Surprizingly fun.

As you might expect from the title, Crazy Penguin Catapult involves penguins, catapults and has a sprinkling of craziness. The basic storyline of the game is that a group of polar bears have kidnapped some penguins, and you control a troop of penguins trying to get them back. And what would be the best way of doing that? That's right, catapulting your penguins towards the evil polar bears. Although the storyline probably isn't the reason to buy the game, so I'll move onto the gameplay.

You start out the game looking at a map. The map exists solely to navigate between levels.

You move by dragging your finger off the iPhone screen towards the next level, and your penguin will walk to the level. You then tap the screen to enter the level. I've had a bit of trouble with the touch controls, Occasionally when I'm trying to move, it'll enter the current level, but this is only a minor annoyance, since it's easy enough to back out from the level.

So, once you go into a game you start off with a queue of 6 penguins waiting above a large catapulting device, being controlled by another penguin. The first penguin in the

queue will swing down towards the catapult on a rope, and you must tap on the screen to send them flying out of a small gap in the wall. The skill is in the timing, the position of the penguin in the swing decides the angle the penguin travels at, and whether or not he'll go through the gap or not. You do this to all 6 of them before moving onto the next step.

Next, you go to a new screen, where one of your penguins is flying over an environment, which is often weirdly shaped, and contains ice blocks and most importantly polar bears. The aim is to kill all the polar bears by hitting them with your penguins. Tap the screen to send the penguin into a fall. He will bounce when hitting objects a few times before falling off the screen. Hitting ice will

crack it, until eventually the ice will break, allowing you to enter new sections of the area. You then do this with the other penguins in an attempt to kill as many of the polar bears as possible. Some levels also contain switches which open trap doors, which add to the gameplay.There are also bonus levels, which inolve using the catapult to fling penguins into collectables, the aim being to collect as many as possible with the number of penguins.

At the end of a level (either when all your penguins have been used, or you have killed

all the polar bears) you will be rewarded with stars, either one, two or three, depending on the number of bears you killed. After a set number of stars have been gained you get an upgrade. These can vary from more penguins, to extra powers which can aide you in future levels (or in past levels if you wish to attempt to gain more stars on those). Eventually you reach a boss level, which features only one polar bear, but it takes multiple hits to kill him, and he moves every time you hit him.


There is an alternate control scheme, using the iPhones motion sensing capabilities. Unfortunately, this is very gimmicky and largely pointless. I found myself using it once, before going back to using the touch screen.

The level design is pretty decent. There is a decent amount of variety, which is impressive considering the limited elements in the game. It kept me entertained thought the whole game. It's a surprisingly fun little game. The only problem is the length. It is extremely short. There are only 3 boss battles, with a handful of levels leading up to each boss, with about a third of the levels available on the free version, so the $4.99/£2.99 price tag is hard to justify, but its good for short bus/train journeys, or for bored periods at work, but there are cheaper ways of doing this on the iPhone.

So, basically, it's a fun little time waster, but there are cheaper, longer fun little time wasters on the iPhone.