Boomlings - (by Robert Topala)[Universal]

[LordGek]

WOW WOW WOW!

This game is so clever but I can't quite put my finger on why it hit me so hard.

It is essentially, as I stated earlier, a lot like Flower Board (no timer, all about sliding 4 or mor blocks of same color together to pop them, and with every move new pieces are added to the board) but with a number of clever twists.

Besides the standard pieces there are two different specialty pieces, bombs and blobs.

Bombs not only blow up all adjacent pieces, if the blast hits another grouping of 4 or more same colored block, that whole color cluster will be taken out. With a little clever planning you can setup some pretty crazy domino like chain reactions with one cluster clearing out another cluster that clears out yet another cluster and so on for huge points (each step getting it's points further multiplied).

Blobs are sort of like color bombs. When ever moved they'll pop drenching all immediately surrounding pieces in whatever color they represent. If used carefully you can make huge single color clusters (especially if you use the blast to color another blob).

Besides these special helpful pieces there are a handful of gradually introduced baddy pieces like Freeze Bombs (if allowed to go off they'll lock down all of the surrounding pieces), Doom Bombs (if allowed to go off the game ends), and Stones (big nasty pieces that not only can't be moved but take a couple of bomb blasts to destroy).

The game is FREE but, as there is always at least a slight catch, you'll need to plunk down $0.99 for an IAP if you want to disable the ads (both banner and intermissions between levels). The game also uses an in-game currency system to unlock power-ups with the standard options of shortcutting this via IAP. To the game's credit, most of these come in the form of permanent upgrades so that once purchased you'll never have to repurchase them.

5/5!

[RobTopGames]

Thank you for that beautiful review! I tried to design the game with a few twists and turns to make it feel interesting, so im really glad it seems to work.

On the skull resemblance. I never set out to copy the Dungeon Raid skull when I first began designing the game. I did however play Dungeon Raid quite a bit before making Boomlings, so I suppose it might have rubbed off to some extent =)

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by RobTopGames

Thank you for that beautiful review! I tried to design the game with a few twists and turns to make it feel interesting, so im really glad it seems to work.

On the skull resemblance. I never set out to copy the Dungeon Raid skull when I first began designing the game. I did however play Dungeon Raid quite a bit before making Boomlings, so I suppose it might have rubbed off to some extent =)

I've just recently upgraded my power-up/skills which allows me to occasionally see MEGA bombs and MEGA blobs, too cool!

Anybody see the bandits yet? I think they come in the teen levels, but not entirely certain as to exactly when.

[Seditqui]

My record is lvl 11, no bandits yet!

[RobTopGames]

Bandits start popping up at level 13, be prepared! =)

[Seditqui]

Level 14! Difficult but fun

Ps. I hate the bandits now...

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by Seditqui

Level 14! Difficult but fun

Ps. I hate the bandits now...

Ahh, ease up, I think the bandits are just boomlings having serious identity issues. Even they don't know who they are.

[BloodFidelity]

What a great game! I'm addicted to Boomlings!

I just have to report that after I signed in to Game Center, not realizing you had to authorize it the first time around, it won't upload my achievements that I earned before hand. I thought about starting over but I don't want to lose my coin progress. Could a bug fix in a future update help?

[LordGek]

Question, unless a one time freak event, it would appear no power-ups or purchases made earlier are not valid when playing offline, right? This saddens me as I love to play the game at work on my breaks and have no wi-fi access on my iPod Touch there.

[RobTopGames]

Ouch, sounds more like a bug I found a day or so after the release. If you close the app and force quit during the first loading screen, the save files will be corrupted and requires a delete/reinstall to fix. An update that fixes this should be accepted by Apple in a day or two, but that wont repair the save file and still requires the delete.

You can see that the files are corrupted by the first powerup slot being locked in the powerups selection screen. If its not locked, then its a new bug I will have to look into, there are no offline/online requirements in the game.

Just contact me and I will restore any gold lost. Sorry again. :/