Sep 25, 2009 09:00 PM
8,309
Enter your username and password.
Ramp Champ, a $2 iPhone game by the Iconfactory guys, is guaranteed to look good—and it does. But does it play well? Yeah, it does.
Combine the addictiveness of skeeball with the iPhone-ness of flicking something with your finger and you get Ramp Champ. Various icons (it's Iconfactory, after all) pop up, move around and beg to be knocked down by one of your nine balls. Perform certain tasks—knock down all the icons, get a certain score or hit certain specific icons—and you complete goals. You also get tickets when you hit certain point amounts, the same way a real skeeball machine would feed you. Then you can trade in tickets for virtual prizes, which are again, just icons.
As surprising as it is, this skeeball game is really addicting, yet really punishing. You need to be very precise in your flicks. Slightly too fast or slightly too slow and the ball will go off target, and I can tell that there are some goals that you can only accomplish by effectively using all 9 of your balls. It's frustrating, because you'd imagine your finger would be a precise gaming instrument, but you'll quickly find that it isn't.
The difficulty level keeps you coming back for more, and the graphical polish makes the whole experience pleasant while you're there. [Ramp Champ]
Send an email to Jason Chen, the author of this post, at jchen@gizmodo.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Start a new discussion