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The best iOS game this week - You Must Build A Boat

10000000 leagues under the sea

The best iOS game this week - You Must Build A Boat
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iOS
| You Must Build A Boat
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You Must Build a Boat is the successor to EightyEightGames's lauded 10000000, which brought pixel-art and puzzle-RPG gameplay together to devastatingly addictive effect.

This games does the same, only more so. The story involves, unsurprisingly, building a boat, by completing missions that allow you to add more rooms and crew members. The action involves sliding tiles in rows and columns to bring symbols together.

These symbols correspond to the obstacles that a little man at the top of the screen encounters as he barrels along. Matching up keys lets you open chests. Matching up shields gives you some protection. Matching up swords lets you hurt things. And so on.

All the while the screen scrolls inexorably along, and if you fail to make the right matches you'll be swept off the side – though the game is quick to tell you that you can never actually fail, and every ending is greeting with a big 'YOU WIN!', even if you just sit and watch, like I just did for experimental reasons.

This boundless optimism is reflected in the game's breathless pace, which is what sets it apart from most other puzzle-RPGs.

Attempts tend not to last very long – a minute would be an excellent effort – and as you progress through each turn it becomes incrementally more dangerous and more lucrative, meaning a good run always ends in a state of avaricious panic.

You jump in, get chewed up, maybe buy some upgrades or speak to your crewmates if you feel like a break, and then jump in and do it all again, all the while driven along by a jaunty chiptune soundtrack.

You Must Build A Boat has a lot in common with 10000000, including a questionable title, but it reinvigorates the concept by injecting an extra dose of pace. Don't be put off by the superficial similarities – this is a unique and excellent game in its own right.

Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.