iPhone App: Critter Crunch
= 4 stars
Action / puzzle game where you must take out invading creatures descending from hanging vines, using your extremely long tongue and feeding creatures to one another.
The Good
- Initially simple gameplay: get all the creatures off the screen. Your character stays on the ground and can move creatures from one column to another using a long tongue. The “twist” is that you can feed smaller creatures to larger ones. By doing so, the smaller creatures are removed. Feeding a larger creature two smaller creatures causes it to explode, and adjacent creatures of the same size and color can be destroyed as well.
- Polished, colorful graphics and amusing animation: overall there’s a cutesy anime feel (think Pokemon). The animations are surprisingly inventive, pretty much everything from your long tongue, to creatures exploding show an attention to detail that adds to the experience.
- Lots of variety in terms of level design, alternating between timed challenges to puzzle-like levels with a limited number of moves, where the arrangement of creatures and their sizes calls for a surprising amount of strategy. There’s also variety in some added complications like viruses and falling objects to swallow.
The Bad
- Not sure about the design of bizarre, huge headed creatures dangling from vines. While I do like the active animations, I prefer manipulating shiny, non-alive objects (Bejeweled, Trism).
- At times needlessly gross; beyond your extremely long tongue, creature regurgitation, and creatures devouring each other, there’s a virus going around that infects creatures and causes them to occasionally explode into green goo.
Conclusion
I complained about disembodied heads in Snood, but in Critter Crunch’s case, the constantly shifting game play and alternation between action and puzzles eventually won me over. This silly, bizarre game is freaking addicting. Recommended.
iTunes App Store Link: 