Pulse is a music rhythm game from Cipher Prime and their first title for the iPad. The goal in Pulse is simple: tap the orbiting notes in time with the music. While the game’s goal and gameplay mechanics are simple, Pulse is anything but easy. Some of the later tracks are challenging and the new free downloadable tracks are pretty brutal. This difficulty is actually enjoyable and makes Pulse a perfect iPad showpiece for your friends. Pulse is best experienced when you’re showing it off to your friends and competing with them for high scores. Cipher Prime has done an incredible job with Pulse. It is a must own iPad app. Pulse’s stellar design, visuals, music and simple gameplay mechanics will make all your friends envy your iPad and when they can’t beat your high score, you will be the one left smiling.

Pulse has no campaign. The game is more like an album of music. There’s a playlist menu and you select that song that you want to play. You do your best to hit as many notes as possible and are then given a percentage score at the end of each song. Pulse shipped with 8 core tracks from Cipher Prime’s own Dain Saint and Kerry Gilbert. Like any music album, there are some tracks that you’ll play over and over again and some that you’ll only play once or twice. For the folks here at IGM, Sakura is the hands down favorite. Pulse’s eight core tracks do an excellent job of spanning the difficulty spectrum of easy to hard. If you want impossible, all you have to do is check out Tidbits from George and Jonathan and Veedja from Ghost Fight.

While Pulse was released with only eight tracks for $4.99, there will be at least 32 tracks when all the updates are rolled out. There are four new songs from Philly artists scheduled to release every month for 6 months following the game’s release. As of the writing of this review, the first batch of songs had been released and they are pretty ruthless. We’re struggling to break 50% on Tidbits and Veedja. While the newest tracks are incredibly difficult, the music is superb.

While there were definitely some standout tracks from indie developer, Cipher Prime, each of the downloadable tracks offers a look at a local Philly band and a glimpse at the city’s indie music scene. So far Cipher Prime has found some incredible musical talent and there’s a lot to look forward to as Pulse’s updates continue.

Pulse is best experienced with friends. Nothing beats a friendly competition and Pulse’s casual gameplay and short levels (usually around 2 minutes) make it the perfect game to pass around the iPad trying to beat each other’s scores. If you have two iPads and can go head to head, even better. It’s a great pickup and play experience that was honestly a little lacking when it was released with only 8 tracks. The first batch of downloadable tracks and the promise of more makes Pulse a must buy.

Pulse is more than an indie game. It’s a musical experience that surpasses the indie game scene and exposes players to great local indie bands. I can’t think of another indie game out there that does that. As a game, Pulse is quick and short Arcade fun. It evolves into something sublime when you approach it from a different perspective. Pulse is an interactive music album that will eventually feature over 20 local indie artists and over 30 tracks for only $4.99. If you have an iPad, why haven’t you purchased it yet?

Fractal by the Philadelphia based Cipher Prime crew is a puzzle game. The player manipulates or “pushes” hexagon fractals to create combinations of 7 called “blooms.” When the 7 fractals come together, the bloom is complete and explodes. Various combinations can come together to produce huge clusters of blooms. In the main campaign mode of the game, the player only has a limited number of pushes to utilize, so every move counts. Under the surface, the game is complex and extremely intuitive with an organic feel.

Fractal offers the player three modes of play: Campaign, Puzzle and Arcade. Campaign is the traditional linear model with the player completing and progressing to the next level. The Puzzle and Arcade modes included hosts of irregular patterns as the name Fractal implies. The game isn’t as simple as pushing fractals to complete blooms, as you get deeper into the gameplay there are specialized fractals which allow for clearing multiple tiles, such as exploding fractals, lightening fractals and others I’m not too sure about. All the modes have scoreboards which rank the top players for each; it adds an element of competition so the player isn’t just playing themselves.

Looking at the Campaign Mode, things start off pretty basic, complete the bloom and move to the next level. Each level has a number of bloom points needed to progress and the game becomes increasing more complicated as the player moves along. There are only a few save points, so the player has to ration their pushes or risk starting over again. It can be both fun and frustrating.

