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Arachnadoodle

Genre: Arcade Game
Developer: Connect2Media
File Size: 9.8 MB
Version Reviewed: 0.3.5
Requirements: iPhone 2.2 Software
Compatibility: iPhone or iPod touch
Age Rating: 4+
Retail Price: $0.99

Arachnadoodle is a charming throwback to the arcade games of my youth, but with better graphics. It takes a simple premise—a spider building a web to catch flies—and makes it goofy and fun with bright colors, surprisingly difficult gameplay, and heartless rules. If this game had come out in the ‘80s, we’d have seen Arachnadoodle lunchboxes, Trapper Keepers, and a Saturday morning cartoon that hipsters would look back on with ironic fondness.

Boris the spider, in all his googly-eyed glory, must be launched by the player to connect strands of webbing to the pins scattered randomly about a room. You primary goal is to hit all the pins—fail to do that and the game ends—but your secondary goal is to attach strands to as many pins, multiple times, as possible. This makes your web stronger, and you’ll catch more flies during the bonus round that follows each level.

The game starts simply enough, then gets harder as more pins are added, along with later obstacles such as pins that change your trajectory and bombs that explode when touched, destroying the webwork. Connecting all the pins is hard enough (you only have a limited number of jumps), and at later levels figuring out how to get a web strong enough to catch the most flies will leave you puzzling over levels. It’s an odd mix of outright crazy, physics, and colorful cartoon characters.

Star*Burst

Genre: Arcade
Developer: Super Happy Fun Fun
File Size: 21.5 MB
Version Reviewed: 1.0.5
Requirements: iPhone 2.2.1 Software
Compatibility: iPhone or iPod touch
Age Rating: 4+
Retail Price: $1.99 (Free Lite version available)

Speaking of arcade throwbacks, Star*Burst was developed by the creator of KLAX, and it shows. You have to catch an endless progression of colored tiles sliding down a conveyor belt and arrange them in rows, columns, and diagonals. You get more points for more difficult arrangements (like The Big X), and must complete a certain number of stacks and, later, certain shapes to continue to the next level.

Your paddle can catch, stack, and flip the tiles (oh noooo!), giving you some strategic control, you can hold a tile to use later, flip it back to the beginning of the conveyor belt, or toss them up to the top of the screen for arrangements. Drop too many tiles and the game ends.

Simple, quick gameplay; you control the paddle by dragging to grab the tiles, touching it to toss them, or dragging it down to flip tiles. It’s frenetic gameplay in the classic old school mold.