I had heard that the artist of that hit X360 game “Braid” had done some work for an iPhone game and I was wondering which one it was. I don’t own an Xbox, nor have I ever played Braid, but I have read a about people fawning over its style and presentation. It is for this ultra deep reason that I asked for a review copy of Bailout America.
The premise has its roots in Lemmings: you lead mindless taxpayer bills as best as you can into the mouth of CEO cat. Standing in the way of the greenback brigade are Capitol Hill, tanks, oil rigs, hospitals, and a lot of really steep drops that will crumple your bills up and make them useless. Are you the right (wo)man to lead America’s dollar back to the open arms of big businesses? Based on my scores, I’m certainly not.
Story
Uncle Sam on the top of the screen keeps drooling dollar bills, thankfully, CEO cat is only too happy to gobble them up. BEGIN!
Controls
The game is a real-time puzzle game that requires quick thinking and equally fast tapping. Your fingers are going to be flying all over the screen, and although the game is difficult to begin with, that difficulty is compounded by the tiny set of controls. Everything the you need to tap on is small, and misses aren’t really very forgiving (more on this later).
There is a tool set you can access on the top-left corns of the screen. Tapping on Uncle Sam will bring up your tools: the hammer destroys obstacles, the bucket extinguishes fires, and the bridge tool bridges gaps. Once you have a tool selected, all you need to do is tap on the corresponding obstacle (hammer -> tank) to activate it.
Gameplay
Your little bills will spawn in a continuous stream and they ‘ll keep walking in a straight line until they bump into a wall or crash into an obstacle and disappear. Each level has a quota in the billions of dollars that you must reach within a time limit of about two or three minutes (I ‘ve never actually timed it “ I ‘ve been too busy tapping up a storm), and your score from all ten levels will be tallied and posted on a global scoreboard.
Each game starts off very quickly and you’ll have an almost overwhelming number of choices as to how to proceed. Do you reduce everything to rubble with the hammer, douse all the fires, and then place the bridges? Or do you take each obstacle as your bills get to them?
The problem with the latter approach is that it can result in a lot of confusion. Gaps that you forget to bridge will send bills plummeting to their deaths in a crumpling crash, and you’ll end up having to flick those dead bills off the screen so that other bills don’t crash into them and die. If you get enough bills into the cat you’ll win the level, although you can always try for a higher score or raise the difficulty level to Hard.
I could barely finish normal mode, so it’s a good thing the devs included one more tool: the vertical wall. The only catch is that you have to eliminate all obstacles to gain access to it. The game designers call the wall a bonus tool, although I’d say it’s an absolute necessity. Once you gain the wall you can cordon off sections of the map so that your bills take the fastest route to the cat. Unfortunately, it’s this selfsame saving grace that absolutely kicked my ass on each of the ten levels.
The problem with the walls has a lot to do with the controls. Even the slightest tap on the screen will activate a tool, so walls can be placed if your finger just happens to brush against the screen. There isn’t a limit to your lives in this game, but my patience certainly ran a little thin when I accidentally walled off my spawn point when I really meant to switch tools. Another troublesome factor is that the walls make no sounds when placed (unlike the hammer as it destroys tanks), so any accidental walls you might place with a mis-tap aren ‘t made obvious until bills are trapped at spawn or plummeting from a high ledge.
I don’t mean to stomp all over the gameplay, though, as I believe it can be drastically improved with a few minor changes. Adding a marker like the magnifying glass for text selection on the iPhone would help a lot for wall placement. Sounds for the placement of a wall would solve a lot, too. Finally, allowing players to zoom in or just enlarging the UI altogether would really help players focus more on the logistics of navigating the level rather than tapping precisely on the screen. I’m not suggesting the devs turn perfectly good LEGO into Megablox, but fumbling with unwieldy pieces does get in the way of creativity — which is something that Bailout America both requires and provides in spades.
Presentation
Bailout takes the tried and tested Lemmings gameplay style and adds its own sardonic twist. The unique art direction is right out of a Sunday paper and the music and sounds are perfectly cartoony. I think there could be a few more visual effects in-game, as bills that bump into tanks or flames simply disappear, but I don’t think it takes anything away from the experience. Puzzle games don’t need the fanciest animations in the world as long as they’ve got a good premise, and Bailout’s gameplay is entertaining enough to overshadow the animation.
Conclusion
I’m not a huge puzzle game player, and I’m not even sure this qualifies as a “puzzle”, but it certainly brought back fond memories of my time with Lemmings as a kid. I think people who enjoyed the likes of HydroTilt or Enigmo on the iPhone should be right at home with Bailout. In fact, you could probably call it the best deal on the App Store: for only $1 (normal price $3) you’ll receive billions in entertainment in return. A worthy investment 😉
If you’re looking to make bail for America, click here to head to the App Store.
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TAGS: puzzle
