Download Games Roundup
Art of Balance, ZombieSmash, BlindGiRl, Super Yum Yum, The Impossible Game.
Every week on Eurogamer, Kristan Reed hunts down the best in everything digitally-distributed and bite-sized across every format: iPhone and iPod Touch, DSiWare and WiiWare, Xbox Live Indie Games, Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, Steam and other independent PC distribution channels. We'll still bring you standalone reviews of the best and most interesting download games, but the idea is that by going multiformat with the roundups on a weekly schedule we can bring you a broader range of reviews of more exciting games more quickly. Win!
This week: how to use a set of scales, how to declare thumb war on zombies, how to navigate a maze with sound, how to solve a fruit mystery and how to make the impossible... impossible.
Art of Balance
- Developer: Shin'en Multimedia
- Format: WiiWare
- Price: 800 Wii Points (£5.60 / €8)
Apparently, stacking objects precariously on top of each other in a bowl of hot soup isn't acceptable dinner party behaviour. Some people can be so uptight.
Rather than risk the indignity of becoming a social outcast, you could just spend a few quid and enjoy Art of Balance instead, and save on unwelcome laundry bills into the bargain. Currently available only on WiiWare, this physics puzzler tasks you with gently stacking up all the available shapes without any of them toppling into the bowl of liquid.
With 100 levels of progressive difficulty, it's not simply a case of rotating and placing objects in the correct order, but manipulating the reticule with the Wiimote with increasing care. Presenting you with a stable plinth and regular shapes, initial levels offer a safe haven, but Art of Balance's initially forgiving nature soon gives way to challenges which reek of pure evil.
With a wonky base and a selection of increasingly awkward shapes to work with, success becomes ever more elusive, as you tentatively teeter on the brink of losing all your blocks to the merciless forces of gravity.
Once your stack is complete, you then have to sweat it out for a few agonising seconds for the three green lights to appear, only to have to do it all again in a succession of even more taxing levels. The variety of shapes increases, including ones which break if more than two are stacked on top of them. It's enough to drive you loopy, but you'll always come back for more.
With two-player co-op and versus modes adding a welcome dose of multiplayer fun to the package, Art of Balance is nothing short of essential.
9/10
ZombieSmash
- Developer: gamedoctors
- Format: iPhone / iPod Touch
- Price: £1.19
Some games appear specifically designed to make the player look like a frothing lunatic, involuntarily twitching away like Thom Yorke in the midst of a harrowing episode. Exhibit A: ZombieSmash, a game where you spend most of the time flicking your thumbs across the screen in frenzied protection of your house, under siege from groaning undead hordes.
The basic premise is to swat these rancid denizens of the dark away before they start smashing the front door down. Unlike the four million other Tower Defence clones, there's no physical unit placement as such - just a great deal of physical interaction as you swipe each enemy away from harm's reach.
Simple flicks send each enemy unit flailing in that direction, so as the onslaught progresses, the rate of your swipes increases proportionally. And no sooner have you flung the zombies into next week than you also have to tap the screen to pick up each star that emanates from them.
But increasingly powerful zombies necessitate the use of powerful countermeasures, such as guns, rocks, rolling boulders, wrecking balls and even liquid nitrogen. Occasionally, an enemy unit will drop one of these weapons, allowing you to pick it up and store it for later use in an inventory slot at the top left portion of the screen.
When mere frenzied flicking proves ineffective, sending a wrecking ball careening across the screen helps restore order for a brief period. Such tactics have to be brought into play sparingly, though, as you'll often clear one gaggle of foes only to find yourself up against something unflickable.
Failure is all part of the fun, mind, and such is the bite-sized nature of this "survival comedy", it never feels like a chore to start over - far from it. With its demented twist on tower defence, ZombieSmash is not only a quite brilliant timesink, but a sure-fire way of getting a train carriage all to yourself. Bargain.
8/10