Overview
Frenzic is a fast-paced puzzle game that revolves around placing pie pieces in empty circles. You get points for completing a circle, with bonus points for completing a circle with pieces of only one color. You must place each piece before a timer runs out, which lends a sense of urgency to the gameplay. A huge set of supporting features, both in-app and web-based, helps to add all kinds of ways to spend time with the game.
Features
Frenzic is a borderline social platform a la Facebook or Myspace, with
Frenzic.com as the hub. Players can create a profile complete with avatar, bio, friends, comment followers and of course their Frenzic stats. I’ve seen a few games do this (Halo 3 is a great example), but I think this is the first time I’ve encountered it on the iPhone.
- Super-Detailed Leaderboards
Even within the app on your phone, your scores and everyone else’s are displayed in deep detail. Whether looking at your own stats or checking who’s the best player of all time, the amount of information available is likely going to outlive your attention span.
While players who are so inclined can just mash the screen until they lose all their lives, those of us looking for a more strategic experience are taken care of. Trying to maximize my score was more of a challenge than I expected, and I look forward to making progress on those leaderboards.
The first thing Frenzic does is to teach you the basics. It does so quickly and efficiently, getting you in the game before you know it. A help window pops up when you first open the app, taking you through four simple screens of instructions. With that, you’re ready to play.
- Virtually Uninterruptible
I love it when apps make sure that when things happen (because they DO happen), your data is saved. Whether it’s locking your phone, getting a call, backing out to the home screen, or any other interruption, the game handles it elegantly. When you come back to the app, it simply asks if you want to resume your previous game or start a new one.
Breakdown
The Good:
The gameplay itself can certainly be riveting. Placing the pie pieces is relatively fast-paced, so there’s no time to stop and think during a game (well, unless you hit pause). At first, I was mostly moving pieces to wherever there was an open spot. Eventually I was aiming for whole-color circles. Shifting from a mostly reactive playstyle to a strategic one felt like a natural progression for me, and I loved that the learning curve was so smooth and forgiving.
I was more than surprised by what I found once I started exploring the online features of what I thought was just a little puzzler for my phone. Detailed leaderboards and competitive score-tracking are hot right now, and the developers of Frenzic are tuned into that. I don’t know how many people actually use the hub site as a way to communicate with other Frenzic players, but seeing that the devs went to the trouble to create and implement it is impressive.
Frenzic felt like a coherent experience combining the gameplay, the features within the app, and the web-based content. In fact, when I think of Frenzic, a more significant entity than just the puzzle game comes up in my head. Considering my only knowledge of the game a few hours ago was an icon in the app store, this is kind of remarkable.
The Bad:
The blurb in the App Store says that Frenzic “makes Tetris and Bejeweled look like child’s play”. This is somewhat true, but comparing them to those games made me think I was in for a somewhat casual experience. Frenzic is casual for the first minute or so, but after that the timer counts down so quickly that it can actually be somewhat stressful if you’re not in the right frame of mind for it.
Verdict
I would buy it again. The core gameplay alone is worth the purchase, and this app is a rare “finished” product. That along with the enormous feature set means you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck. Fans of puzzlers will eat Frenzic up, and gamers looking for a portable challenge will appreciate the level of strategy involved. Frenzic is more competitive than casual, and more intense than soothing, so I can’t recommend it for casual gamers or those looking for a relaxing way to pass the time.