Puzzle Mode offers different puzzles with objectives that need to be accomplished with limited fractal pushes. Sometimes this means clearing a whole board with one or two pushes causing a change reaction. There really are a lot of ways to play and the puzzle mode will exercise your skills for the campaign mode. It’s almost like a tutorial of different puzzle sets. The sets, once unlocked become progressively more complicated and require some strategy.

In the Arcade Mode, levels are timed and broken down by player style. Each style highlights different constraints based on Speed, Agility and Confidence. For example, Speed allows for maximum bloom explosions and one playable color, while Confidence has two colors and a higher difficulty when it comes to creating blooms. The objective is to keep the clock from timing down which will end your run. During the course of the gameplay, there are specialized fractals that pop up and add more time to the countdown. The player also doesn’t have to worry about running out of push fractals, which makes for a fast pace and sometimes chaotic time.

There is much to be said for simple clean looking graphics and the boys over at Cipher Prime really capitalize on that style. The graphics simultaneously give both the sense of elegance seen in the best mainstream games while maintaining the feel of an indie studio. The luminous color combinations bring a dramatic impact to the simplicity of the style and richly reward the player with a fan-freaking-tastic color orgy for the eyes.

The studio has cleverly included helpful little hand-drawn tips drawn into the level backgrounds. In the earlier levels these serve to as the tutorial. Some of these tips are as simple as “push here” or quirky like “good luck, sweetheart.” I’m a huge fan of the design of this game. The player can tell that Cipher Prime spent heaps of time paying attention to the details of the game. This detail goes right down to the “spiffy” comments that scroll across the game after particularly good combinations of blooms. I have to admit, my favorite still is: “Holy Hasselhoff.”

Like Cipher Prime’s Auditorium and forthcoming Pulse, music plays an important role. In Fractal the tempo of the music increases along with the tempo of gameplay. The music builds upon itself incrementally chord upon chord, which seems to incorporate fractal points which can be found in music theory. Ultimately the player is pushing fractals out to some serious beats.

In terms of lasting appeal, Fractal has hours of complex and satisfying puzzles. Fractals in mathematics include irregular patterns which often cannot be expressed by classical geometry; as such, Fractal the game lends itself to varying degrees of complexity and unique play each and every time. If you’re looking for a smart and sophisticated game, be sure to try Fractal.

Helsing’s Fire is a spectacular game for iOS devices. There is an elegance to its design. It takes a simple game mechanic and continues to add new wrinkles to the core gameplay that keeps the game challenging and fresh throughout.

In Helsing’s Fire, you take control of Dr. Helsing and his partner Raffton. Your mission is to eliminate the evil blight and monsters that have invested the land. The main campaign pits you against Count Dracula, but there are two other campaigns as well. Helsing’s Fire is a truly unique game with refreshing game mechanics. I guess the easiest category to put the game in is the all-inclusive puzzle genre – but it is undeniable that this game is inventive.

The game revolves around Helsing’s torch. The Player must illuminate every monster of the same color by placing a torch in the game field. Once your torch is lights up a baddie, they can be eradicated by tapping one of Raffton’s corresponding tonics. The goal of each level is to destroy all the monsters while avoiding the murder of any beautiful maidens. The game never stops introducing new monsters and new twists to the basic light and shadow mechanics. Whether it’s werewolves that turn into fair maidens, explosive toads, teleporting mummies, or light-bending crystals – Helsing’s Fire keeps introducing new things that will keep you forging ahead.

The dialog in the game is amusing and witty. A nice rapport between Helsing and Raffton is developed throughout their exchanges. The writing uses humorous old English and the whole thing is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes…with monsters.

The torch lighting effects in the game are awesome. Everything else in the game looks great, but there’s not much animation here. The good news is that you don’t notice how static most of the monsters are while you’re playing the game. The Developer, Ratloop made a smart choice with the graphics since the most impressive visuals revolve around the torch, the very game mechanic that makes this game so innovative and engrossing.

