Acrosplat review - A solid stuff-flinging puzzler that gets a bit too messy
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iOS
| Acrosplat

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Acrosplat is a game that seems to swirl a lot of ideas together in a big idea vat. There are shades of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Where's My Water here. And a variety of other classic App Store puzzlers.

You're mixing paint, twanging blobs, avoiding spinning blades and impassable walls. There are pop culture references, and new mechanics are introduced on a regular basis.

Sometimes the whole thing gets a bit too busy, and a bit too fiddly, for its own good. And while there is fun to be had here, and a decent level editor, occasionally you'll feel like the whole thing could do well to calm down.

Splodge

Ostensibly the game is about using bits of rope to fire blobs of paint, catapult style, into a paint pot. There are three stars to collect on each level, and plenty of obstacles standing in the way of you and success.

Things start off reasonably simply, with you tossing blobs here and there with aplomb. Soon though you need to mix the blobs in chaotic splodges. If one of your paint drops is the right colour, you can make a gate for it in walls it'd otherwise smash into.

There are blades and spinning circular saws that move with each of your twangs, and strangely distributed splotches of colour that you need to use tactically to achieve your goals.

This is a puzzler all told, and it layers the head-scratching on ever more thickly as you get further into the experience. To the point where sometimes, the combination of punning film poster, obstacles, blobs, and other furniture just gets a bit too much.

There's a lack of subtlety here, and it turns the game into a club rather than a rapier. The more things that are chucked at you, the more time you spend figuring out what to do, the less interesting things become.

And there aren't that many eureka moments when you do manage to pass a level. Everything is pretty straightforward, it's just a matter of bashing the right colours into the right positions and hoping the controls don't fail you.

Splidge

Don't get me wrong, Acrosplat is an interesting prospect, and you are going to enjoy the time you spend with it. But it clunks when it should sprint, and adds more when it needs to let its ideas breathe.

You're going to have fun with the game if you decide to pick it up, but it doesn't have the poise and balance that make the very best action puzzlers on the App Store so compulsive.

Acrosplat review - A solid stuff-flinging puzzler that gets a bit too messy

While Acrosplat does have some nice ideas, it gets too busy too quickly, and that's a real shame
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.