version 1.0
Kapowie is a game that made me so happy I almost bought a ticket to Australia. That’s where bjango headquarters is, you see, and I’d really like to thank them for making such a great, feel-good game.
Kapowie is a shooter in the strictest sense of the word, but it’s also called Kapowie. Not Kapow, not Headshot!, and not One Shot One Kill. The name has a decidedly cutesie ring to it, and it’s that delightful sense of cuteness that makes the game so charming. So yeah, you are shooting penguins in elevators and duckies in a bathtub to amass a high score, but you’re also very likely going to dig up your old Teddy bear and give him a big hug after every round of play.
Kapow
bjango’s shooter works just like those old shooting games at the arcade. Various objects fly or pop onto the screen, and you have to shoot as many of them as you can before time runs out. Every once in a while you can shoot a heart symbol to gain an extra life, but these instances are pretty rare. You choose to earn more points, though, by initiating combos: shooting seven penguins in a row, for example, will net you extra points. After that, you can use the seven penguin skins to — alright, that’s a lie, the combos are just for for points.
There are seven different scenarios, each with different objectives to shoot, and you’ll run through each one multiple times if you survive long enough. The game starts you off with three lives, but you’ll lose one each time you hit an invalid target or fail to achieve the goal on a level. However, failure never really feels like failure because of the ridiculously happy lobby music that plays as you submit your high (or low) score.
I thought I was pretty slick at the game, but it turns out that my scores aren’t even a blip on the global scoreboard. I can usually score somewhere in the 200,000 range, but the top scorer as of the writing of this review, has over 7 Million points. The high scorer has obviously taken advantage of the auto-saving feature to play one round over multiple sessions – since it seems impossible to rack up all those points in just one sitting.
Whee
That’s really all there is to Kapowie: it’s just a simple game made with a lot of love. The levels are colourful, the music is lively, the game can rotate 180-degrees (thank you for this!), and the shooting is as simple as putting your finger to the screen. I honestly was ready to dismiss the title when I’d first heard about it, but I’m happy I decided to give Kapowie a shot. Scratch that, I’m *really* happy I gave Kapowie a shot.
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Kapowie is available for free on the App Store, so check it out now, because I don’t know how long that lack of a price is going to last.
Kapowie was downloaded for free during Kapowie’s initial release period for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: australia, bjango, iphone game, shooter
