The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Let’s talk about a more “normal” app from me, I guess. You know, a game?

There’s been this game on all the top bought app lists called Burn the Rope (not to be confused with You Have To Burn The Rope, which is totally different) that is all the rage. As such, like just about anything, similar games start appearing. At least, I assume so. Because I’ve been playing Burn It All: Journey to the Sun, which has a lot of rope-burning, and I have to assume it’s similar. Is it a rip-off? I really have no idea. I want to say not, as this game seems to have been made by the same people who made the very nice Pix’n Love Rush, but it certainly seems similar just by looking at it. However, this one had the main difference of having a recommendation from a Talking Tyrant, so of course, I bought it! I’m glad I did, too. It’s pretty entertaining.

The main idea is that all flames are actually the children of the sun, obviously, because the sun is the biggest flame of all! So you are trying to guide the little flames upwards so they can go meet the sun. You do this by burning everything. The flame starts on a little volcano, and you drag the flame to what you want to burn. It then hops back to the volcano and recharges after setting the fire, which will slowly consume whatever you lit up. You attempt to set fires to do this as fast as possible, while dodging things like non-burnable stone, and water droplets which will make you have to recharge early. There’s a timer, and if you don’t burn it all in that time, you fail and have to restart. Do it really fast, and you get between one to three gems for that level, a sort of standard rating system for games on iOS these days (I think Angry Birds started that trend, but man, I don’t like Angry Birds, so I don’t even remember. It’s not a bad thing, though. I rarely care about high scores, so I rarely try, but I respect people who want to “ace” each level, and that’s a good way to entertain those people).

The game does a really good job of mixing it up as you go along. You start by controlling a standard “red” flame, but eventually you have levels with a “blue” flame who can light ropes on fire in the middle, instead of just at the end of them, and a “green” flame, who can pass through burnable objects and light multiple things on fire, but who recharges super slowly. These mechanics changes really seriously come at exactly the right time. I was getting bored of the simplistic red flame levels when they came along, and they do offer a lot of different scenarios while having the same basic pieces in play. Apparently, the game mixes it up even more in levels I haven’t gotten to yet, adding even more mechanics. It’s great the developers aren’t just grinding out levels, which you could probably do for this game with little issue, but instead is focused on making sure to maximize player fun.

The game also looks very pretty, too. The little flames are nicely animated and have character, and the fire effects look neat when they really didn’t have to. It’s also a universal app, but doesn’t look like they just stretched all the assets or whatever when playing on the iPad. I haven’t tried it on my Touch, but it seems much better suited to the iPad, too, because you have more precise control of where to drag the flame on the screen with more screen real estate, and some of the later levels can require really pinpoint movements to be really effective.

Really, the only problem I have with the game is something the developers can’t help all that much. All the time I’d quickly be moving my finger about to solve a level, and find out that my flame got caught on a rock early on in my crazy movements, and thus didn’t move how I wanted. This was really frustrating, especially since movement isn’t really confined to when your finger is on the flame. You can set the finger down wherever and drag it to move the flame about (I assume this is for the iPhone version). Thus, you miss one turn, but your flame doesn’t stop, but instead goes careening into something you didn’t want it to hit. There’s no good way to fix this without tactile feedback, which the game can’t give me, but that was really my main source of frustration with the game. It’s not a game-breaker, but it provided moments of less fun in the middle of my fun.

It’s a buck, and currently has like 100 levels or something like that. (I’m only through about 50, or so.) Of course, it also has the other iOS “More to come!” world icon after the ones that are there, but even if they don’t, this is plenty of fun game for a dollar. Well, at least to the level I value my dollars. If a fast-paced little maze game sounds like fun to you, do check it out.