Game Reviews

Aqua Forest

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Aqua Forest
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| Aqua Forest

Remember that scene at the beginning of The Goonies, where the gang are sat in Fratelli's run-down restaurant and Mikey says he needs to go to the bathroom? Mama Fratelli tells him to hold it, but Mouth starts pouring that brownish water between two glasses in an effort to torment his fellow Goonie.

Well, that's pretty much what playing Aqua Forest is like: it's funny, tense and a little bit annoying. The problems with Aqua Forest are many, though its salvation is found in such weird and mesmeric gameplay it becomes hard to tell where the irritation ends and the fun begins.

The game gives you various single screen puzzles that must be solved by manipulating a variety of natural elements. By natural, we mean fire, water, ice, steam - that sort of thing. A goal is marked at a particular point on the screen and your job is to get the water to that point. It sounds simple, and in theory it is - it's the practice that makes it a challenge, not to mention a chore.

To help you achieve this, you've got two tools: a mixture of hand drawn obstructions of varying consistencies and the motion-sensing handset itself. Each level grants you a choice of different types of tool. These could be a pen, a brush, or a knife, and each can draw different types of platforms and obstructions intended to help you pour the liquid from the starting position to the goal.

It's sounds a baffling concept, though once you see it in action it quickly becomes clear. The problem is in choosing which type of element to use. Choosing the right one from the rather obscure collection of icons is a matter of guesswork. You can easily fill up the screen with goo or fire by selecting the wrong type. Because of this - as well as a lack of any real instructions or tutorial - a lot of the levels in Aqua Forest descend very quickly into a muddy, chaotic mess from which there's no recovery.

Constantly restarting levels becomes irritating and you'll be tempted to simply skip them in favour of the less critical ones. If the controls and icons were a little clearer in their function, it'd be astronomically easier to figure out what to do. While there's some satisfaction in completing the trickier levels, most of the time you're simply glad it's over and you don't need to battle against that messy puzzle again. But it's not all aggravating, splashing, uncontrollable primordial ooze.

The most amazing thing about Aqua Forest is the realism of the natural components. The sublimely faithful movement of the liquids, the growth, consumption, and death of the fires and the rolling, rising life of the steam is quite outstanding. One of the most undeniably alluring aspects of Aqua Forest is simply watching the reactions of the garbled, elemental chaos you've created on the screen. Flipping the handset over and watching the sloshing water fall, or the platforms collapse as the fire eats through them is quite spellbinding.

Unfortunately, this takes a heavy toll on the iPhone, and as nature begins to brew up a storm on the screen the CPU really struggles to keep up with it.

If you're looking for something to demonstrate the active nature of the iPhone in a very particular way, or you're the kind of person who loves those DVDs that make your TV look like a fireplace or a fish tank, Aqua Forest could well be the best thing you've bought this year. If you're looking for an easy puzzle game, however, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Aqua Forest

A game that keeps you glued to the screen, despite its dried out gameplay
Score
Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.