drelbs
07-01-2009, 06:22 PM
If Lemmings and Speedscript had kids, they would definitely be Dweebs!
I’m sure you’ve all heard of Lemmings, but what I’m referring to in Speedscript is the fact that in that crusty old word processing software, you would do text formatting by inserting certain reverse-text characters in the text itself, which the blocks in Dweebs remind me of…
Graphics
Dweebs sports very nice 2D graphics, and I don’t see how the graphics could get any better. There’s lots of use of bright colors, and things are easy to tell apart. The one thing that stands out (or rather, doesn’t stand out) is the fact that the bad “weevils” are just gray colored Dweebs. I guess they’re unhappy for some reason, maybe they wanted to be genetically enhanced to a brighter color…
Sound
There’s some nice, groovy music to this game. It’s up-tempo, light and fluffy. The Dweebs make appropriate noises when they do things, and be prepared to hear the word “Okay!” a lot.
Control
Okay! Back to Lemmings, er… Dweebs. You can look around by just dragging the background, and at the bottom of the screen are a selection of blocks for you to use to guide your Dweebs to the end of the level (a flying saucer is somewhere along the top of the level, waiting to beam them up.) Clicking on one of these blocks selects it, then clicking elsewhere will place one of these blocks. Exceptions to this are the CLR block, which can be used to remove a block you placed, the paws block, which pauses the game, and the X, which can be used to go back to the menu. You can't just place a block anywhere, they kinda snap to a grid that matches up with how the scenery is laid out, which works just fine.
There are two yellow arrow blocks which instruct Dweebs to head to the left or the right. These are handy to corral Dweebs, and are especially helpful at ledges to keep your Dweebs from falling off. The green arrow pointing upwards will cause a Dweeb to jump into the air in the direction they were traveling. The blue block (it looks like a pie chart to me, I’m assuming it is supposed to be a timer) puts Dweebs to sleep for a period of time. Finally the red block with the star in it causes a Dweeb to use it’s special power (which may not be all that special, see the following picture…)
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/4264/dweebs.jpg
The arrow blocks are persistent, but the jump, sleep and special ability blocks are not. This is where Dweebs starts to feel very different from Lemmings, in that when a Dweeb touches a jump, sleep or star block, that block disappears. It feels to me that I often had one Dweeb “going it alone” to get a switch flipped to activate a teleporter, or kill one of those pesky Weevils. This can be done by putting most of your Dweebs to sleep, or corralling them with the arrow blocks.
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/9044/sleeping.jpg
While doing this you have to make use of each Dweeb’s special abilities, for example on the first level you use Fizzer (the yellow one, I nick-named him Fizzgig) to take out the Weevil, and have ‘Chicken Little’ (Fuzzy) follow up later.
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/364/abilities.jpg
There is a time limit for each level, which can be extended a bit by picking up clocks. For the most part I ended up running out of time once figuring out what I have to do then repeat the level in a more serious attempt to complete it, especially when encountering a Dweeb I hadn’t seen before (as the special abilities aren’t really explained anywhere.) The levels move upwards like Rainbow Islands, you will find yourself placing a lot of those green jump blocks as you work your way up. Being touched by a Weevil causes your Dweeb to fall down to the next lower level. Activated teleporters float Dweebs up to the next one. Kill and/or avoid Weevils, activate teleporters via switches, and float or jump your way to the top. Wash, rinse, repeat. There are 24 levels, 3 each in 8 differently-themed groups, new groups are unlocked as you finish the prior one.
Price
At the time of this review, Dweebs was 99 cents in the App Store, which is a great price. I wouldn’t have felt bad paying $1.99 for it either. I’ve had a decent amount of fun playing though this, but I don’t see myself picking it back up after I’ve completed it.
I'd give this game a solid 4 stars.
