrant graphics and great animations stand out, making this one of my favorite level select screens I’ve ever seen. And it only gets better from here.
In Shellrazer, you’ll be guiding a War Turtle through swarm after swarm of goblins on the ground, in the air, and in well designed fortresses as he makes his way on his annual march across the land. You’ll start off with a machine gunner who sits on top of the War Turtle, and is able to blast through the enemies. As you progress across the map, you’ll come across many captured creatures that will be able to sit on-top of the turtle as well, and help him out on his journey.
You’ll soon find out that there’s way more characters than you can equip, and that figuring out which three characters best fit your style of play is something you should figure out quickly. The faster you figure this out, the better, as the coins that you earn by destroying enemies, and making your way through the levels will be required to upgrade your characters, and spending the time to upgrade one character which after a couple of levels doesn’t end up working out can cost you big time.
Along with upgrading your characters, you’ll also be able to spend coins on power-ups and special stat add-ons. One time use items like ice blocks that slow down the enemies, and electric charges that take out all of the airborne enemies, as well as stat additions like 10% more damage against ground troops, and slow health regeneration are available, and cheap, in the shop. You’ll also pick up tons of them as you make your way through the levels, so purchasing them isn’t required. You’ll even be able to sell quite a few of them to help you upgrade your characters.
The controls take a little getting use to, as you can either tap the gunners to fire in one constant direction, or you can tap on a character and then drag your finger across the screen, with the gun following your finger. With up to 3 gunners available at once, figuring this out does take some practice, but once you get it, it flows very well, and definitely fits the game perfectly. I couldn’t picture any other control scheme that would work better.
Shellrazer is one of the best side-scrolling arcade titles I’ve played in a while. The gameplay, graphics, controls, the whole package is extremely polished, and well developed. Priced at $0.99 for launch, it’s a steal, and anyone even remotely interested in the genre should pick it up. Being Universal really helps out as well, as do the 16 GameCenter achievements. However, having no leader boards, and only one gameplay mode kind of takes away from the replay value, but that’s partially redeemable by the 3 separate difficulty levels which could cause you to loose more than just a few hours on the game. Slick Entertainment is definitely a development team you’ll want to keep your eyes on. If Shellrazer is any sort of taste of what’s to come, iOS gamers are in for some awesome gaming.
2 comments:
I love this game! Everything about it is perfect. I have no idea why it didn't get 5 stars from you guys.
Awesome game. Every time I power up my iPad, I forget what I needed to do and get lost in the game. Art, sounds, gameplay are all great. 5 stars in my book.
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