Bizango Blast

Bizango Blast  is a one man iPhone game.  It is sort of like Angry Birds in 3d, in that you basically throw a flaming ball at towers of stuff in hopes of destroying stuff.  Its not as polished or as good as Angry Birds, but it does have some potential.

You aim with the arrows in the lower left, or with swipes.  I only used the arrows, because the touch controls don't move as you touch (like scrolling in almost any other app), the only respond after you have finished a gesture.  Then you press the fire in the bottom right to launch a flaming ball, and hold it to charge up the launch speed.

Your goal is to use that catapult to make those towers...

look like this.

You need to destroy the all the action figures and radio tower looking things to beat the level.  There are some eggs (look at the lowest platform below the action figure) that you don't want to destroy.  As you advance there are a few more elements added, like ability make your flaming ball drop straight down, or split into two or even more balls.  The game encourages you to create chain reactions, but I always found it easier just to aim at each radio tower and destroy them one by one.  Even when I did cause a chain reaction of destruction, the radio towers would often not be destroyed, they would just be lying on the ground next to the wreckage of the towers, and I would still need to aim directly at them.

I didn't enjoy this game much, although there were a few fun moments when I caused big chain reactions.  But like I said, the chain reactions don't really pay off, and the fun goes away when you realize you haven't gained anything. To be fair I don't enjoy Angry Birds much, so I'm unlikely to enjoy games based on Angry Birds. There are a lot of features that gets in the way of the fun.  For example this is one of the first menu screens you see, and it is truly ugly.

Menu screen.

The game is filled with low resolution texture.  They look ok on 3d objects that are far away from you, but they look horrible on all the menu and UI elements.  Every UI element looks ugly, from the aiming arrows and launch controls, to the screen that comes up after you finish a level.

I lost on this level.

The game is confusing at first, but some of the elements are explained by tutorial screens that show up between levels.  These are helpful, but sometimes features are added without being mentioned in the tutorial screens, or being mentioned a few turns after the feature shows up.  The screens are sometimes helpful, but usually they try to tell you the "story" of the sock puppets vs radio towers.  Also they are unskippable, and come up every time you retry a level.

Story screen.

To be fair the author has been continuing to update the game.  The story/tutorial screens were added in a recent update.  He may address my complaints in future updates, who knows?  If you think Angry Birds in 3d would be fun, then you'll probably enjoy this game.  Otherwise I would avoid it.

Score 5/10

Some more random screenshots:

Charging up a shot.

Aiming higher.

Flaming ball in flight (at the top of the red crystal).  Special powers on the bottom: ball split, ball split even more,  ball drop.

I'd like to thank Oliver Archer for the promo code.