Let’s talk about Funky Smugglers for a few minutes. It’s the next game from 11 Bit, the studio behind Anomaly Warzone Earth. It’s a new casual IP that’s presumably targeted at the kind of folks who only download what’s top on the charts — basically anything with “Birds," “Rope," or “Where’s My" in the name of it. In the game, you play as a security dude at an airport tasked with removing quirky items from passengers as they pass through an x-ray device. The more objects you remove, the higher your score at the end of a round. Rounds pile up on top of each other, some adding modifiers to your score.
In practice, the removal of items requires a lot of swiping. When a passenger enters into the x-ray, a dangerous item, like say, a saw or a pair of scissors, is highlighted in orange. At this point, you’ll need to swipe to remove the item while avoiding green (safe) items. Making this more interesting is a combo mechanic — you can hold onto orange items while swiping new ones, building up a modifier. Hold on too long, though, and your pile of confiscated items will explode because, reasons. Take three bits of damage total and your game is over.
That’s the give and take. How long will you hold on to items? How far will you let a person walk through the scanner before you swipe his belongings? As the game ramps up these become crucial decisions. People will start walking through faster and faster and the planting gets cleverer. Also, as the game ramps up, characters will start throwing around their arms much more wildly and will occasionally clutch a green item in their palms. Deciding when to chuck your items and collect the points or when to keep grabbing gets frantic.
Layer on top of this is a cool power-up system, which really helps you rake in the points. Randomly, you’ll be able to pick up an item that essentially throws the game into bullet-time. And there’s also the classic magnet power-up and a health power-up, in case too many items explode in your bumbling hands.
We’re thinking the neatest design choice in Smugglers is the effort that went into the look and feel. It’s silly without being too cartoon-y. And its music is just funky, but not gratingly so. The character models in particular are great, as you can see by giving this article’s images a once-over.
Funky Smugglers isn’t the game we expected to see from 11 Bit next since, you know, this is the studio that turned tower defense on its head, but it’s a welcome game that has an enormous amount of character and neat premise. We’re looking forward to wasting a ton of time with Funky Smugglers when it hits “soon" across iPhone and iPad for the agreeable price of 99¢.
this looks ace, though i hope it has some form of mission or purpose, or else it gets boring fast.
Seems like a "compact" version of Ubisoft's From Dust. If it is half as good, instabuy for me.
That's what I thought when I first saw it a while back. Too bad there's no mission structure, it's more like Minecraft creative mode.
My immediate thought/desire is to have the "game" loosely simulate weather; in particular some semi-realistic formation of clouds which then rain creating rivers
(I hit post on accident...ahem...as I was saying...)
...creating rivers which eventually erode the landscape, creating valleys and so on. Just a thought.
What time does it come out tonight?
Crescent Moon games > EA.games + Gameloft.games + Glu."games".
Depends on which EA or Gameloft game. But Glu? That's a no brainer.
No it really doesn't. Those 3 are plagues.
Give us populous on iOS thats all I need to say
Seconded
Looks like World of Warcraft
Wtf
I don't see any pandas
"You'll be able to shape, spawn and herd creatures, and then watch your world grow and age... That's it."
I think all developers deserve compensation for the work they put into any project. And, I am never one to complain and say that something should be free. But, will this be free? I have yet to read anywhere that this will have any kind of mission structure or some sort of point to the concept. It just looks like a cool demo. Please tell me I'm wrong??
But its a really awesome demo, and their developers are deserve to get supported, so they can make a really awesome game after (or from) this one.
I totally agree. I just don't know if it will offer enough to make it worth the purchase.
I'm so stoked for this game
This one trailer is the most awesome I saw in months. :D
We really would like Glenn to flesh out this game. I am proud to own it, but it needs to be more playable. Best of wishes to you with this game, Glenn! Thanks.