Casual Gaming Forums

We’ve seen very few great inertia driven cave-flying style games since the classic Thrust title for the BBC Micro. That all changes with the iPhone and iPod Touch release of RETRO by Big Head Games. This title brings the gravity and inertia and leaves your hands gripping the mobile device as if your life depended on it.

You’re goal is to navigate your tiny lunar landing craft around the caves and landscapes of mysterious planets trying to save people stranded on the planet. You control the game using the accelerometers within the Apple iPod Touch and iPhone and blast your way through space by touching the screen to fire the engines.

You’ll have 23 levels to play through, if your nerves can survive the ride. This game is hard but brings an almost unsatisfiable addiction which can only be satiated with more game play. After hours you’ll find your hands cramped and your eyes burning from staring at your tiny screen. You can play on Normal mode or Hard, there is no easy in this cave-flyer, you’re on your own.

The three variables that make this game a nail biter? Fuel, Shields and Time. You’re limited on fuel as you fly around the graphically satisfying environment trying to pickup all the lost lunar people, you’re limited in shields which take damage as you bump into walls due to mis-guided landings and navigation. You must rescue all the poor souls on the planet before time runs out and your space shuttle leaves; you’ll soon follow the estranged individuals into the abyss of loneliness.

A small beacon of light is all you have to guide your way. This light bulb floats ahead of you and gives you an indicator on your trajectory based on the current inertia. Once you’ve learned the lesson of the little guiding light, you’ll start to envision the projected outcome from over-acceleration or excessive gravity when falling with your engines off.

This game brings some serious challenges and the accelerometer adds its own unique controls to the game play. The first few stages are fairly easy, you can download these for free by “buying” the RETRO Lite version of the game. The full blown version, for a whopping .99 cents, gives you stages which feel long and challenging–you’ll find yourself replaying the sames stage many times until you perfect the stage.

Once you’ve been destroyed you can pickup where you left off at the last human you’ve saved with the same fuel and shields you had when you rescued the individual(s). The recovery points do not always offer a clear or possible way to solve the puzzle, especially if you rescued a straggler with almost no fuel in the tank. Sometimes it’s easier to restart the stage and try again at full fuel and shield levels.

There are strategic areas within the stages where you can refuel and fix your shields but they’re often in difficult to find areas near the bottom of ravines and caves. These refuel points are extremely important to capture in the higher difficulty levels. As the game gets more difficult you’ll find new environmental challenges and the requirement for saving more stranded people will rise; soon you’ll be collecting two to three at a time with a large burden on your shoulders but you can do it with practice.

Overall, this game has all the qualities of a great cave-flyer style game. It brings a new polish to the graphics while staying true to many qualities of the classic games of our past. The balance of fuel, shields and time make it a challenge to complete but feasible with practice as with any great game. For the price tag of .99 cents this is a hard bargain to pass up if you like this style game. The only gripe to be had is the button pushing on menu’s because they’re not as responsive as they should be, requiring you to continue pressing until it finally “feels” it.

If you’re not sure if this game style is for you, try the Lite version for free to get a sense of what you’re getting into!

Download It Now!

Read original blog post