Sometimes, in life, the earth starts bursting at the seams with magma and fire while meteors and little chibi zombie para-troopers rain down endlessly from the sky and giant slime monsters slug their way across the earth. Sometimes, a baseball playing Robot gets caught up in all of that mess, and decides that if he’s going to go down, he’s literally going down swinging. And also hitting. And sometimes striking out. Such is the premise of Baseball Apocalypse ($0.99) from Thomas Janson.
You might recognize that name. The very same Thomas Janson also brought us the magnificent Wave Wave (Free), so you can imagine that I and many other mobile gamers were super excited for this next project. With a premise and art style that are both decidedly retro and the promise of equally retro super difficult gameplay, who wouldn’t be? Unfortunately, the launch of this game was not so smooth. I’m all for super difficult games, but the hard to learn controls and occasionally broken enemy drops made most people give up on this game in a hurry.
As mentioned, you’re a super baseball playing robot wandering around in this over the top apocalypse. You have 5 balls with which to hit the little zombie creatures parachuting down over you. Aiming is very strange and different. A ball will move around a Pacman shaped ¾ circle in front of you, and depending on when you hit it, it can be launched in any direction from directly over your head behind you to along the ground in front of you. Every time you hit a zombie, you get a ball back and 1 point, and if you are hitting them in a combo or streak, you get 2 balls as well as 2 points.
Enemies come in 2 sizes and 3 colors: small, large, white, red, and green. Red enemies move a bit more erratically in the sky and drop from their parachutes before hitting the ground, and the green zombies are full of coins. Each coin you pick-up is also worth 1 point. From time to time, at completely random intervals, you’ll encounter a bear trap with a box of baseballs as a lure. Once trapped, you’ll have a boss fight against a big slime monster. Unarmed green bombs and armed red bombs will randomly scroll across the top of the screen in opposite directions. The already armed bombs just explode when you hit them, so you’re aiming for the green ones, to arm them and make them fall on the boss.
This boss is incredibly difficult at first, and takes some getting used to, just like the rest of the game. Because the color of the bombs are randomized and because the bottom row bombs can sometimes block the top row, you’ll be cursing at first. I tend to beat the boss more than half of the time now. The trick is to start launching balls off screen to the right to try to get a hit or two on him before he even fully comes into view. The boss is also worth a bevy of points. Once you get used to the controls and boss, it’s pretty standard to get scores in the hundreds each go.
The game has already seen two updates since launch. Originally, zombies could fall and reach the ground to your left, behind the player. The only way to get them was to try to run to the left quickly and hit a ball along the ground, but that was hard. Before the patch, you could just run left constantly and hit enemies along the ground after they’d landed until a boss spawned. It was cheap but effective. Now, however, enemies move way too fast along the ground to do that, and a very benevolent gust of wind seems to keep them from landing behind the player. They can still occasionally reach the ground off screen to the right, and with the new speeds, they’re nearly impossible to hit. You also used to have to avoid meteors constantly falling, but now those only hurt you in Hardcore Mode.
Oh yeah! There’s a hardcore mode. As much as you might spit out your coffee and guffaw at the very idea of a hardcore mode in this game, I actually really like it. It’s incredibly engaging. I almost didn’t even see that there was a hardcore mode. You activate it by hitting the skull icon in the top right. I wouldn’t have known about this mode if I hadn’t seen the Game Center leaderboards. In this mode, everything is a darker red, the left of the screen is a wave of heat that melts your character, and every zombie is of the red and aggressive variety. Plus the meteors, of course. I currently have the number 1 spot on the Hardcore leaderboards. Out of 43 people who discovered hardcore mode, but still. Come at me, bros!
The main hurdle of this game is the controls. They’re just not intuitive at all. The game was designed to be super difficult, and I dig that. Games like Run Roo Run ($0.99), The Impossible Game ($0.99), andGive It Up! ($0.99), are some of my favorites. The difference is that those games are all very intuitive to play, and build up the difficulty gradually rather than dropping you into hell from the outset. I guess this is more like a Flappy Bird. Difficult from the start and more a test of endurance. If you keep at it for an hour or so though, the controls start to come naturally. It actually really helps to wait for enemies to be in the bottom half of the screen. They can pile up quick, but they are much easier to hit. It’s also easier to establish a few easy attack vectors, like directly above your head, straight up, and close to the ground in front of you. And don’t forget to position your character to help you aim.
This game oozes that genuine retro style. Genuine like a Shovel Knight as opposed to something lazily done to appeal to nostalgia. The music is outstanding, and sounds a lot like stuff you’d hear while playing Super Hexagon ($2.99). This game is well worth checking out if you like difficult games, retro games, or just unique games. In terms of premise and controls, I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Also, Thomas Janson has been paying close attention to criticism, which is apparent from these two updates. Drop a line in our forums to continue giving him feedback. He recently dropped the price to a dollar as well, so now’s a great time to grab this unique improving game.
