I love how far mobile device hardware has progressed over the years, and the complex and impressive games that are possible because of it. But I also have a soft spot in my heart for those simplistic time wasters that aim to fill those brief moments of downtime throughout our busy lives. Specifically, I love portrait-oriented, one-handed, single-thumb games. Games like Bouncy Trampoline (Free), SlamBots ($1.99), Doug Dug (Free) and yes, even Flappy Bird are frequented by me when I feel like playing something but don’t feel like thinking too hard about what I want to play. I even have a folder on my home screen dedicated to games like this, games that I know I can tap on any of them and reliably be entertained.
Recently, a new one-hander made its way into my life. If you listened to our podcast last week you heard me gushing about it. It’s called Caveman Pong (Free), and it is more fun than it has any business being. Have you ever practiced playing tennis or handball or pretty much any other ball-related sport by batting the ball against a wall by yourself? That’s basically the premise behind Caveman Pong. It’s like one-player Pong played against a wall. Your paddle is a blocky caveman who jumps in the air with a single tap. Your ball… well, it’s not really a ball, because it’s a square, but the goal is to bounce it against the wall back and forth as many times as possible without letting it get by you.
It’s an extremely simple idea but it’s the tiny details that make Caveman Pong work so well. One of the problems with Flappy Bird was that once you got comfortable with the timing, high scores became more of an exercise in monotony as you made your way through hundreds of pipe gaps. In Caveman Pong the physics of the ball are somewhat unpredictable, which avoids that tedium of getting locked into the same rhythm over and over. Also, just like in Pong or Breakout, how and where you bat the ball off of your caveman paddle makes a difference in how the ball bounces. Despite the fact that you’re doing the same simple action over and over, every game of Caveman Pong feels wildly different.
Another thing that contributes to the variety in Caveman Pong are the little creatures who begin crawling around the landscape as your score rises. These little guys crawl across the ground and up the wall you’re bouncing against, and they can throw off the trajectory of your ball if you hit them. That’s not always a bad thing, but it has a tendency to throw off my timing. Also there are special colored critters that bestow abilities onto your ball, like a green one that makes your ball move in slow motion or a red one that makes it move much faster. There may be other colored critters too, but so far my high score is just 17 so I’m not too sure what might come beyond that.
Caveman Pong probably won’t be the game you show off to your friends to impress them with how fancy your iPhone is, but it probably will be the game you fiercely compete with them over for high score supremacy. I really feel like it has the potential to be the next Flappy Bird-like schoolyard phenomenon. It’s free to download and ad-supported, with an option to disable ads for 99¢. There are criminally few impressions in our forums so far, so if you like these simple but difficult high score chasers then you really need to download Caveman Pong for free and try to beat my whopping high score of 17.
One of KEMCO's finest RPG to date.
I dunno, it is very similar to Asdivine dios and meance, as well as Journey to Kreisa and Infinite Dunamis. It makes a few tweaks but all five games share many similarities in design and look. I would like to see Kemco do something truly unique and different. Rusted emeth was a good start, though similar to metal max returns and also Rusted emeth was unpolished, but it was a good attempt.
"Chubby cat-god" #yaaaaaas!
I was not expecting this to be the one, especially when it has "ass" in the title.
I had so many puns prepared, too.
um, no "ass", it is ASD....get it right...
Great review Shaun finally Exe-Create nailed it, when I start playing it, I had a feeling this one was difference, and later realize it was really great, also was waiting for your final word, and yes definitely this one nailed it! ( and I don't like cats)
My mistake there : different
Time take actually buy a Kemco RPG now.
Thanks, Shaun.
Great recommendation. Downloaded and added to backlog!
One word: "Meowzers"
Great review. Completely agree, this is the best of Kemco (at least of what I played) by a country mile. Nothing groundbreaking, but a damn solid game. I think the strongest parts of the game are the dialogues and the battle system. Weakest is music, and I echo Shaun's complaint in that area.
Actually very similar to at least five other kemco games.
Good review. I really enjoyed Exe-Create's Frane: Dragon's Odyssey for iOS. But anytime I see a Kemco RPG review, it only reminds me of how much I'd so much rather finish Crimson Gem Saga. I wish Exe-Create could get the rights to that one!
The hot mess that is the iOS version? Did they update the update, ever?
Update the app, OMG!
CGS was published by Nate Games, and I don't think they've touched it in years. Must not have any funding to finish any updates on it. Such a shame. But Frane kind of helped me forget about it for a few hours anyway.
I only have two complaints, with one very strong support which seems minor but for me, makes all the difference.
Too much dependence on Felix for stealing gems. The crafting system is brutal if you are playing without IAPs, because you need 10 low level jewels to craft just one mid level jewel. Then, if you want a higher level jewel, you need 100 low level jewels because you'll need to craft ten mid-level jewels to get just one high level jewel. You can steal jewels with Felix's ability, or find them in treasure chests. Maybe you can buy them later, but I haven't gotten to that point. But you can only steal one jewel per enemy, and sometimes there is a chance of a jewel dropping after a battle.
Overall though, the amount of jewels and the reward you get seems very small, especially because you can buy a maxed-level jewel for a buck.
However, I have to say that the attention of detail in enemy design is amazing. Unlike the FF games (which really went to town with making different level enemies visually distinct through simple recolors), this game actually changes little things to the design of an enemy to show it is a different enemy and will drop different items. For example, a low level treant enemy is called a Mover, while a higher level treant enemy is called a Wither Rot. However, if you are using auto-attack or not paying attention to the enemy names you won't know this. So Exe-Create made little visual cues - a Mover is your basic treant, while the Wither Rot has fangs and withered green leaves.
There is also a cat in the beginning of the game with two models, a cait sith and a lupine. The cait with doesn't drop anything special (just useless epsilon gems which sell for around 20 coins) but the lupine drops a Speed + 2 gem. You can tell the difference by the fact the lupine has two tails, while the cait sith has only one.
Attention to that kind of detail has really gotten me into the game. Looking at the giant list of future enemies is intimidating, but has so much potential and really excites the completionist in me as a player.
I have a question for those who played the game on higher difficulty levels. I tried, but didn't see an increase in rewards. Can you elaborate on the kinds of rewards you get for beating enemies on Expert versus Normal or even Hard?
One big thing you'll notice on hard and expert is the ×1.5 and ×2.5 gold increase respectively, same as with xp. On harder levels enemies are also more likely to drop the rare items and not so much the common items. Yes the game is so much harder on the harder difficulties, but more rewarding. I play on expert when I found hard to be a little easy. Don't get me wrong it's not easy by any means if you just like to mow through enemies. That's not going to happen. If you chose to play on expert or hard you'll get used to using buffs, skills, and offensive magic, plus you will need to use felix's gem stealing abilities quite frequently. I quit playing jrpgs on normal after I started playing the etrian odyssey series for the 3DS, that's almost as hard as the souls series.
They really need to come up with better names. :/
this game is rubbish , the gameplay is repetitive and the plot is mediocre cliche (not to mention that the final boss has too many haxed abilities which made the main characters useless)