The music and sound creates a great atmosphere for the game. The creepy tunes and organ heavy music sound like they come right out of an old monster movie. It’s not the most memorable music, but it fits the game. The dialog is so good that I couldn’t help but wish for it to be voiced, but I understand the space requirements of a touch device.

Helsing’s Fire is an incredible value. It’s less than a buck for the iPhone or iPod Touch and the HD iPad version is only $2.99. The gameplay is so fresh that you’ll want to play every level that this game has to offer. Every level has new challenges, enemies and mechanics to master. Ratloop has been kind enough to expand the game by releasing two additional free campaigns (90 Levels) doubling the size of the original campaign game. The game is worth every penny and is one of the best iOS games that I have played. It was tailor made for touch devices and is an exceptional mobile game.

Super Meat Boy is a challenging platformer that emulates and pays homage to the challenging games of yesteryear while maintaining the “indie spirit”

Super Meat Boy it a tribute to the games of the 80s and 90s. For those that don’t know, Super Meat Boy is a platforming game where you control a cube of meat while he attempts to save his girlfriend from the evil Dr. Fetus. The game gave me a smile before I even played the first level when the opening cinematic perfectly emulated the opening to the original Street Fighter II arcade machine. It is no coincidence that Super Meat Boy shares the same initials as Super Mario Bros. – Super Meat Boy is a challenging platformer that celebrates all the classic retro gaming of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.

Let’s get the few criticisms of SMB out of the way. Super Meat Boy is not for everyone. It’s difficulty will scare away a lot of casual and less skilled players…but screw those no0bs! While the difficulty can be frustrating, the game’s short levels and tight controls mean that death is always your fault and that success is only minutes away. It helps that the game records all of your attempts and replays them all as a reward when you finally complete the level….love that. Some of the boss levels can be particularly frustrating. So what else is there to complain about? The crude cinematics make you aware that the game was made by only 2 people and the humor and characters aren’t for everyone (Dr. Fetus can’t sit well with the Right Wing). Some of the story sequences simplistic art style and lack of polish detract from the overall package. Despite these few complaints, the gameplay is spot-on and incredibly fun.

In fact the only complaint anyone can really make about the gameplay is that it is challenging. The slightest mistake results in Meat Boy’s bloody death and restarting the level. Super Meat Boy is outright hard, but it always stays fair. Meat Boy’s controls are exceptional and simplistic. The game could be played with an old Nintendo Gamepad. Players move Meat Boy with the D-pad or Left Joystick, hold a button for run, and press a button to jump; that’s all there is to it. The tight controls keep the fault with the player and reduce frustrations.

SMB’s platforming gameplay is the deepest around. The game sports over 300 levels, free DLC chapters are on the way, and there’s a ton of unlockable indie characters with their own unique abilities and nuances. On your first playthrough you’ll be focused on just beating the level, but beating the level quickly unlocks the “dark world” version of that level. The Dark World is basically a much more difficult version of all the main levels in the game. There are also warp zones to find and bandages to acquire along with boss stages that serve as finales of each world. These additional challenges, unlockable content, and secrets mean that you’ll be playing Super Meat Boy months from now. The content in this game is immense and far exceeds the XBLA standard.

The graphics in Super Meat Boy are not the most technically impressive around, but they are a substantial upgrade from the game’s humble beginnings in Flash. More importantly, the pixel-art graphics fit the game well and reference the retro games that inspired SMB in the first place. I especially appreciated the warp zones where the graphics change to emulate the green hues of the original Gameboy or become pixelated to remind us of the old 8-bit generation. The pixel art is great and there’s a lot of attention to detail to admire. As Meat Boy runs around a level, he leaves a splash of blood on any level tiles he touches and if he meets his demise to a spinning saw blade, the blade will stay bloodied for the remainder of the level. The only real complaint about the graphics are the cutscenes mentioned earlier.

