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- Rating:
- Price: $0.99 (Get It)
- Version: 1.02
- Developer: Pattern Making
Playing Radius, your job is to spin a sphere in all directions to detect little circles on the screen, and tap them to make them disappear before they explode. It’s a game that requires dexterity, quick thinking, and a bit of luck. In essence, Radius is a modern version of Whack-A-Mole, done in a very stylish manner.
Instructions are provided in-game. You are the sphere, and during the course of the game, enemies represented by circles with a plus (+) sign inside them is the spawn point. You tap the spawn point to destroy the enemy. There are different colored enemies, each with their own personalities. Once en enemy spawns, they have an outlying circle that grows larger. If it gets too big, it’ll explode and you lose health, and a nice touch is that your iPhone will vibrate when this happens. Once your health runs out, game over. Your health does regenerate over time. Powerups also spawn, and tapping one infers their benefits to you.
There are no game mode, and the main menu is very simple; New Game and Help. Help are the in-game instructions, and New Game is self-explanatory. During a game, a Menu button appears in the upper-left that lets you pause and resume the game, or start a new one.
I experienced a weird bug where, when starting Radius, it’ll show the menu of a previous game I had recently played. Sometimes it’ll go through fine with no problem, but other times Radius will crash. Another developer said this seems to be a bug in Apple’s OS on the iPhone/iPod Touch, where the buffer wouldn’t flush after a game is exited.
Control of the sphere is easy and intuitive, simply drag the sphere around with your finger, and tap the enemies as they appear.
The graphics are very smooth and easy on the eyes. The sphere itself has lines on it to convey to you its movement, while outside the sphere lies the health bar, time, any powerups you may have, and score. There’s not much to the game, but what’s there looks very crisp.
Sound effects are solid, fitting the theme of the game as being futuristic and modern. There’s no music, and Radius fades out the music when loading up. Just as well, as you need to use the sound cues to help you realize when enemies have spawned on the sphere to start tracking them down.
Radius is a polished, well-thought out game that requires deft skills to master. There’s just not a whole lot to the game, but what’s there is a great start. The addition of a local and global scoreboard would greatly enhance the game.
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