Game Reviews

Burn the Rope

Star onStar onStar onStar halfStar off
Get
Burn the Rope

You'd be hard pressed to find a smartphone without an accelerometer these days, but games entirely built around the technology are few and far between.

The fear, no doubt, is that gameplay based entirely on accelerometer controls will verge on the shallow, and the first few stages of Burn the Rope do little to assuage that fear.

Firestarter

The goal behind every level – and there are more than 100 to tackle – is to clear the screen of as much of the rope as you can using the medium of fire.

The start of each stage follows a set pattern: to set things going you first need to touch the brown section of thread before watching the flames fan off in all directions. What happens next depends on the shape the rope has taken up.

That's because keeping the flame – or, if you're daring, flames – alive relies on your ability to twist and turn your phone all manner of directions so that the fire is always tracking upwards.

The more vertical the fire's path, the faster it singes through the rope, with 60 per cent of the map needing to be scorched to cinders to qualify for the bronze medal required to progress.

Fanning the flames

It's a simple concept, and in some of the early stages where the shapes you're tasked with burning down are equally uncomplicated it plays out far too smoothly, too.

Where Burn the Rope eventually gets its spark from, however, is in the creativity evident in its later designs.

Whenever flames meet a crossroads, for instance, they multiply and set off down any path they make contact with. While it's not always necessary to keep every flame alive, once the flame is out it can't be reignited.

As such, Burn the Rope involves a certain amount of forward planning: the more complex the shapes get, the longer it takes to fathom in where you should steer it and when.

And this is all before you take into account Burn the Rope's efforts to drag your attention elsewhere – bizarrely, through a bevy of insects that have made the ropes their home.

Roping you in

Most are essential to your progress. For example, burning up a green rope will require you to tint your flame accordingly – a trick only achieved by passing your fire over one of the game's green bugs first.

Others help spread your flame around the map, with bugs that explode on contact shooting the fire out in all manner of directions as they blow.

Slowly but surely, the realisation that you're effectively spinning plates – keeping a number of flames on the go at once by finding a happy medium angle to tilt your phone at – begins to give Burn the Rope the edge it promises from the start.

In the end, Burn the Rope manages to deliver the kind of panic-based you get in the best time-management titles, or even line-drawing legends like Flight Control and Harbor Master.

Time to burn

Almost without you realising, the game gradually translates its simple premise into something that eats away the minutes.

Burn the Rope's one drawback is that it doesn't develop its central mechanic far enough. It's not hard to imagine developer Big Blue Bubble taking the concept developed both here and in its sequel on iPhone and embellishing it further.

As things stand, Burn the Rope's accelerometer-based approach feels fresh and, despite its simplicity, it's as intuitive as it is addictive. Just don't count on re-lighting that spark after the initial flame finally sizzles out.

Burn the Rope

Managing to put accelerometer-based controls at its heart, Burn the Rope's simple start gradually flourishes into an addictive and hectic puzzler
Score
Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.