'Downhill Bowling' Offers Strange Fun
posted by arn on February 7th, 2009 5:54 AM EST in $2.99, Racing, Sports, iPhone games, iPod touch games
GameResort LLC recently released an iPhone version of their 3D game Downhill Bowling [App Store].
Like regular bowling… except you control a bowling ball as it charges down some crazy slopes with jumps, coins, bombs, cannons, speedups, sheep, grow and shrink pickups and mushrooms. Did we mention the raccoons?
The game lives up to its name with the curious goal of steering a bowling ball down a hill while trying to knock out bowling pins and collect coins. Stranger still, it's actually kind of fun.
GameResort is offering a Lite version [App Store] which gives you a taste of the game with the first level. They have also dropped the price of the full version from $4.99 to $2.99.
Finally, this developer video shows off a later (more complicated) level:
App Store Links: Downhill Bowling Lite, Free, Downhill Bowling, $2.99
That's really a great game. Totally unique game concept and quite challenging!
Wow! Looks like a really interesting game. Looking forward to trying it out
Actually, this concept has already been done at least once.
It reminds me a lot of a minigame that was in i-Ninja…
Skip to 3:00 to see it in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgEFVHIBY64
(I can't recall if there's another harder version of this minigame or not…)
You can play the entire game online to see if it's your kind of thing right here: http://www.downhillbowling.com/. There's a lite version in the App Store too, which I tried, and I really expected the game to suit the iPhone tilt device, but I wasn't 100% convinced… but hey that's me: the ability to even try a game before you buy in two different places is very welcome!
Thanks for this great find. I've tried the Lite version, played the first level a couple times and I have to say, even replaying the same level again and again is still a lot of fun. It's just like casual bowling in that respect. The event itself is so much fun that you don't really care that much about winning or not
All thumbs up from me.
Anybody else think that this would make for a killer platformer if the developer tinkered with the engine a little bit? As another poster reminded me, it's similar to the special stages in i-Ninja (btw, if ever there was a platformer made for the iTouch/Phone it would be i-Ninja). It also reminds me of the special stages in the Sonic games. Actually, it definitely reminds me of the regular stages in Sonic Adventure a bit, especially with the cannons shooting one across gaps.
Wow, SSX Tricky with Balls.