Before
TiltaFun, the last time I sought fun from tilting was the Tilt-a-Whirl at a cheesy local carnival as a kid. That, let me tell you, did not end well. Filling up on sweets and then being spun about was a recipe for something far removed from fun. A clean-up crew and an hour closure of the ride should give you some indication.
Candy-munching is on the schedule in
TiltaFun, but fortunately there's no risk of tilting your stomach in the process. Using tilts and twists of your handset, you collect sweets as a hungry little monster. Where the sugar is stored is a curious point, as your orange-headed avatar doesn't have a body. No matter, though, because it makes it all the easier to guide him through stages riddled with obstacles.
The concept of roving about stages collecting items is far from new and
TiltaFun does nothing to break from that tradition. There are no surprises here, just plain candy collecting using the accelerometer. Far from feeling fresh (several preceding iPhone games have employed this same formula), the straightforward tilt-to-collect gameplay works exceedingly well. It's a natural fit, even if it's the farthest thing from innovation.
Still, spot-on use of the accelerometer enables intuitive play. That's a good thing, too, because the levels are challenging. Of the game's ten worlds, each packed with a handful of levels, only the first dozen or so stages are a breeze. The rest put forth extremely challenging scenarios with moving platforms and precipitously placed sweets. Introducing enemies would add variety, even if it risks ramping up the difficulty.
What
TiltaFun can't achieve in freshness, it gains in accessibility. The controls are just sensitive enough to grab sweets situated in tight corners and manoeuvre around the slew of tricky obstacles; not a hint of sluggishness or over-sensitivity here. Curiously, the game requires playing with your handset parallel to the ground. It's its primary shortcoming: not allowing you to set the neutral point for the accelerometer, forcing you to hold it flat. It's uncomfortable to do this for more than a few levels, hunching over the screen trying to keep a good eye on the action.
Another odd element places a timer in the top-left corner of the screen. Levels can always be completed with ample remaining time, which makes the clock pointless. Instead of providing that false pressure, the timer ought to be eliminated entirely.
Omitting the timer and adding an option to adjust the accelerometer are easy fixes that can do much to improve
TiltaFun. These won't differentiate it from the pack, though. Incorporating new features such as user-created levels or enemies would be a step in the right direction. It's definitely a lot more fun than the Tilt-a-Whirl, but
TiltaFun needs more than just a sugar coating to upgrade from a good game to a great one.