The sound and music of SMB continue to take players down memory lane. Chip tunes accompany Meat Boy on his retro adventure. The sound effects (unless you’re in a warp zone) are more modern. I particularly love the patter of Meat Boy’s feet running along a bloody tile. The roar of “Suuuper Meat Boy” and the accompanying title screen theme is memorable. The game does an excellent job mimicking and approximating tunes from Zelda, Street Fighter, Mega Man and other classics while still introducing its own memorable tunes.

Super Meat Boy is the best indie platformer and one of the best values on Xbox Live. The game may lack online (and local) multiplayer, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun passing around the controller with your friends – old school style. The game is tough and unforgiving, but it’s also fun and rewarding. The old NES classics of the 80s and 90s were a lot more challenging and simpler than games like Gears of War. Super Meat Boy pays homage to their legacy while still carving out its own place among them. Super Meat Boy is an indie masterpiece.

Joe Danger by Hello Games is Sony’s answer to Trials HD (which has sold over 1 million copies) – the only difference is that Joe Danger offers a whole lot more variety and not quite as steep of a learning curve. When you add in Joe’s rich track editing features and multiplayer modes, you have one of PSN’s best downloadable titles.

Joe Danger is a down-and-out stuntman trying to make a comeback. The gameplay is a mix between the aforementioned Trials HD and the old NES classic ExciteBike. You control Joe through different tracks with different objectives. The challenges range from hitting all the targets to collecting D-A-N-G-E-R to racing and brawling other motorcyclists. The level design is reminiscent of old Tony Hawk games since each track has a variety of objectives that Joe allows you to tackle in any order that you wish. Each objective awards you with stars that are used to unlock new levels and progress through the campaign. The level progression system and the ability to restart any track with the press of a button without any loading whatsoever are two of Joe’s strongest features and keep the game challenging without being frustrating.

Joe Danger is a nice looking game with bright colors and vibrant colors. While I prefer the realistic and gritty visuals of Trials HD, the graphics in Joe are nothing to scoff at and fit the overall presentation and motif of the game to a t. Joe’s animations are also top-notch and the menus and level select are depicted as stunt show wall posters hung up on Joe’s Trailer. The fun-loving and charming presentation is further supported by catch tunes and an announcer who’s “J-J-J-Jo-Joooooeeee D-D-Da-Da-Daaaaanger!” yells embody the era and motivate the player.

Joe Danger is a highly polished product, but what really makes it one of PSN’s best downloadable games is its lasting appeal and depth of features. The single player game has a ton of challenges a great variety of objectives that will offer up hours of entertainment, but Joe’s longevity is truly amped up by its multiplayer features and track building and sharing functionality. Joe Danger is truly this generation’s ExciteBike…only this time you can share your creations with your friends right through the internet rather than having to invite them over to your basement. My one complaint about the user created levels is that you can only send tracks to your PSN friends versus having a global database of levels at your fingertips (think Little Big Planet). Joe Danger also has a great multiplayer modes that lets you race people over Playstation Network or locally. It’s great that Hello Games included local multiplayer and split-screen since nothing beats creating a level with your buds and being able to experience your track collectively.

Playstation Network does not have nearly as many games as Xbox Live Arcade, but their games seem to be (on average at least) of better quality and value even if they are fewer and farther between. Joe Danger is a shining example of what PSN can offer. The game is robust and fully featured. Joe Danger is a charming title that expertly balances its challenges so that it never gets too frustrating. You’ll get more playing time out of Joe Danger for $15 than you will most $60 PS3 titles. If you own a Playstation, you really should add this game to your library. Go Joe!

The Original Bullet Candy was an arena shooter from Charlie’s Games. Perfect is the “enhanced version,” with tweaked levels and updated sound and graphics. I haven’t played the perfectless version of Bullet Candy, so I can’t weigh in on the updates, but the game looks polished and performs without any hiccups.

The term bullet-hell comes to mind. The game starts off easy enough. It’s just you and a couple slow, weaponless enemies trapped in a square of two-dimensional space. But the easy targets only last for the first few waves. While your enemies never get much faster, they start shooting lots of yellow bullets pretty quickly. If you don’t clear a wave in under a minute, it’s probably because you’re so worried about avoiding projectiles that you can’t take your eye off the ship long enough to target anything. Eventually you run out of lives and have to start over. But the next time you get a little farther, and not just because you’ve gotten accustomed to the controls.

