Review Rewind: Crazy Rings (Previously Riot Rings)

Crazy Rings by Cervo Media, released as Riot Rings, is a fantastic bubble popper. Using zoo animals as marbles, and including boss-like fights, along with the amount of polish, 3 Gameplay Modes and replay value enhanced by GameCenter support all make Crazy Rings one of the best Zumaesque titles on the iOS. Now, still a year later, Crazy Rings can be found on both my iPad and my iPod, and with the added Freeplay and Zen gameplay modes, chances are it'll never leave my devices, and will be transferred over to every new device I happen to get. If you're a fan of the genre, this is definitely one game you'll want to make sure and check out. 

**Note: This review was written after playing Version 1.1

--Click Here to check out the original review--

Riot Rings is a new Zuma-type bubble popper from Cervo Media GMBH. In it, you’ll match up groups of 3 or more different animal bubbles to clear out multiple rings thought over 100 levels and 3 different gameplay modes. Right off the bat, I want to say that Riot Rings is now my favorite Zuma type game, knocking The Temple Zumas out of the #1 spot. Cervo Media has taken the bubble popper game, and expanded it in a pretty original way. Instead of trying to clear out the bubbles before they get to the end point, you try and clear out the bubbles before the key on one end, and lock on the other end of the ring touch each other. To make it even more interesting, animals are flung into the rack from the outsides of the screen along with the animals that you fling into the rack from the middle of the screen.

The controls are pretty much like every other Zuma-type game out there, where you touch where you want your bubble to go. And like all other Zuma-type games out there, this is easier said that done. There’s various twists and turns in the rings that give you some pretty awkward angles to shoot at. 

Also, sometimes there’s inner and outer rings, causing you to sometimes wait for one ring to pass before you can hit an outer ring, or you will have a ring around your shooting area, with more rings on other parts of the screen, or even sometimes shake, constantly move, speed up, or shrink in completely, causing you to miss your target, or even worse, causing the key and lock to come together. There are, however, power-ups, which can help out big time. There’s a power-ups ranging from pieces of chicken that clear out big sections of the racks, to needles which can slow down the movement. These, put together with bosses, stones, and really so many different mechanics, that I can’t name or describe them all, makes Riot Rings easily one of the most interesting and fun Zuma-type games available in the AppStore.

The graphics are top notch, very polished, and retina display supported. The clouds hovering above some parts of the screen add a lot to the feel of the game, as do the great animal sounds. The controls are very tight and responsive, there’s GameCenter leaderboards, 3 star time-based rankings to try and snag, and re-playable levels along with Endless and Zen Modes to play after you’re done with the Campaign. 

Riot Rings is great for all ages, and even my wife has started to obsess over it, and there’s 3 available profiles so that multiple gamers can play on one device. I can not say one bad thing about this game. It’s done extremely well, adds a lot of gameplay mechanics to the tired Zuma-like gameplay, and you’re bound to see something new every time you play. For $0.99, it’s a steal. The iPad version is $2.99, which is still a great price for all the content and gameplay you’ll get out of this game. I really can not recommend it enough, even if bubble popping isn’t your thing, this game is sure to show you a great time, and give you tons of hours of entertainment.

**Note: Crazy Rings HD is available for free, and the XL version (iPad Build) is available for $0.99

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Supermagical [Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team + Gala Pocket] - $0.99

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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Colored Bubbles - 0.99 (Zabiyaka)

Colored Bubbles is a new tap/swipe action puzzle game from Zabiyaka. In the game, you try and match up bubbles without popping different colored bubbles in the process. To match the bubbles up, you’ll need to either tap them when they’re overlapping each other, and not touching another colored bubble, or drag a bigger bubble, which is made by combining bubbles, into a smaller bubble that is touching a different colored bubble. This might sound kind of confusing, and it kind of is at first. Finding out what you can and can’t do within the game is something that is easily learned though, and once you do, Colored Bubbles becomes quite the addictive little bubble match + pop game.

