There never seems to be much innovation on the part of those that try to clone the classic naval battle game. Along comes this game…

iSink U ($0.99)

iSink U upsets that notion, at least to an extent. It’s definitely a fresh take on the game we all grew up with, but I think they could have gone even farther with it. Also, some less than stellar controls mar what otherwise would be a pretty decent experience on the iPhone.

Presentation

iSink U looks good. The boats are rendered with a cell-shaded look that is especially appealing on the close-ups. The battlefield itself is adorned with “window dressings”. For example, you might find a snowman on the Frozen Front or a volcano on the Tropical level. I think my favorite theme is the War Zone, however, complete with a partially submerged school bus on map one.

I also like the fact that you can see objects reflected in the water, and if you look closely you can see the sunken ships below the waves. The sound effects are what you’d expect for naval warfare, and they are done well. I really like the music, and I appreciate the fact that there’s actually a different tune for each map set.

Controls

In concept the controls make sense and should work quite well. In execution, however, they don’t impress. Either I’m not doing something right or the controls need to be tightened up quite a bit. To pan the screen you drag your finger around. This works, but seems a bit sluggish. To rotate the screen you’re supposed to use two fingers, and to zoom in and out you pinch.

Neither of these movements work well at all for me, and since I’ve played other games that use such movements flawlessly, I’m not really sure it’s me. When picking a square to attack on your opponent’s grid you drag a crosshairs around, but the crosshairs seems to move in a jerky fashion instead of sliding nicely across the screen. Even simple touch controls aren’t always as responsive as they should be.

Game Play

If you’ve played Battleship before, you know the basics of how iSink U works. If not, it goes something like this: each player has 5 ships to defend. At the beginning of the game you place those ships on a grid (or in this case move them if you wish, as they are already on the grid). In an interesting twist, some of the boards in iSink U have objects occupying some of the squares, which means your ships can’t use those spots. Once you’ve placed all of your ships, the game begins. In each round you get 5 actions points to do one or both of the following – shoot at your opponent’s ships and move your own ships. Being able to move your ships once the game has started adds an interesting element to the strategy involved in the game, though you can’t move a ship once it has been hit.

There are two options for attacking the opponent – single fire and scatter shot. A single fire takes one action point no matter which ship you use. With scatter shots, however, the amount of ammunition fired and the resulting number of action points used differs depending on the size of the ship. Once you’ve selected what attack type to use you’ll drag a crosshairs around your opponent’s grid to decide where you want to fire. Once you’re comfortable with the square you’ve targeted, you press a button in the lower right corner of the screen to execute the action. If any of your projectiles hit, a red X will appear on the affected square. Empty squares get a black X on them. Note that once a square on your grid has been hit you cannot relocate any ships capable of moving onto that square.

The game goes until one player has sunk all the other player’s ships, or all the rounds have been used up. The reality is that unless both sides spend a lot of time moving ships, you most likely will never run out of rounds. The game supports a computer opponent, which sadly has no adjustable AI level, or an opponent on the same device.

Suggestions

I have quite a few thoughts on how this game could be improved, mainly because I think it’s one of the few Battleship clones I’ve played that has the potential to rise above the crowd. First and foremost, the controls need to be a lot more responsive. But, in the mean time a lot of frustration could be eased if you could simply click on a square to select it during combat instead of having to drag the crosshairs around. The controls definitely need work, though.

As for game play itself, give us some options! The ability to specify the number of rounds only exists on two player mode. Why not open that up for one player as well? Also, the number of rounds starts at 20 and in two player mode goes up in increments of 5. Why not just give the user the ability to enter in a number? Can you imagine the strategy required if you only have 5 rounds to find your enemy? Some other considerations would be to allow the user to pick the number of ships per side and the grid size, both within reason, of course. Finally, provide an alternate battle condition – allow a side to win if they destroy a certain ship.

The game really should support at least WiFi or Bluetooth connectivity, if not both. It seems like there’d be very little data to transmit back and forth, and I personally don’t have any people right around me to play two player games with. As for the computer, it really needs multiple AI levels. The current AI, quite frankly, is a bit dumb and lacks any real challenge.

Conclusion

There is a lot of potential here. The game looks great and sounds great, and the basics of game play are solid. There are some nice features that aren’t present in other Battleship clones which makes this a prime contender for “top of the heap” for this style of game. They just really need to flesh things out a bit.

If even some of my suggestions were implemented the game would be much more interesting. I really hope they decide to continue development on this game and make it what it should be.