Armadillo Gold Rush
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iOS
| Armadillo Gold Rush

After playing a few levels of Armadillo Gold Rush, you’ll be thinking - this is a perfectly agreeable arcade puzzler featuring a rolling armoured mammal. The game is straightforward - you need to collect all of the coins in each of the dozens of maze-like levels.

The unadventurous - but, again, perfectly pleasant - snag is that our rolling Dasypodidae chum can only stop upon colliding with something, such as a wall, a box, or, as it turns out, a floating magic carpet. That last one’s a bit of a curveball, admittedly, but, hey, this is a mobile game featuring a cartoon animal.

Smooth on the inside

And so the armadillo goes about its day, rolling around, grabbing coins, and fruit that arrives and vanishes on a whim. It’s all rather nice.

Occasionally, new hazards make things slightly tougher for the cute little critter, such as roaming scorpions (roll on them to crush them), hissing snakes (flee or squash via your cunning puzzle-solving smarts) and rather out of place lasers (just avoid - you can’t fight a laser).

Even when you’re killed, the game is entirely amicable, with a little angel armadillo ascending to the heavens, followed by an immediate restart so you can have another crack at the level in question.

For the most part, the game provides a slight challenge. Sometimes, you must place a box just so, in order to access the next part of the maze, or roll a ball from start to end.

Mostly, though, this is a fairly linear game that erects few barriers, only really baring its teeth at all once you move past the halfway point.

Crunchy on the outside

The game never fully excites, although it was probably never meant to, otherwise the armadillo would have been armed with a massive sword to get all stabby with, and the reasonably charming sound effects would have been replaced by some ear-smashing techno.

Everything would be a lot faster, too, instead of moving about in an overtly sedate fashion. Visually it’s also only a notch above bland.

But smart level design coupled with relentless niceness makes this one worth a punt, if you’re in the mood for a noodly and mildly entertaining arcade puzzler featuring an armadillo.

Armadillo Gold Rush

It feels a bit like it’s rolled in from 1995, but Armadillo Gold Rush is quite nice, fairly fun, and somewhat charming
Score
Craig Grannell
Craig Grannell
Craig gets all confused with modern games systems with a million buttons, hence preferring the glass-surfaced delights of mobile devices. He spends much of his time swiping and tilting (sometimes actually with a device), and also mulling why no-one’s converted Cannon Fodder to iPad.