There out two things that stand out about this game: it’s visuals, and it’s perspective. To that effect, it stands true to what you see in the screenshots.

Catapult King (Universal: $0.99) 

“Become the catapult… Take down forts, castles and even a fire-breathing dragon in Catapult King—the King of castle crushers! Rescue the princess and defeat the enemy in this beautiful, 3D fantasy adventure.”

Presentation

The game looks great, and plays smooth. The world stands out for it’s sharp visual style, cartoon and fantasy looking. The soldiers don’t fall short, since they keep the levels around with clownish animations (like the pigs mocking you in Angry Birds, only to the next level). My favourite part is the destruction, it’s quite satisfying.

Since you are launching a giant boulder, chaos is ensured. And sure enough, despite the high resolution visuals the game handles the animations for all this smoothly, for both the blocks and the ball. On the other side of presentation, the game also features a soundtrack that blends right in with the game’s art style, and sound effects for everything else that can possibly happen in the game.  If there’s one thing Catapult King isn’t short of, it’s polish.

Controls

Here’s where things get a little wibbley wobbley. The game does the best job it can possibly do to make the controls easy for you. Simply pull back on the catapult to set the desired power and aim. Sometimes you will need to aim higher, and sometimes you will need to aim lower. For this purpose you have a cog on the lower right side of your catapult that allows you to tilt it forward or backwards, so you can aim high or low.

If you wish to explore the level you can simply tap above to go into exploration mode and fly around. Sound good? So, here’s the bad side. It may not seem like it, but aiming in 3D is a lot harder to aim than in 2D. And the worst part is that you have no aim assist. To get aim assist you must buy it in each round with the in-game currency (which, you guessed, can be bought as IAP other than earning it in game) and only lasts a short time.

Gameplay

When I called it Angry Birds in 3D I wasn’t kidding, there’s no denying the similarity here. You use an object (in this case a giant boulder) to destroy wooden platforms where your enemies are either standing on or hiding under. Although your goal is just to destroy your enemies, the more wooden platforms you destroy the more points you get.

Of course it’s not just as easy as it seems. Apart from your normal boulder, you’ll be able to use magic for more powerful ammo, such as a meteor shower, a shockwave, etc. And as mentioned above, you will also have to buy aim assist using magic. Of course, magic runs out, and you can refill it via IAP.

All that being said, you don’t actually need any of the powerups to complete the game. In fact, through my play through I hardly touched them. Of course, that meant at times a lot of trial and error shots, and watching my boulder fly right in between two columns without causing any damage at all. But after a few shots I could get as much damage as I was gonna get on that level, or sometimes beat it in just one shot. Here’s the bottom line though: the 3D perspective breathes new live into the genre, and it’s a blast to play.

Conclusion

Canapult King is a lot of fun. One of the main reasons is that the game is so well polished, with fun and smooth animations from the destruction the enemies mocking you. The other is that the 3D perspective is just really freaking cool. Even if you were not a fan of Angry Birds, I recommend picking up Canapult King right now. 8/10.