Those who enjoy a bit of casual, yet challenging, fun may want to have a look at Future Games of London’s recent iPhone survival action title, Hungry Shark [App Store].
Hungry Shark is an aptly named title. The game puts you in tilt-based control of a shark that is, well, hungry. Your shark must feed — constantly — in order to keep his ever-dwindling health bar from tanking out. The menu consists of pretty, little tropical fish, humans, barracudas, penguins, pelicans, and scary-looking deep-sea anglers, among others. Bingeing yourself on a whole mess of fish at once gets you multiplier bonuses. And some things out there are best left uneaten or perhaps eaten just right. These include jelly fish, puffer fish, swordfish, and aquatic mines.
After a few minutes of play, zipping to and fro gobbling prey, you’ll realize you’ve only just scratched the surface of the game, so to speak. While reefs and shores and ice block your way in places, you can swim your shark far down into the darkened depths to feast upon a more creepy-looking menu. But, whatever your depth, the name of the game is eat, eat, eat. As you do so, your shark will level up, growing in size and ferocity — but be careful, your newfound might will soon attract the attention of shark hunters.
Along with the health meter, your shark has a boost meter that replenishes with time. A tap to the screen activates the speed boost which helps in grabbing fast moving prey or getting out of a sticky situation. Collecting lost items strewn about the seafloor (license plates, helmets, etc.) gains you points, as well.
Hungry Shark is a cute, fun, simple game that’s pretty hard to put down. It has a just-one-more-time appeal that I would liken to Doodle Jump; it seems that surely the next game will win you a crown spot on the global leaderboards. It’s a casual game that our forum readers are loving, and so are we.
( Note that the developers, who are active in our forums, have indicated that the game has a bug that prevents it from running on 3G iPod touch 32GB / 64GB models, at present. A free v1.1 update is on the way (already submitted) that will correct this issue and allow it to run on all iPhone platform devices. )
App Store Link: Hungry Shark, $1.99