Yes, your ability to avoid projectiles and gun down the enemy is the most important part of any shooter, and that’s no less true of Bullet Candy Perfect. But a little bit of strategy and a little bit of knowledge goes pretty far here. There are a few moments at the beginning of each wave when the screen is empty of everything but the enemy ships and you. Taking out the right ships in those few moments can be the difference between a screen full of yellow and an easy stroll to the next wave. So you have to pay attention to which ships are the most dangerous and take them out early.

Power ups are key to the later stages, but they come in few forms. The first is a laser upgrade. Each wave is littered with collectibles. If you collect all of them, you get a score bonus and everything on the screen dies, which is useful but hard to pull off. But if you get half of them, your lasers become more powerful, doing more damage and even passing through weaker enemies. The other power ups come from stars. Enemies drop four colored stars: Red, Green, Purple and Yellow. Yellow is just a score bonus, and a red star gives you an extra life. The purple star gives you the three-way shot, and the green star gives you the three-way shot, upgrades your lasers and makes you invincible for the rest of the wave.

Lasers and invincibility reset every wave, but you keep the three-way shot until you die. If you have the three-way shot and you’re stuck in a corner with nowhere to go, you do have one option. You can kill yourself. Suicide takes up two lives but preserves your powerups, giving you a second chance to clear the wave. Obviously that’s a last resort, but sometimes it’s worth two lives to keep the extra firepower.

You can play with either a joypad or a keyboard and mouse, whichever you’re more comfortable with. I chose my 360 controller, which probably wasn’t the best choice. I think the keyboard would have provided tighter control, but the 360 controller had its own benefits. The right analog stick makes the ship fire in any direction, while the buttons left, right, up and down, which was something I often turned to when I had to pay close attention to my ship’s movements.

Bullet Candy Perfect is bright neon colors on a darker, spacey background. The art is pretty well executed, with ships in aesthetically pleasing geometric shapes and interesting, intricate bullet patterns.

But the color choice is compromised in one area; the color and shape of most bullets is very close to that of the Saturn-shaped collectibles, making distracted collection a risky endeavor. But other than that, everything ran smooth and looked pretty.

The soundtrack is an appropriate mix of blippy and glitchy. It’s a bit repetitive and forgettable, but not too distracting. The sound effects are spot on though. Each type of enemy fire has its own static type of blip-blip-blip, while your gun emits a low hum, which stands out without being loud.

An online score board does increase Bullet Candy Perfect’s replayability, but the biggest thing that gives Bullet Candy Perfect lasting appeal, at least for me, is it’s cross-platform availability. This game wouldn’t stay in my rotation if it were only on the PC, but since it’s one of the few (but growing, thanks largely to indie developers) games that runs on my iBook, I’ll probably keep it on there for when I’m out of the house. It may even take the place of Jets’n'Guns, which has been my go-to shooter on the laptop for the past year or two.

PixelJunk Shooter’s one major fault is that it is over too soon and leaves you wanting more.

The game is as simple and addictive as they come; you control a small subterranean rescue ship on a mission down into the depths of a strange mining planet. The plot is simple and takes place in the future. Humans have done their thing and colonized worlds, used up resources, and gotten themselves into trouble. These miners have sent out an SOS and that’s where you (and a friend) come to the rescue. There’s no real plot to speak of other than some special miners/researchers who give you a short spiel about the planet when you find them. While the story won’t drive you to keep playing, the gameplay certainly will.

