There are some games where the question has to be asked: why wasn’t this on iOS sooner? Joost Van Dongen’s Proun+ is one of those games. Releasing on November 27th for $3.99, ported by Engine Software, it’s a game that really feels like it’s finally home on iPhones and iPads. The PC version is remembered as a particularly notable entry in the tunnel racing genre, and it feels like it’s reaching its intended destination on iOS, where games like Unpossible ($1.99) and Synesthetic ($2.99) have followed in its footsteps, wittingly or not.
The reason this feels like a long-lost iOS game is because the controls are perfect for touchscreens. Using left and right thumbs to spin around just feels like this game’s natural way of playing it, as opposed to using a keyboard or a gamepad. I think mobile is the best platform for Super Hexagon ($2.99) for the same reason. When there’s left-right inputs, why not have easy ways to control them with the left and right hands? It’s criminal that Proun+ wasn’t a mobile game sooner for that reason. There are also a couple of buttons for boosting and braking, and I’d like to see them be movable, but putting my thumbs higher up than I otherwise consciously would is a minor issue at best.
Proun+ aims to have a lot more content than most tunnel racers as well. The bulk of the game is in racing on the various tracks, trying to beat the other racers, but there’s also time trial levels to play for each track, and the occasional extra mode that mixes things up. Points mode involves racing through colored gates of different point values, but with bonuses for not contacting walls and for traveling through the same color gate again and again. And then there’s Endless mode, where surviving on a track for as long as possible without hitting anything is the goal. This doesn’t mean that crashing is at all recommended in the race modes, as not hitting anything is key to getting the turbo boosts to get ahead.
The very design of the game ensures that it has more depth than similar endless tunnel racers. This isn’t to disparage these shallower games, there’s a unique challenge in trying to make a game based around repetition and randomness work. Proun+ is more about design, both in the varying art-inspired visuals, and in the tracks that populate the game.
The game boasts a number of new tracks compared to the PC original integrated into the game, and there’s 5 different speeds, from Relaxed to Speed of Light to try and conquer. There’s no IAP either, just $3.99 for the whole game. This is one worth keeping an eye on come Thanksgiving, November 27th.
