Drop Wizard

This game is wonderful! The design is airtight, with seamless and consistent high-end pixel art that Nintendo themselves couldn't outdo. (Drop Wizard takes a lot of visual cues from the Kirby games, an obvious inspiration.) I love the main gameplay mechanic: it's fresh, but still has a familiar platformer feel. The characters and environments succeed one another in a very elegant way that allows you to pick up the game's ideas intuitively without rushing. Drop Wizard is PeRfEcT for mobile devices and seems truly designed with the platform in mind, not something I can say about many other developers. The music (and sound design!) is emotional and nostalgic, the art is thorough and detailed and cute, and the levels are clever and fun! One of my favorite iOS games to date. :-)

Took a second to get used to the mechanics, but once I did it was really fun and addictive. Some people seem to dislike that the character is always moving, but to me that adds to the challenge. I mean, all you are doing is pressing 2 directions. The game needs a way to stay fast paced and I think maybe that is why they did that. Retro games were always tough and you would die a lot until you got the rhythm down. But that's what I liked about them. This game has that element to it, along with great retro graphics and 16-bit music. Is this up to par with a Super Nintendo game with the Super Nintendo controller? Of course not. But for a 99-cent iPhone game this is really quite great!

Nice Kirby-like graphics and music. The negative comments are a little extreme. This is a simple little game that has a nice renewed retro feel. Having said that, I do have a few complaints. -The controls aren't awful as some have said but I would prefer just one touch controls to change from direction instead of two side controls. -It gets quite annoying when I lose a life to falling on top of an enemy. I might suggest being able to hurt enemies by hitting their head. -Also, with the enemies that need to be hit twice, you can get stuck between it and the wall you have to lose a life. -What are the points for???

I don’t like that the character auto runs once you press a direction. I would rather that he only move while I hold that direction, and stop moving when I lift my finger from the screen. I also would rather have the directional movement contained only on the left side of the screen. It feels unnatural as a traditional gamer to use my right hand to move right. I’d rather use only my left thumb to control both my left and right movement like you would with a traditional game controller. Other than those problems, the game is pretty great. Very charming characters and graphics. Stylistically, the art direction feels very much inspired by Nintendo’s Kirby games. And the gameplay is pretty innovative.

Anyone who remembers classics like Bubble Bobble or Rod-Land will enjoy the nostalgic rush this game provides. With its cute graphics and cheery music, it's hard not to be charmed by the whole production. The only area of disappointment concerns the auto-run control scheme, which some gamers are bound not to like despite that they work well within the limitations of the touch screen. I believe they add a nice element of technique and challenge to the proceedings once the initial awkwardness is overcome, but some alternate control options would still be appreciated. Otherwise, this title is well worth the price.