Droidscape Basilica: As We Play

As we play offers the thought strands of the reviewer as they’re going through the game. This offers unique content for the reader so they can come to understand the conflicting feelings of the reviewer as they’re playing a game for the very first time.

All feedback on this concept is welcome.

Opening Sentiments

After the game fires up instead of the usual menu, you get the introduction to the game laying out the main characters and the plot of the game. The intro plays out in a number of wonderfully drawn comic book like panels that tell the sad tale of the last Chronomancer and his desperate bid to escape from the clutches of the evil world rulers who have him held prisoner in a huge ship called the Basilica. In order to escape, he builds a robot called Bishop 7 and directs it to span the huge ship and save him.

The art style is different to anything I’ve seen in an iOS game before and really stood out for me as something new and quite frankly brilliant.  The story itself re-treads oft-covered ground but to be fair it’s has pretty much done Mario for as long as I can remember so it can’t be all bad.

Early Gameplay

The aim of each bite sized level is simply to navigate Bishop 7 safely to the exit of picking up the key for the exit door on the way. The action is effectively split into two phases; plan and execute. First you plan the route Bishop 7 will take across the level on his way to the exit by simply dragging your finger where you want him to go. Once you have the route mapped out you tap the screen and the level goes live and you move Bishop 7 using the slider at the bottom of the screen; move it to the right to go forward (the further, the faster) and to the left to go backwards, stick in in the middle and he will stop.

The first few levels are over in a flash as you quickly pick up the simple gameplay and wonder what all the fuss is about. Then, as you progress, the levels get more complex, enemy robots are thrown into the mix and you realise that Bishop 7 has a limited amount of juice making planning rest stops on the re-fueling stations a key thing to think about.

Onward and Upwards

While the early levels start slowly as you progress the levels do get genuinely tough. Once you have a course plotted for Bishop 7 there is no deviating from it and it takes some real thought, sharp reflexes and a certain amount of trial and error if you want to get him to the exit in one piece. Also as you progress you will need to grab more and more key cards to open the locked doors that lead gems and also the levels exit. Once you finish a level you get a score for the time taken and number of gems collected so each level also has a level of replayability for those score attack junkies out there and in the later levels hitting the top scores and getting gold can be a big ask.

Up on the Down Side

While early on in the game Plotting Bishop 7’s route is a breeze on smaller iThings this can get a little fiddly for the rotund fingered as the maps get more congested you need to be more accurate to avoid getting murdered by evil red robots.

There was also the odd bit of lag that sent Bishop 7 charging to his death when after a split second pause the game caught up and slammed him face first into the killer robots that patrol the levels. These issues were few and far between, however, for the most part the game ran really well and developers Kyttaro Games already have a bug squashing patch in the works.

Conclusion

Droidscape: Basilica beautiful brain teasing fun for any iOS device but the probably best played on the iPad. There is tons to do,  plenty of replayability and for just £1.49 you can’t say you don’t get value for money.