There are a ridiculous amount of these see how far you can go vertical climbing games on the App Store, and much like the match three genre, classics like Doodle Jump [99¢], Mega Jump [Free] and others overshadow most new releases. Argentinian iPhone developers Hungry Game, creators of Fly Kiwi Fly decided to throw their hat in to this overcrowded ring, and wound up with Sir Lovalot [99¢]– A jumping game that manages to set itself apart with cute graphics, a fun premise, and loads of collectable loot.
Sir Lovalot plays a lot like similar games in that you’re tilting your device to the right or left to control your character who is constantly jumping whenever he has solid footing on a platform. The first thing you notice while playing is that instead of jumping on a 2D plane, Sir Lovalot climbs a Rapunzel-like never-ending 3D tower. Tilting causes your knight to spin around the outside of the tower, which will have platforms on all sides of it. Platform types include standard stone platforms, breakaway wooden platforms, spring-loaded platforms, platforms that turn in to spikes, spikes themselves, and others. Not being to see all sides of the tower provides a considerable challenge as you get farther in the game, as often times the path upward isn’t as clear as similar games where you can see all of your options at once.
The difficulty of Sir Lovalot is defrayed a bit in a number of ways. First off, you’re able to fall back down a few platforms without penalty, and you start the game with three hearts which get spent each time you hit a set of spikes. To balance this, you’re constantly under the pressure of a timer that is refreshed at checkpoints along the way up the tower. While being able to miss a jump or land in spikes a few times makes the game feel more forgiving than most, goof up too much and you’ll run out of time before reaching the next checkpoint.
As you make your way up the tower you’ll find various pieces of loot to collect which also add to your total score. Sir Lovalot has OpenFeint integration for online leaderboards, which undoubtedly will soon be dominated by people far better at the game than me. To see what Sir Lovalot looks like in action, check out the following video:
I totally dig the theme of Sir Lovalot, and really can’t help but smile as he performs various acrobatics while twirling his sword around in the air ascending the tower. The only thing that really sticks out as an annoyance is that the game uses a single fairly obnoxious spring sound each time you jump. This quickly gets incredibly tiring, but thankfully, sound effects can be turned off in the game’s options. If you’re looking for a new game to satiate your need to jump forever, give Sir Lovalot a try.