The controls are simple to use, and very responsive. When two bubbles of the same color are touching each other, or overlapping, just tap on them, and they will merge together. Once you have a bubble that’s made up of two or more bubbles, you can drag it around the screen, and catch smaller bubbles of the same color, even if they are touching or overlapping bubbles that are a different color. If you tap on a bubble that is touching a different colored bubble, they will both pop, and you will loose your points. The bubbles will also pop, resulting in a negative score, if you drag a smaller bubble into a larger bubble that is touching different colored bubbles. To beat the game, you’ll need to clear the screen of all the bubbles, or have a screen filled with 50 bubbles. After each bubble or bubbles pop, more bubbles will appear on the screen, or you can just wait, as bubbles appear randomly every couple of seconds as well. If you don’t like how the bubbles are floating around, or the current overlapping of a group of bubbles, you can also shake your device to shake up the bubbles, sending them all in different directions, which is a nice mechanic, and a great little helper move if you get stuck.

In order to make a group of bubbles pop and get a positive score, you’ll need to combine 5 or more like colored bubbles. You also get a bonus score for grouping together more than 5 of the same colored bubbles. For instance, if you have a blue bubble that’s made up of 3 little blue bubbles, and another blue bubble that is made up of 4 blue bubbles, and combine them, you’ll get quite the extra little bonus. Each 2 bubbles that you combine will give you 10 points, and each group of 5 bubbles will give you 100 points. There are also combo points given for making consecutive matches. The bigger the bubbles matched, the bigger the combo points. So a lot of work has gone into making the scoring system very interesting, and it’s always nice to see this much work going into the scoring aspect of a game.

The graphics also have a pretty nice touch, as there’s a nice, smooth, bubbly graphic style, and an option for retro graphics. The option for retro graphics is a great addition, and I think it actually helps players see the bubbles better, as well as looking cool. The music is nice, and changes between modern, and chip-tune when you change the graphic style of the game.

There are 3 different difficulties within the game, Easy, Medium, and Hard, each setting having more different colored bubbles. Easy has 3 colors of bubbles, Medium has 5, and Hard has 7. Also, the amount of bubbles that you start with, and the frequency in which they appear, or amount of bubbles that appears when you pop or match bubbles, also goes up with the difficulty. There aren’t any extra modes, but with each difficulty, it’s almost like having 3 modes within the game. Though having a time trial or something would have been nice. Also missing from the game are power-ups, which would have fit in extremely well with Colored Bubbles. Something like multiplier increases, changing half the bubbles to one specific color, and things like this would have really spiced up the game.

There is also no online support, so the replay value is limited to beating your own scores, and building up your own score board, as the scores that are already inserted into the game are very easy to beat, with the #1 spot being 100 points (or one match of 5 bubbles). Not being able to battle over the #1 spot, or challenge friends is a pretty big upset when playing a score-oriented game like this. However, Zabiyaka has done a very good job in creating a game that’s pretty addicting, and doesn’t necessarily need online leader boards to have decent replay value. The game is only $0.99, and it’s Universal, so you’ll be able to see and play it the way it’s meant to be played on your iPod as well as iPad.

Colored Bubbles is getting a score of 7 out of 10.

Links:

Full Version - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colored-bubbles/id459492959?mt=8

Website - http://zabiyaka.com/colored-bubbles

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Snorbies - 0.99 (Nepik)

Snorbies is a new bubble popper game from indie developer, Nepik. It’s your typical match 3 or more bubble popper, with some added items to make the gameplay kind of interesting. In the game, you’ll touch the screen to shoot awakened Snorbies at the sleeping Snorbies, making groups of 3, or in hard mode, 4, or more, to make them drop off of the screen. If you don’t make matches with enough of the shot Snorbies, more Snorbies come down from the top of the screen, pushing the big pile closer and closer to the bottom of the screen. If the sleeping Snorbies touch the bottom of the screen, it’s a game over. There are 4 items thrown in randomly with the sleeping Snorbies, grumpy rocks, happy rocks, cups of coffee, and roosters. Rocks fall when you wake up the Snorbie above it, and will wake up more Snorbies as it falls. Happy rocks do the same, but wake up more Snorbies than grumpy rocks. Cups of coffee and roosters fall down when the Snorbie above it is woken up, and are kept in the lower right corner to use whenever you see fit, cups of coffee wake up one snorbie, while roosters wake up a bunch.

