PUK
Laser Dog Games
£0.69 on Apple iOS and Android
There’s a bit of buzz about PUK by home-grown Laser Dog Games (from Manchester).
It’s billed as a fast paced action puzzler; basically, use your digits to ping pucks at what looks like balls but are, I’m told, portals, to shatter them before a timer runs out.
You can bounce the pucks off the walls, and shake the device when they get stuck beyond the interaction line to move them.
Higher levels include pinging pucks off each other to pop the portals, and avoiding fences placed in the middle of the field of play.
There are 1000 levels, the creators say, and you play in one straight run – meaning if you die, you start from square one. You don’t tend to play the same formation of balls every time you die, so it doesn’t melt your brain.
However, the shaking mechanism doesn’t work wonderfully well; occasionally it will respond and your pucks will move and other times they just sit there, as the timer speeds towards your doom.
The fact that you have to play through the levels to get further is also really annoying, because it means as a new element is introduced, and you run out of time without completing the level, you go all the way to the start to work through the levels before reaching the new element again. This gets very frustrating quite quickly, particularly because the timer feels so short.
There is, however, a pause button, to allow you to work out your next move, which could come in handy when facing new challenges and PUK is, after all, a high score chaser.
I think what makes this more frustrating than your average high score game is that it’s a clever idea, so you invest in the game. When the targeting balls don’t respond properly and the clock runs down, it’s that much more frustrating because you wanted to see what the next level brought, and you only needed a few more seconds to accomplish it. Plus, I don’t deal well with timed games. The pressure, man.
The app is simply laid out with an attractive design but the colour scheme reminds me of Nike. A headache-inducing Nike. The music is pretty bombtastic though.
In all, it’s a clever idea that almost has the feel of Portal and other physics-based puzzler game – with a colour readjustment and possibly a little longer timer, I think it’d be grand.
