Right next to the entrance at the Yorkshire Games Festival was the bright and colourful Zoom Boom! Designed for smartphones and tablets by Sheffield-based studio Cave Monsters, Zoom Boom! was popular with the kids — a winning formula of quick-thinking arcade gameplay and vivid design.
It has one simple, continuous goal, which is to guide Dob the Blob as far as you can without going boom. Your aim is to save Dob’s hypnotised friends, who appear before you on the screen in among clumps of crystal, their eyes unfocussed as a result of the crystals’ hypnotic powers. Not as much is said when you load the game, though, with the instructions being graphic and simple enough to let you launch straight in. Rescue the blobs, avoid the crystals. That’s the plan.
Dob always moves upward, but you can change his position in the forward-moving space by moving your finger on the screen. This is the only interaction you need to play, and with it you can guide Dob around crystals, brushing past friends to save them. Be careful, though, as you could get yourself trapped in a crystal cluster and lose Dob. That said, you get some sore relief from dodging every once in a while; save enough blobs in a short space of time and you’ll activate ‘boom time’, where you can smash through all the crystals in your path.
Zoom Boom!’s graphics are quite eye-catching, with deep, glowing colours that still manage to be simple enough to make navigation easy. Crystals are distinct enough from blobs that you can tell which to avoid, and blobs float to safety in a satisfying animation once you free them.
While Zoom Boom! was very popular with the kids, we can see it being a hit with adults as well. It’s fun and easy to play and will be releasing at the perfect time, around Christmas, on Android devices. What’s more, it will be free!
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