Each level challenges you with rescuing every miner, but the real fun of this game comes from the fluid mechanics and environments. Don’t be fooled by the game’s title, frantic shooting only results in dead miners and your ship overheating. PixelJunk Shooter is a much more methodical game that feels a bit like Beakman’s World meets Master Blaster. The game starts with you shooting holes in rock and controlling the flow of lava, but quickly evolves into your own scientific experiment. Before the game is over you’ll be cooling lava, melting ice, grappling snow, creating gas, using magnetism, and having a blast. The hazards of the planet’s caverns are diverse and each level seems to offer something new to enjoy: from new environmental hazards to lava shooting suits and other upgrades. The game is instantly familiar and fresh. It’s easy to digest the game’s controls and shooting mechanics, but each level offers fresh new mechanics and interesting solutions. You’ll be enjoying yourself so much, that the game will be over way too soon.

The game’s graphics are much more impressive in motion than in stills. The game has a simple cartoon presentation that works. The style is unique and somewhat reminiscent of PixelJunk Monsters and would ultimately be mediocre and forgettable if it weren’t for some amazing effects and physics. The fluid mechanics shine again. You’ll start by being impressed by the oozing lava and rushing water, but will continue to be impressed by the crumbling snow and melting ice. By the time you get to the final area, you’ll be blown away by some incredible magnetized oil and gas effects. The fluid mechanics and effects steal the show here.

The music is not nearly as memorable as PixelJunk Eden, but High Frequency Bandwidth does an excellent job capturing the subterranean nature of the game with some odd and retro inspired beats. The sound effects, like the game itself, are simple and to the point. You can’t help but feel bad when you hear the curdling scream of a miner.

There is no doubt that you will want to experience every level of PixelJunk Shooter. While it will be over soon, there is some longevity to this game. It has an immensely fun cooperative mode. A friend can pop into your single-player campaign. While there’s no real change in challenge with 2 players other than the fact that you tend to kill more miners if you don’t coordinate what you’re doing. There’s a cool addition in Co-Op where you can grapple your buddy and save him from death. The game is so fun that you will likely replay levels to save all the miners and collect all the hidden gems and researchers. While the game value is certainly there, it would have been nice to have one more area and set of levels to explore.

As far as point and click adventures go, Machinarium by Amanita Design is a perfect 10 in my book; you can’t get much better. The artwork, puzzles and sound devices create a unique steam punk world to click through on your quest to save Robot city. As for the story, the player takes control of robot that has been cast out from said city and must solve various puzzles to sneak back inside. Once inside, the player has to put together clues and solve puzzles to save his fem-bot and the entire metropolis from some robo-thugs and their bomb. This involves a lot of point and click trial and error and screen exploration. Honestly, I was hooked by the artwork before I even got to the first puzzle.

The gameplay of Machinarium is pretty straightforward when it comes to progression – it is a point and click adventure after all. Anybody who has played Amanita’s previous Samorost series of games will be instantly at home with Machinarium. For the most part, the sort of out-there style and basic mechanics work the same; point to a hotspot, click and let the robot do the rest. The protagonist, the robot, ventures through each level collecting various objects and “swallows” them for later use. The objects fit into a great scheme solving the ubiquitous puzzles presented throughout the game.

The earlier stages of Machinarium tend to keep the puzzles limited to a single screen, which can still stump the player for a good while. Luckily Amanita included some hints to help the us noobs along the way- myself included once or twice! A walkthrough is available (though you have to beat a mini-game first) along with these helpful little “hint bubbles.” The robot tends to have to be next to the trigger spots for the player to be able to click on them and start a sequence of events. This sometimes leads to a lot of clicking around the screen.

As the story develops, the puzzles become more complex and involved. From time to time the overall story is interrupted by mini-games that range from space invader clones to complex patterns involving different pull lever combinations and logic problems. In both cases the puzzles can often seem easier than they are. Some puzzles have clues to the solution drawn right into the scenery – so grab a note pad. For the more complex puzzles, the player will have to venture from one screen to another and return after completing missions. After a while it can seem like the routine back and forth of a typical adventure game. It might seem a little humdrum, but with the great artwork, the game flew by.