However, these added items are only found in Advanced Mode. In Classic Mode, you are faced with clearing out the screen as fast as possible without any help from items. There’s also a Level Mode, which is more like a challenge mode, in which you are given 4 different worlds each with pre-made levels that you need to clear out, and try to get 3 star ratings in. These levels are initially very easy to clear out, but once you get in the later levels, and worlds, the shots that you need to make become increasingly difficult, and almost border on impossible. The items, rocks, coffee, and roosters are added as you progress throughout the worlds. It adds a nice challenge to the game, and is where most gamers who are already familiar and maybe worn out on typical bubble popper gameplay will spend their time.

The graphics in Snorbies are alright, a little fuzzy, but there are some cute yawning animations in the game for sleeping Snoribes. The Snorbies that are awake just sit there and smile with big eyes looking right at you. More could be done here, as the graphics don’t really stand out as a highlight of the game. They aren’t a deal-breaker, but as we all know, graphics are not something you can ignore for long. The scoring system is done exceptionally well though, growing with combos, and multiple hits. But it kind of gets lost in the game, as there’s no OpenFeint or GameCenter leaderboards. There’s also no music in Snorbies, and the constant ‘bing’ effect can get pretty annoying very quickly.

Snorbies is a decent bubble popper game, with just a few things missing. Polish on the graphics, some animations, online compatibility, and music, but at it’s core, it’s a bubble popper worth getting. For a dollar, and being Universal, it’s worth buying, as it has enough content to stay on your device for quite a long time. The challenge it brings with the pre-made levels/challenges is alone enough to make me want it. I do hope to see more done with it in the future though.

Snorbies gets a rating of 3/5 from me.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snorbies-full-version/id455972992?mt=8

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Riot Rings - 0.99 (Cervo Media)

Riot Rings is a new Zuma-type bubble popper from Cervo Media GMBH. In it, you’ll match up groups of 3 or more different animal bubbles to clear out multiple rings thought over 100 levels and 3 different gameplay modes. Right off the bat, I want to say that Riot Rings is now my favorite Zuma type game, knocking The Temple Zumas out of the #1 spot. Cervo Media has taken the bubble popper game, and expanded it in a pretty original way. Instead of trying to clear out the bubbles before they get to the end point, you try and clear out the bubbles before the key on one end, and lock on the other end of the ring touch each other. To make it even more interesting, animals are flung into the rack from the outsides of the screen along with the animals that you fling into the rack from the middle of the screen.

The controls are pretty much like every other Zuma-type game out there, where you touch where you want your bubble to go. And like all other Zuma-type games out there, this is easier said that done. There’s various twists and turns in the rings that give you some pretty awkward angles to shoot at.

Also, sometimes there’s inner and outer rings, causing you to sometimes wait for one ring to pass before you can hit an outer ring, or you will have a ring around your shooting area, with more rings on other parts of the screen, or even sometimes shake, constantly move, speed up, or shrink in completely, causing you to miss your target, or even worse, causing the key and lock to come together. There are, however, power-ups, which can help out big time. There’s a power-ups ranging from pieces of chicken that clear out big sections of the racks, to needles which can slow down the movement. These, put together with bosses, stones, and really so many different mechanics, that I can’t name or describe them all, makes Riot Rings easily one of the most interesting and fun Zuma-type games available in the AppStore.

The graphics are top notch, very polished, and retina display supported. The clouds hovering above some parts of the screen add a lot to the feel of the game, as do the great animal sounds. The controls are very tight and responsive, there’s GameCenter leaderboards, 3 star time-based rankings to try and snag, and re-playable levels along with Endless and Zen Modes to play after you’re done with the Campaign.

Riot Rings is great for all ages, and even my wife has started to obsess over it, and there’s 3 available profiles so that multiple gamers can play on one device. I can not say one bad thing about this game. It’s done extremely well, adds a lot of gameplay mechanics to the tired Zuma-like gameplay, and you’re bound to see something new every time you play. For $0.99, it’s a steal. The iPad version is $2.99, which is still a great price for all the content and gameplay you’ll get out of this game. I really can not recommend it enough, even if bubble popping isn’t your thing, this game is sure to show you a great time, and give you tons of hours of entertainment.

I’m giving Riot Rings 5 out of 5 stars, with a huge recommendation to pick it up as soon as you can.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/all-riot-rings/id450444074?mt=8

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