Spirit — not to be confused with the Leona Lewis album of the same name — is a $0.99 arcade game that I really should like, but simply don ‘t enjoy. The game features beautiful graphics, the power to open vortexes, and some questionable touchscreen controls.
If Pac Man could rip holes into other dimensions
The levels and enemies you ‘ll face within Spirit are randomly generated: some are ranged, some hold 1-Ups as hostage (very cute idea), and some mimic your every move. Like most other arcade games, the only real objective in Spirit is a high score.
The bulk of the gameplay involves leading your little spirit around the level and creating a vortex at the last second to suck enemies into another dimension ” the more enemies suckered into your vortex at one time, the better. A lot of attention was paid to the way the vortexes work, and they affect more than just the enemies. The entire level can actually temporarily warp out of shape if you create a particularly large vortex, and the viewing angle can also become skewed. It’s a fantastic, immersive effect.
However, there are two aspects that keep me from really enjoying this title: the difficulty level and the control scheme.
The game is controlled purely through touch gestures that aren ‘t localized to any one spot on the screen: a swipe to the left will always move your Spirit left, and so on and so forth. In practice, I often found myself accidentally giving myself the finger and blocking my view of the arena and my character ” so much so that I ‘d end up crashing into enemies when I thought I had plenty of room to clear them. Part of this can be solved with more in-game experience, but I also believe that non-localized touch-based gestures are exactly the wrong way to go about controlling a high speed arcade game.
My other major problem with the game is the difficulty inherent in the creation of your Spirit ‘s vortexes. You can create them at most any time by simply creating a closed loop ” much like manipulating the lasso tool in Photoshop. However, unlike Photoshop, the amount of string that you are given to work with is dependant on how fast you move your fingers.
It ‘s possible to create HUGE vortexes if you swipe very quickly across the screen, but those vortexes are impossible if you slow your finger speed, and I actually found it uncomfortable dashing my finger all over the iPhone just to create a vortex big enough to earn me combo points. A more player-friendly solution would be to allow a variable tail length in the settings, so that players averse to finger speed skating could also be given the chance to score some combos.
Conclusion
However negative the comments above are, I don ‘t think Spirit is a bad game. In fact, it ‘s a pretty good game with some really novel ideas. Unfortunately, I feel that the control scheme and difficulty level take all the fun out of this $0.99 arcade title ” but maybe you ‘ve got more Spirit than I do.
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Spirit is available for $0.99 on the App Store.
The app was bought by JAiB for review on the site. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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