Previews

Hands-on with EA's Fantasy Safari for iPhone and iPad

Themed Parks

Hands-on with EA's Fantasy Safari for iPhone and iPad
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iOS
| Fantasy Safari

EA Mobile isn’t taking the threat of EA Mobile’s Theme Park lying down. Oh no. Instead, it's attempting to produce a smart-looking freemium FarmVille-style game of its own in the form of Fantasy Safari.

In what must be one of the strangest head-to-heads I’ve seen in a long time, Fantasy Safari is effectively going to directly compete with Theme Park this winter, with similarly smart graphics and familiar gameplay.

Double-take

It’s not even really aiming at a different crowd, truth be told. Rather than make your dream theme park, you’ll be concentrating on making a - yes - safari, with animals such as unicorns, ogres, and glamour models. That last one is probably just me daydreaming.

Feeding, petting, building little enclosures, and decorating the park with items such as viewing platforms (for the punters to take a closer look) is the aim of the game here, with a Sim City-esque road-building section thrown in for good measure.

Naturally, all this is performed via tapping and waiting, waiting and tapping. It's not exactly 'freecore' (my new term for hardcore freemium games) so fans of something like Kingdom Conquest are advised to look elsewhere.

I can’t say this particular title appealed to me, but - as with Picnic Wars - I suspect 27-year old males with a penchant for shooting virtual terrorists in the face and scoring 30-yard screamers in the FA Cup final aren’t the target audience for this game.

Fantasy Safari will be out on iPhone and iPad later in the year.
Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).