Color Lines Review

The original version of the Russian game Color Lines is now available on your iDevice. The purpose of the game is to score more points than the King has. You gain points by moving the dots around and lining up 5 or more of the same colored balls horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

Just by looking at the icon of Color Lines, I knew that this game would have a retro feel to it. When I opened it, I was right, as Color lines uses old fashioned graphics you’d expect to find on an old PC or arcade system. The colors are nice and bold, with bright greens, solid reds, cool blues, and more. Even though this game is supposed to be more old school, it just ends up feeling unpolished, as the graphics are very pixilated and not that appealing. The animations present are ok; they’re jumpy and not the smoothest.

The sounds are simple as well. They don’t add much to the gameplay, and they don’t take much away from it either. Once again it just feels like not enough attention to detail was given in Color Lines.

Gameplay wise Color Lines isn’t complicated at all. As stated earlier, the goal is to line up 5 or more dots of color in a row in any direction, and this is done by tapping one dot, then tapping another empty space to line up the colors. The dots can move anywhere on the screen as long as the path to the space isn’t blocked. At first there are only a few dots, but each turn that goes by without creating a line results in more dots being put on the screen. So near the end of the game, the screen becomes really cramped and thinking ahead is a must.

The touch interface actually works pretty well, as there were not problems selecting the correct squares.

Basically that’s it in Color Lines. There’s that one game mode, and it’s not bad, but it does become dry after a while. There is a high scores list so you can try to aim as high as possible but really, there’s not much to do because a lot of the game relies on luck and after a while it just felt as if I was doing the same thing over and over again. If more game elements were somehow included, or a global high scores list, then Color Lines might actually stay on my iPod.

If you are a true die-hard puzzle fan than I’d say give Color Lines a go. Otherwise pass, because at $2, there are many apps that have more time spent in their production and offer much more than Color Lines. This game does not do anything to put itself as a must buy app, and while it was fun for a few minutes, it probably isn’t something people will really look forward to.

The Good

Nice colors
Simple to understand
Nice strategy involved

The Bad

Unimpressive graphics and sounds
Gameplay quickly becomes stale
Just overall an average app
Price isn’t worth it

Related posts:

1. Jump Review
2. Dapple Review
3. Last Cannon Review

Tags: Color Lines P iston Games Apple iPod Touch iPhone App Store

Category: Games