Hero Pop
|
iOS
| Hero Pop

Hero Pop is a puzzler very much in the Candy Crush Saga school. It's not just a question of matching three things, you need to complete challenges within move limits in order to progress.

And if that's the kind of game you're into, then you'll lap it up. It's well put together, highly polished, and offers enough twists on the matching genre to make it worthwhile.

If, on the other hand, you'd rather stick your face into a hot waffle iron than spend any time on a free to play, energy-system riddled, wait-timer filled game of chance, you're best leaving this one well alone.

Once you pop...

Rather than swapping to make your matches, here you're releasing bubbles. It's a bit like a simplified Puzzle Bobble. You're not aiming anything, just swiping and releasing to let go of your hero-carried balloon.

It's a cute little system, though not exactly challenging. You can tap the balloon to swap it out for one of a different colour, but it uses up a move.

To begin with you're just trying to free friends trapped in balloons, but the game adds challenges quickly. You might need to make a number of super balloons, which are created by matching five balloons of the same colour, or get rid of a number of helmets, which mean balloons need to be matched twice.

It sometimes gets a bit frustrating, and the game's mechanics work against you. Matching big chunks of balloons is usually more of a hindrance to your cause, rather than the high-score meriting celebration it might be on other puzzlers.

...you can stop

Hero Pop is a an unashamedly sweet and well put together free to play puzzler. There's enough here that you can enjoy yourself without paying, so long as you don't mind waiting every now and then for chances to regenerate and new levels to unlock.

But compared to some of the very best premium puzzlers on the App Store, it's a pretty shallow imitation. Give it a go, but don't expect anything more than a sweet snack.

Hero Pop

A well polished casual puzzler, it won't be to everyone's taste, but it does what it sets out to do very well
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.