Explodables

There's a reason we have a whole day set aside for fireworks. Blowing stuff up is fun.

Explodables lets you blow up multi-coloured rockets to your heart’s content, making for an enjoyable screen-masher that’s only let down by its imbalanced structure.

Rocket science

The campaign is divided into three levels of difficulty, and each requires you to beat a target score or complete a task with a finite number of rockets. Red, green, and blue rockets (and occasionally 'wild white' rockets) launch from the bottom of the screen, and you blow these by tapping them with your finger. However, racking up high scores isn’t as simple as that.

Each stage has a bonus combination, which offers generous multipliers for blowing up rockets in the correct colour order. Furthermore, the screen is divided into three coloured sections, meaning you have to blow up rockets in the corresponding coloured zones to gain the bonuses.

Blowing up rockets in the wrong order resets the combos, so coloured flowers at the bottom right of the screen are there to remind you.

Combo Breaker

Perform successive combos and you'll receive a bonus multiplier that you can drag around the screen, increasing the number of points gained from blowing up rockets in the same section. Different types of bonuses, such as crowns, are also possible and new elements such as Catherine wheels and rainbows are introduced in later levels. Coins are also up for grabs, and you can use these in the shop to buy upgrades. Once you've completed the objective of one level, the next one is unlocked and ultimately so is Blitz mode, which tests your ability to score as many points as possible in one minute.

Explain yourself

These various combinations and bonuses add a layer of depth to a simple concept, and pulling off a monster combo is incredibly satisfying. The visuals may look like they’ve been conjured up in Microsoft Paint, but they are cheap and cheerful with clear, distinct colours ensuring there’s no confusion.

Explodables’s simple controls, which reward perfect timing and nimble fingers, manage to foster a compulsive desire to beat your high score, but unfortunately the game doesn’t feel fully formed. New gameplay elements are constantly introduced, but instructions are written in URGENT CAPITAL LETTERS and aren’t the most clear and concise. This confusion is intensified by the wonky difficulty curve. Many levels serve as introductions to the new elements, but then all of a sudden there's a sharp increase in difficulty. Much like a playground game formulated at lunchtime, rules seem spontaneous and whimsical. A better tutorial would help to simplify things, as would a more balanced level structure. There’s a lot of fun to be had with Explodables, which at its heart is a fun and frantic arcade game. Its biggest shortcoming is its inability to explain itself properly.