Review: SteamBirds - Turn Based Aerial Attack
by Staff Writer
November 12, 2010
Overview
The makers of Canabalt are at it again porting a flash title to iOS devices. This time it's Steambirds which is an aerial combat turn based strategy game. You direct your planes' path a few inches at a time, and your enemies do the same as you try to shoot them out of the sky.
Features
There are 21 levels of strategic action with each level a battle in time. Your planes and enemy planes have special abilities that you can use in a single turn such as poison gas, missiles, speed boost, shield, and reverse. More recent generation devices benefit from better graphics and animations especially compared to the flash version.
The Good
The game offers turn based strategy in a very simple package to open up the genre to less experienced players. All you do is position your planes path to cause damage to enemies while trying to avoid damage. You can change your strategy often as the game plays for a few seconds, and then you and your enemy can realign the paths and special abilities of the planes.
The later levels with the new special abilities, and more challenging enemies offer real challenge, but also give you plenty of power. Earlier levels seem more like a battle of attrition with the basic weaponry at your disposal, and it taking so long to destroy larger enemies. The combos are great to rack up, but the game isn't score based so it seems irrelevant.
The Bad
The game isn't the most feature rich, and really does have a lack of content. You can breeze through the 21 included levels, and then there is nothing else to do. There is no online component or any other possible feature to replay any of the levels that didn’t take long in the first place.
The gameplay itself is repetitive as there aren’t that many variations from level to level. There isn't a whole lot of strategy needed just to beat the levels, but if you do want to get perfect on every level that's another story. When your planes are going along sometimes they don't fire when they look like they're lined up on an enemy, and occasionally your planes don't have a full range of movement with no indication why.
Both occurrences combine to take away some of the strategy when the game doesn't perform like you expect it should. The gameplay doesn't really challenge or engage you to even want to play through the included 21 levels. The visual and audio department isn't the most deluxe with relatively basic design in both regards.
The Verdict
Steambirds provides real time strategy for more novice players, but the gameplay isn't that engaging. The game is basic in most regards, and just seems simple compared to the current standard in iOS gaming. It's really just mediocre that has some positives and negatives, but nothing to make it stand out.
Steambirds isn't worth it for $0.99 because there are many better ways to spend a buck in the App Store. You can try the free flash version to help you decide as it plays pretty much the same just with mouse controls rather than touch.
