Dial the clocks back just about 4 years ago and you’ll find us talking about a silly new game called Tape it Up! from the Devsisters that had just launched in the App Store. It was essentially a 3-lane runner but played from a top-down perspective, with the premise being you’re taping up boxes as they come down each lane on a conveyor belt. We were initially intrigued by that silly premise alone, but came to find that Tape it Up! was actually an excellent arcade game with tons of personality. While Devsisters has gone on to see unimaginable success with their Cookie Run series, poor old Tape it Up! fell by the wayside. Last year, two former Devsisters developers formed their own indie studio called, appropriately, Team TAPE to pick up the mantle of the Tape it Up! legacy with their just-released spiritual successor Box It Up! Inc.
Making it over from the original game into Box It Up! is the top-down view, the conveyor belt, and the 3 different lanes. Besides those things, this is a much more complex beast than Tape it Up! was. At its most basic level, each lane of the conveyor belt in Box It Up! represents a color, and your job is to sort the packages traveling on the belt so that the correctly colored boxes are in the correctly colored lane before they reach a machine that automatically seals the boxes up. (I guess automation took away the jobs provided in Tape it Up! hence the need for a new game.) As you would expect, there’s a variety of additional mechanics, power-ups, and other stuff that spices up the gameplay, but that’s more or less the general gist of the game. The trailer below gives you a pretty great idea of what you’re in for with this one.
Like Tape it Up! before it, Box It Up! Inc. combines everything into a fast-paced arcade-style game that is perfectly suited for one-handed play on a touchscreen. Everything about playing it just feels good. It features dozens of unlockables too, like a variety of automated tape machine styles, a skill tree-like stat upgrading system, and TONS of unlockable cats. Because who doesn’t want to unlock cats? The game is free with ads and quite generous with its in-game currency, but you can buy a permanent ad removal or additional in-game coins with IAP if you wish. Whether you were a fan of Tape it Up! back in the day or not, if you enjoy arcade-style mechanics that feel built especially for mobile and appreciate when you can feel the actual love oozing from the entire package, you should definitely give Box It Up! Inc. a try for yourself.
