A while back a reviewed a game called “Watermelon!” which I had deemed the oddest iPhone game I’ve played that I actually liked. Well, I think we have a new champion for that title.

Tomena Sanner ($1.99)

But isn’t Tomena Sanner “just another” one of those run and avoid everything type games? I’m trying to come up with a good analogy here but I’m drawing a blank, so let’s just say “no, it’s not”. It’s one of those games that you spend equal amount of time going “why am I playing this?” and “where have you been all my life?”, and it’s an experience you’d be remiss to pass up.

Presentation

Tomena Sanner has a great look to it. The style is reminiscent of Flashback, with a nice set of pastel colors and just enough details to tell what things are without being really detailed. The character designs are great, and each object that you can interact with has three animations – one for Excellent timing, one for Good timing, and one for when you completely miss your timing. You can’t help but laugh at some of the animations and wonder “what were they thinking?” because of others. There’s no denying that you’ve not seen an array of characters quite like this, however.

The sound effects are weird. I’m pretty sure they stole a sound reel from an old Tom & Jerry cartoon, and sometimes the sounds make perfect sense and sometimes they don’t. In the end it doesn’t really matter, though, as it just adds to the humor of the game. The music during the main menu sounds like a tribute to every prime time soap opera ever made, and the music to each of the nine levels is well written, though I’m not sure it always matches the theme of the level. One of the songs even reminds me of the music in all those bad marvel animated shows from the late 60s.

Controls

Well, you tap the upper part of the screen to pause. And then… you tap the lower part of the screen to perform an action. It doesn’t matter what side of the screen, and it doesn’t matter what action you’re trying to perform. I’m pretty sure controls couldn’t get any simpler.

Game Play

Basically, you’re a businessman (I gather by the suit, anyway) that’s trying to get from point A to point B, and nothing’s going to stop you. You’ll travel across 9 different landscapes, jumping, slapping, tipping, dunking – doing whatever it takes to make sure that no one or nothing prevents you from getting to your goal. I like the fact that the game is actually broken down into levels unlike a lot of these running games where it’s just one big long terrain. More importantly, though, I love the fact that each level isn’t full of the same obstacles. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that certain things in one level aren’t like something in another level, but by and large each object has it’s own way of reacting to you.

And react these objects do. For you to initiate an action you just tap the lower part of the screen. I don’t know exactly where the cutoff is between performing an action and pausing the game, but I’ve never had an issue. The key to the whole thing is timing. If you’re too close to an object, or you flat out forget to tap the screen, you’ll miss. Some sort of (often humorous) interaction will occur between you and the object, and you’ll lose some time from the clock. If you’re too far away from an obstacle then you will either jump or roll, depending on if there are some coins or balloons above your head that you can grab or not.

If you perform a successful action there can be two outcomes, depending on how precise the timing was. A Good rating nets you a bit of time on the clock and a reprieve from the obstacle. An Excellent rating not only gives you time on the clock, but will often project you such that you can bypass one or more additional obstacles. Either way you are, of course, treated to an animation. If you’re not within range of something to perform an action there will often be coins and balloons in the air. You can tap the action section of the screen to jump up and grab those coins and balloons. The coins give you extra points, and the balloons can increase your speed, add time to the clock, or sadly decrease your speed.

To start off with you have to play each of the levels individually in Normal mode. As you beat each level you will unlock the next level, as well as unlocking the beaten level in Turbo mode. Turbo is basically the same as normal but everything runs a lot faster (big surprise). Once you’ve beaten all 9 levels you can play Endless mode, which is all 9 levels strung together without stopping for a menu selection in between each level.

Suggestions

If anything, I’d like to see the order of play reversed. In other words, have endless mode unlocked first, and as you pass each stage in endless mode, make that stage playable as a separate entity. I’m not sure it would make too much of a difference, except that it gets frustrating on the individual levels having to go back to the main menu every time and then select Normal mode to go to the next level.

I suppose the other alternative then would be to have the game go back to the Normal menu when you exit a level in normal mode instead of going back to the main menu. On a “personal preference” note, I don’t really care for the rolodex style menus. That’s just a “me” thing, though.

Conclusion

Games where your character is constantly running and you have to time moves correctly are a dime a dozen, but I can guarantee you haven’t played one like Tomena Sanner before. Even if you don’t like that style of game play, this game might be worth checking out for its cool art and wacky atmosphere. In the grand scheme of “odd” games I don’t think you’ll find much that’s more odd than Tomena and still actually decent to play, and this game is a blast. If you choose to pass it up, don’t say I didn’t warn you.