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Remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones is running away from
the boulder trap after stealing the golden idol? Aside from being one of my all-time
favorite scenes in film, it's a poular culture reference often included in movies and games.
Tim Winsky of TwinSky Games (say that three time fast) decided to turn this much beloved
trope in to an entire game all on its own. The result is Indiana Stone: The Brave and
the Boulder.
What sets this title apart is that you don't play as the brash, adventuring archaeologist.
Instead, you play as the boulder and it's your job to stop the would-be thief and rescue
your one and only love (the golden idol). The game will take you through various exotic
locales in your quest to stop him. All you have to do is crush him. Well, you have to
crush him multiple times, because this is a video game after all and Indiana's not exactly...
human. You do this by avoiding obstacles and traps, making contact with red hoops to increase
your speed and by running over other hapless victims to build up your boost meter. Once
this meter is full, you tap the "POW!" icon on screen to activate a berserk mode where
you'll grow larger, glow red and destroy anything in your path for a short period of time.
The story mode eases the player in to the game and then gradually ramps up the difficulty,
culminating in a notoriously difficult "Hard Mode". Each of the difficulty levels in the
story tasks the player with knocking down Indiana a pre-determinied number of times
in each of the game's stages. After you've done this, you'll travel to the next location
and repeat.
Other game modes include an endless mode, quickplay and an incredibly challenging, and
aptly named "Challenge Mode". In addition to unlocking these additional game modes,
there's loads of different boulder types to unlock. Each of these has a positive effect,
like being able to jump higher or less slowdown when hit and a negative effect like the appearance
of less speed hoops or being extra wide - making it difficult to avoid obstacles.
The game's not afraid to make fun of itself with much of the writing involving purposely
poorly written puns about each of the unlockable boulder types and the awkward relationship
each of them has with the golden idol.
As you've no doubt already noticed, the graphics are amazing. Sure, we've seen similar artwork
in games like 3D Dot Game Heroes, but I can't think of any game that utilizes this style
and conveys a feeling of speed! The low-fi voxel graphics are thrown at the screen at
a gorgeous 60 frames per second and it looks just beautiful on Retina displays.
The sound is great. The rumbling of your boulder along the ground, the traps, jumping, collecting
power ups and smashing in to things are all pleasantly retro. The music is essentially
the same throughout the entire game, however, the instruments used to play the tune change
to match the theme of the stage that you're on. This small feature means that, surprisingly,
you never quite get bored with the track and it still leaves the player with a feeling
of urgency and tension.
It's easy to be skeptical. After all, Indiana Stone is yet another endless runner in an
already overcrowded App Store category. Three things truly seperate this from many of the
other titles however. The humor, the sheer level of refinement and of course, the graphics.
Tim Winsky clearly loves his product and it shows. You don't have to be a programmer or
designer to see the level of polish that has gone in to this.
At $2.99, Indiana Stone is priced a little higher than most of the competition on the
App Store. But for that, you get a complete game with hours of replayability, loads of
unlocks, no ads, no in-app purchases and some awesomely cool easter eggs. Without giving
too much away, let's just say that Indiana Jones isn't the only Lucasfilm title to get
some play here.
Indiana Stone: The Brave and the Boulder is a universal app and is available right now
from the App Store. Check it out today. Hit that subscribe button for more news and reviews
from the mobile gaming world. This has been Alex for Game Mob. That's www.gamemob.com.