Game Review – Murdersaurus

Posted by on Apr 13, 2010 in News | 0 comments

Behold! The single greatest videogame to ever deign to grace your pathetic, puny world with its existence! Murdersaurus! In the vein of such videogame greats as 1942, Galaga and Ikaruga, Murdersaurus brings superior action, excitement, thrills, spills and mayhem to the world. Lead the Bloodsplosion MkII against endless waves of Murdersaurans, as Earth’s final hope in Humanity’s battle for their very survival. With insane visuals and out-of-this-world effects that will tug the nostalgia gland and beat it with a stick, Murdersaurus will shock and awe you, if you were ever to play it.

But you can’t. It’s mine. Written, directed, drawn and willed into creation by me and me alone, with just a little help from Sketch Nation Shooter.

Possibly the single greatest killer of time and paper I’ve encountered in a long time, SNS allows the common scum of the world to take their textbook doodles and notepad scribblings and turn them into a scrolling shooter. Simple premise, simpler in execution. All you need is pen, paper, imagination and the bane of Pirate’s existence, the iPhone. I suppose iPads or iPod Touches will also do in a pinch, but once you’ve sold your soul, there’s no point in begging for more eternal torture.

In a nutshell, all the app does is take photos and convert them into sprites. Player, backgrounds, enemies and the end-of-level Boss are all created by you. Simply use the built-in Camera (God only knows or cares what the iPad users do) to snap your 3rd grade art failures, then the program processes and adds it to your game. Background collision zones are detected and added, making your levels as dangerous as they are hideously complex to navigate. Once you’ve got your game all drawn up, just configure enemies, add AI, throw in a few powerups and you’re away.

Sadly, the customisation is limited at this point. Bullets and AI are already created and there’s no option to create your own game-breaking powerups, but all the classics are there. Multi-bullets, homing rockets and energy balls, with the classic shield, armour and 1ups all available to throw into your levels. Enemies come in waves, either waiting for death or trying to shoot/crash into you and the end of game Boss fight is your classic deathmatch against a hideously oversized behemoth with superior firepower hitpoints up the wazoo and a tendency to use the same pattern over and over again. If all of that’s too much, there’s also the option to take a drawing of you, another of your enemies, then let the program create the rest for you.

The visuals are as good as you make them. The game supposedly allows actual photos, but I’m lazy and felt the need to exercise my skills of an artist to be bothered with such things. Sound is your classic shooter sounds, repetitive music in the background, explosion and gun sounds, along with a nice little vibrate to let you know that you’ve just crashed into a crudely drawn face. Touch controls are simple to figure out.

The games are only 5 levels long, with a boss fight at the end, making it simple to make and perfect for the ADHD kiddies of the world who invest their money in such things. Once you’ve made your game, you can share it to friends, families and colleagues through Facebook, if you really want people critiquing your work. Additionally, there are sample games installed, a 1942 clone, a space game and a car game, so if your hands break off or caffeine has killed your photographing skills, there’s still something there for you.

All in all, another $1.19 app store purchase well spent. I heartily recommend it to anybody with insufficient distraction and too many margin drawings.

That’s what you get for enabling the stupid you tag, Pirate. iPhone reviews!