'Titanic Rescue' – Save Gentlemen from a Sinking Ship
posted by Eli Hodapp on October 8th, 2009 1:52 AM EDT in $0.99, 3 stars, Action, Games, Reviews, iPhone games, iPod touch games
Donuts Games' latest title, Titanic Rescue [App Store] was released tonight. Like their other games, Titanic Rescue is packed with pixel art, great music, and silly yet strangely charming gameplay.
The historically questionable premise of the game revolves around loading "gentlemen", as the game calls them, from the sinking Titanic in to the lifeboats below. These gentlemen eventually jump on their own, but a flicking motion on the screen also sends them flying skyward only to hopefully land in one of the boats or lifebuoys floating along side the ship. Sliding your finger along the bottom half of the screen controls the location of these life saving vessels, and for additional bonus points, gentlemen with matching suits can be loaded in sets of three in each life boat.
The longer you play, the more obstacles are introduced. For instance, fog obscures your view of the gentlemen on the ship and lifeboats loaded with three piece bands eventually are included in the series of boats on the bottom of the screen. Needless to say, gentlemen can't be loaded in to the boats with bands in them. The game continues until five gentlemen have splashed in to the ocean.
One extremely puzzling omission is the lack of any kind of scoreboard, either online or local. Inside of the options menu there is a button for your overall statistics, which list the number of gentlemen you've saved along with color matches, sunken boats, and total playtime. The only other stat that is saved is your all-time best, which I guess does the job, but I'd still rather see the top 10 scores.
Despite the lack of a more robust score recording system, Titanic Rescue is still a lot of fun. The simple gameplay gets challenging quick with the introduction of different obstacles, and it's hard to not enjoy a game based on such a silly concept.
App Store Link: Titanic Rescue, 99¢
TouchArcade Rating:
I want to save beautiful ladies, not hairy men.
Good SFX – nicely polished game.
Too soon.
wonder if they'd hav this game for 9/11 a few years down the track without ppl getting offended.
Why are the windows on fire? :O The ship was sinking!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/titanic-doomed-by-fire-raging-below-decks-says-new-theory-808472.html
Next up Hindenburg: The Game!
Making money from tragedy isn\'t the best use of game programming skills.
Where is the SuicideBomber game for iPhone or the 9/11 game for iPhone.
What about Katrina: Save The People game for iPhone?
Oh dear.
Waiting for the Twin Towers: Catch the Jumpers game. That would be sweet. Catch as many jumpers as possible before the collapse. Good for laffs. Make it gory.
Does the game allow you to turn off the in-game music/sound and allow playthrough of your iPod music? I refuse to buy any more casual games that don't allow you to do that. It kills my desire to play them when I'm commuting and listening to a great album/podcast.
The yellow, round windows: are they forming Braille letters? Can somebody read it?
Probably not. Braille is three rows of two, I believe, not two rows of two.
This game reminds me off the game and watch game LifeBoat from nintendo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBtB-2KIzkU
Totally agree with the comments above re: Hindenburg/September 11/Katrina. Please add Bali Bombing & a couple of Tsunami & Earthquake games also, those would be awesome.
This is crass & tasteless at best, offensive at worst.
(I raised an eyebrow when I had to enter the word "wave" as the anti-spam word.)
The hypocrisy in the comments astounds me. So it's wrong to "make money from a tragedy"? So, do you also complain when you see games and movies that are based on WW2? WW2 was a "tragedy" as well. Hey, how about those movies involving WTC and the failed hijacking? How about movies that are about real-life serial-killers? Those were tragedies as well.
How about Schindlers List? Steven Spielberg earned money by exploiting the tragedy of the Jews in WW2-era Poland!
Get a grip, people.
^ Totally agree with you (Janne)