There really isn’t enough I can say about the artwork. The depth of the Machinarium world is immense and vivid. Amanita obviously took a considerable amount of time and effort to enhance and develop the world the player is transported into – and it worked. The protagonist features beautifully drawn animations which convey a great fluidity and an almost intrinsic feel to the character’s robotic expressions. If the robot can’t do something you ask it to, it will let you know. Really, no detail was overlooked and I was pleasantly amused by the robotic rats, cats and owls as well as the varied and ingeniously presented robotic denizens. Working through the game was like playing a piece of beautiful and quality hand-drawn artwork. This art was topped off with great music and sound effects creating a great overall experience.

The sound effects and music in Machinarium don’t fall short either. From the sounds of dripping water to the clanks of the mechanical widgets, the sound effects were ingenious. Again I came to the conclusion that no detail was overlooked. The soundtrack has the endearing ability to make the Machinarium world all that much more real to the player. Amanita’s combination of sound and music delivers a coherent and uniform world. You have to ask if it could have been any other way. It’s definitely something that can make or break a game, in this case – it makes it.

The only downside I could really find with the game is the replay value. The game is short enough to be completed in one sitting (a four to eight hour sitting), though it is longer than the previous Samorost titles. The game can be saved at anytime and since the game is flash based, reload time is mercifully fast. The story is self contained, so once you complete all the puzzles and objectives the game is over and there really isn’t much more to do. This doesn’t lend itself well to replay value. However, if you’re like me you’ll visit Machinarium again just for the aesthetics.

Critter Crunch is a stellar PSN puzzle game with enchanting music and graphics.  I dare anyone to find as highly polished and addictive game at the $6.99 price point.  Cabybara games has made Critter Crunch impossible not to recommend.

Critter Crunch is an interesting twist on match-3 and similar puzzle games.  It’s a much more polished version of Capybara’s 2007 iPhone game of the same name.  It may appear cutesy and seem to rely on simple color matching, but the game is much deeper.  Critter Crunch is a humorous tale of Biggs and the strange ecological system that he lives in.  Biggs eats crystals and barfs rainbows (literally), but all of this is really a humorous spin on the innovative “food chain” gameplay found at the core of Critter Crunch.

The player controls the rotund Biggs with the D-pad or Left Stick and uses his long tongue (the X button) to move critters around on the vines above.  Just like nature, larger critters eat smaller ones.  If a critter is overfed, it explodes into a crystal which Biggs can eat. There is a humorous national geographic type documentary that tries to explain the ecosystem of the game.  This goofy narrative actually gives the game more charm.  You see on the island of Krunchatoa, Biggs is at the top of the food chain.  Creatures hang on vines above him and he overfeeds them and darts to collect the crystals and powerups critters drop.  These tasty crystals fill Biggs hunger bar.  The goal is to fill this hunger bar before the creatures mosey their way down the vines to Biggs.

The gameplay has all the elements that make a great puzzle game.  The game is simple to pick up and play but has a ton of smaller features and slight variations that keep things interesting and provide a great deal of depth.  The game centers on the food chain mechanic, but there are also color matching elements which help you setup big chain reactions and combos.  The adventure mode does an excellent job of introducing new gameplay wrinkles such as “Power Foods” and Poisoned Critters.  Power foods include things like watermelons that let Biggs spit seeds to destroy critters above or Garlic which allows him to repel critters back up their vines.

The graphics of Critter Crunch are stunning.  The hand-drawn 2D graphics are bright, colorful and have excellent animations.  Everything pops really well off of the soft muted watercolor backgrounds. With the game’s excellent and anime-inspired character design, watching Critter Crunch has as much appeal as an episode of Pokemon (ok, let’s be honest… more appeal).  In a Cute & Cuddly Pageant, Biggs could even steal Pikachu’s crown.

The visuals are coupled with great music and sound effects, but the big shocker of the whole package is the price.  At only $6.99, Critter Crunch is an absolute steal.  With the stellar graphics, core gameplay, and features, Capybara games could easily justify a $15-$20 price tag. The game’s adventure mode is littered with optional challenge and puzzle stages, not to mention the multiplayer offerings. Critter Crunch will give any puzzle fan hours upon hours to enjoy with Biggs and company.  All of these features add up to make Critter Crunch one of the best values on PSN.