Ever wondered when being stuck up is actually a benefit? With this game, now you know exactly why!

Spikey’s Bounce Around ($1.99; Free)

The more games I play games from Donut Games, the more they become one of my favorite iPhone publishers. Their games are simple to play, fun to master, and have simple but totally impressive looks and sounds.

Spikey’s Bounce Around is certainly no exception to all this, and manages to provide a nice puzzle/strategy experience in a professionally wrapped package.

Presentation

The graphics are chock full of pixel art goodness. The color palette is lively without being too bright and there’s just enough detail to make every object stand out. A variety of plants keep the butterflies suspended in the air, and as Spikey passes through them leaves fly everywhere. Glass shatters as a jar hits the ground, and the butterflies gently flap their wings both inside and out of the jars. It’s the perfect homage to some of the great developers of the 80’s and early 90’s like Apogee.

The sound effects work quite well. Whether Spikey is bouncing on rubber platforms or jumping through the air it just sounds right. You hear the shattering glass jars and can just imagine your mom screaming “what did you do?” The music is also nicely done, though it’s a bit too subtle and often hard to hear over the sound effects.

Controls

Controlling Spikey is quite simple. Press your finger on the screen and you’ll see an arrow. Drag your finger around the screen to change the angle of the arrow, and let go to release Spikey. That’s it!

Game Play

Game play is about as simple as the control scheme. There are 50 levels, and in each level there are one or more butterflies that you need to set free. They are trapped in jars, and in order to set them free you must drop the jars on a surface besides the plants that are growing all over the place. To clear the plants away Spikey must simply touch them. You basically point Spikey in the direction you want him to go and release your finger. Any plants that are in Spikey’s path will go away, and if a jar was resting on top of the plants the jar will start to fall towards the ground. Once the jar hits the ground or a platform it will break and the butterfly will be set free. All butterflies must be set free in order to beat the level.

Each time you launch Spikey it’s considered a shot, and you only have so many shots, which differs with each level. If you use all the shots up without freeing all the butterflies, you must start the level over. Sometimes there will be enemy spiked balls on the screen, and if you run into them it is level over as well. At one point wasps will start appearing in jars, and as you can imagine, letting them out won’t bode well for you either. Simply freeing every butterfly is enough to pass the level and unlock the next one. However, like many other Donut Games games, each level has three stars. The first star is attained simply for beating the level. The other two stars are based on score, which in turn is based on number of shots used, how many plants you cleared, and how much you bounced around on levels with bouncing platforms.

That brings me to the main strategic element of the game. There are two types of surfaces in Spikey’s Bounce Around. One surface you stick to, and the other surface you bounce off of. As you can imagine, the trick to most of the levels is to determine when you want to bounce and when you want to stick. What’s really intriguing is that many times you end up doing exactly the opposite of what you’d expect in order to beat a level. And, sometimes it’s just blind luck that does the trick. Whatever the case, every level offers some amount of satisfaction when you beat it, and there are times when you’ll give a cheer after clearing a particularly taxing level.

Suggestions

Spikey isn’t perfect – I don’t think I’ve met a game that is – but for what it is there’s very little I could think of to suggest for enhancements. On levels that are longer than one screen it would be nice to be able to scroll through the level, but that’s not even a major determent. It would be nice to have separate toggles for sound and music, but again no big deal. Overall the game works quite well as it is.

Conclusion

With Spikey’s Bounce Around, Donut Games has another winner on their hands. The game looks and sounds good, but more importantly it’s quite fun to play. The best part is that even the challenging levels are doable, and because the levels individually are so short, you don’t mind going through them a few times until you get it right.

The short nature of the levels also gives me more impetus to replay them to try and get more stars on the ones I barely pass the first time around. Bouncing of the walls has been this entertaining in quite some time.