Generally, whenever someone asks you to experience Earth from a whole new perspective, it's best to heed mama's advice: "That ain't the way to have fun, son." With Fibble HD, however, there's less cause for consternation. Just imagine a Pikmin inspired miniature golf game with the heart of a puzzle platformer, and you kind of have Fibble HD.
What is it?
Fibble is an orange alien with no legs…a smooth golf ball with arms, if you will. His spaceship has crashed on Earth (inside someon's home, no less), and he'll need to locate his friends so they can together locate the pieces of their ship and reassemble it for their journey home. This will largely be accomplished by rolling Fibble through many levels of miniature golf style mazes, collecting stars along the way and being rewarded with medals for accomplishing various goals.
How does it work?
Each of the 30 levels spread throughout the house (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, basement) begins with a quick overview, showing you the destination (hole) and the items you can pick up along the way. At first, it's just a matter of getting from here to there. After a while, however, you'll need to recruit the friends you've found to help you reach all of the level's items and avoid its obstacles. One fellow will bounce you up to a higher level, another will catch you and throw in the direction of your choice at a higher speed, etc.
The strategy element comes from you determining which friend to use where. The action element comes from you tapping the friend at the right time to activate him. You set Fibble in motion by tapping him and pulling in the opposite direction from which you want him to roll. Once he's in motion, you have a limited window in which to tap to activate the friend before Fibble rolls right past and gets stuck, resulting in multiple rolls and a lower score.
Is it contagious?
30 levels isn't a lot for a game like this, especially considering so many of them go by so quickly. That's a shame, because the level design is quite fun and colorful; almost claymation-like in its presentation. But Fibble HD is quite fun while it lasts. The later levels are especially fun, and it's very much one of those games where you know you can achieve the gold medal if you just try it one…more…time.
I'm not sold on the Fibble character himself. I don't find round blobs all that cute, especially when their voice is so annoying. I don't know what it is, but unlike in the song referenced above, I do want to see some more.
Category: Games
Developer: Crytek
Cost: $4.99 (free version also available)
Download: Fibble HD
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under iphone, news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
