Who doesn’t enjoy the smell of funnel cakes, flashing lights, sounds of prize booths, and the rush of roller coasters?

Carnival Games Live ($0.99; FREE)

If you’re like me those childhood memories are still there, and if you have similar tastes, you still enjoy going to carnivals. So to all those who love carnivals, you’ll love this game. Carnival Games Live, brings four of the most classic games you could ever have right in your pocket.

Presentation

The graphics for the game fit it perfectly. It’s a somewhat papermario style mixed in with some 3D elements. And as with every carnival you can’t have them without appropriate sounds. Carnival Live exceeds this attribute with some good tunes.

Now the coolest part of the game is that its not one but FOUR games in one. And don’t forget that you can challenge up to four friends that are present with a pass-n-play feature.

Controls

Although there’s four different game types, you really end up doing similar control functions. They either require you to tap on the screen or slide across somewhere. Everything else should be self-explanatory. The pause button is always in the top right corner, score is kept at the top center and the score progression bar is on the left.

Gameplay

The game has four game types: Duck Shoot, Smack ‘em, Arcade Basketball, and Arcade Bowling. In Duck Shoot you must tap ducks as they slide on screen, but your gun requires you to reload when you run out of bullets. Some ducks take more than one shot to take down, so you have to time reloads wisely, while others require the special golden gun.

Smack ‘em brings the old school whack a mole but more challenging. You have to pay attention to the moles since some will have shields or also require more than one tap. Activating the hammer will get rid of anything on screen. Arcade Basketball is just what you’d expect, drag the balls up to shoot and score. But you have to watch out for monkeys as they will appear to block shots and then you must face an opponent who deducts points from your score for each shot they make.

And finally Arcade Bowling is the classic skeeball. Just drag the balls to shoot them into the targets. Each type has around 8 levels that get faster and more challenging than the previous. Each level ends when you reach the required score and you either tap or get the golden key. The next prompt then tells you the requirements to beat the next level. But that’s not all, they also have a “boss” level where you must accomplish some goal in order to win.

And don’t forget about the timer, after each level is completed, you gain back some time, but you have to coordinate your aim. The game has trophies that you can collect as “achievements” I guess, and you can even customize your profile with different icons pictures.

Suggestions

Digital Chocolate really produced a fun and amazing game. Carnival Live is fun for all ages and will definitely have you playing again and again, especially with friends. There’s only a few things I would recommend be fixed.

First there should be a save on quit feature. Nothing really frustrates me more than being interrupted when your doing extremely well. I also think a social networking feature should be implemented with OF or Plus+, it already has Facebook integration and push notification to challenge friends but more networking would really blow this game up.

Now for specific game issues. I faced some difficulty with defeating the “boss” in the duck shoot level. It could have just been me sucking, but I don’t think 15 seconds is enough to defeat the beast that heals whenever is hides in the water. I also had trouble sliding balls in skeeball. They either seemed “stuck” in place or wouldn’t move right. Plus I killed major time trying to slide them. And finally, just add more games. As of now, it does have replay value, but people are going to get bored if updates don’t showup. Add more game types have more interesting achievements.

Conclusion

My final verdict is that this game is AWESOME. I tell everyone to get this now. It’s only .99¢ and for four games, that’s a steal. It’s really fun and brings back the carnival nostalgia.

Now as for calling this the best Digital Chocolate game ever… download the FREE version and it’s easy to understand why. The graphics are pretty amazing, a take off from the usual somewhat grainy Dig Choc graphics. It’s pretty fun and plays well to so there you go!