Reviewed on a 2nd Gen iPod Touch, OS 2.2.1
Thank you for suffering through my first review of an iPhone/iPod Touch game – here’s a link to a promo video on YouTube if you’d like to see the game in action:
AXT3UWyF5RA
I’m sure you’ve all heard of Lemmings, but what I’m referring to in Speedscript is the fact that in that crusty old word processing software, you would do text formatting by inserting certain reverse-text characters in the text itself, which the blocks in Dweebs remind me of…
Graphics
Dweebs sports very nice 2D graphics, and I don’t see how the graphics could get any better. There’s lots of use of bright colors, and things are easy to tell apart. The one thing that stands out (or rather, doesn’t stand out) is the fact that the bad “weevils” are just gray colored Dweebs. I guess they’re unhappy for some reason, maybe they wanted to be genetically enhanced to a brighter color…
Sound
There’s some nice, groovy music to this game. It’s up-tempo, light and fluffy. The Dweebs make appropriate noises when they do things, and be prepared to hear the word “Okay!” a lot.
Control
Okay! Back to Lemmings, er… Dweebs. You can look around by just dragging the background, and at the bottom of the screen are a selection of blocks for you to use to guide your Dweebs to the end of the level (a flying saucer is somewhere along the top of the level, waiting to beam them up.) Clicking on one of these blocks selects it, then clicking elsewhere will place one of these blocks. Exceptions to this are the CLR block, which can be used to remove a block you placed, the paws block, which pauses the game, and the X, which can be used to go back to the menu. You can't just place a block anywhere, they kinda snap to a grid that matches up with how the scenery is laid out, which works just fine.
There are two yellow arrow blocks which instruct Dweebs to head to the left or the right. These are handy to corral Dweebs, and are especially helpful at ledges to keep your Dweebs from falling off. The green arrow pointing upwards will cause a Dweeb to jump into the air in the direction they were traveling. The blue block (it looks like a pie chart to me, I’m assuming it is supposed to be a timer) puts Dweebs to sleep for a period of time. Finally the red block with the star in it causes a Dweeb to use it’s special power (which may not be all that special, see the following picture…)
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/4264/dweebs.jpg
The arrow blocks are persistent, but the jump, sleep and special ability blocks are not. This is where Dweebs starts to feel very different from Lemmings, in that when a Dweeb touches a jump, sleep or star block, that block disappears. It feels to me that I often had one Dweeb “going it alone” to get a switch flipped to activate a teleporter, or kill one of those pesky Weevils. This can be done by putting most of your Dweebs to sleep, or corralling them with the arrow blocks.
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/9044/sleeping.jpg
While doing this you have to make use of each Dweeb’s special abilities, for example on the first level you use Fizzer (the yellow one, I nick-named him Fizzgig) to take out the Weevil, and have ‘Chicken Little’ (Fuzzy) follow up later.
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/364/abilities.jpg
There is a time limit for each level, which can be extended a bit by picking up clocks. For the most part I ended up running out of time once figuring out what I have to do then repeat the level in a more serious attempt to complete it, especially when encountering a Dweeb I hadn’t seen before (as the special abilities aren’t really explained anywhere.) The levels move upwards like Rainbow Islands, you will find yourself placing a lot of those green jump blocks as you work your way up. Being touched by a Weevil causes your Dweeb to fall down to the next lower level. Activated teleporters float Dweebs up to the next one. Kill and/or avoid Weevils, activate teleporters via switches, and float or jump your way to the top. Wash, rinse, repeat. There are 24 levels, 3 each in 8 differently-themed groups, new groups are unlocked as you finish the prior one.
Price
At the time of this review, Dweebs was 99 cents in the App Store, which is a great price. I wouldn’t have felt bad paying $1.99 for it either. I’ve had a decent amount of fun playing though this, but I don’t see myself picking it back up after I’ve completed it.
I'd give this game a solid 4 stars.
Reviewed on a 2nd Gen iPod Touch, OS 2.2.1
Thank you for suffering through my first review of an iPhone/iPod Touch game – here’s a link to a promo video on YouTube if you’d like to see the game in action:
AXT3UWyF5RA