Review: Land-a-Panda: Fun With Physics!
by Allan Curtis
March 22, 2011
Overview
Land-A-Panda HD is a cute, panda based puzzle game from Big Pixel studios were you use cannons, boxes and other contraptions to reunite Yang Gaung with his lost love.
Features
Land-A-Panda HD features dozens of levels, great cartoony graphics, lots of replay value and Game Center support for both online scores and achievements.
The Good
Land-A-Panda is great example of the type of odd games you can find on iOS. Players indirectly control Yang Gaung, a love-struck panda. It’s your job to get him to Tain Tain, his girlfriend who is trapped on a platform.
To get him there, you use some conveniently floating panda-seeking cannons. While some simply fire Yang when you tap them, different types of cannons are added as you work your way thought the levels. Some cannons rotate and move, making it far harder to line up your shots.
Land-A-Panda’s levels are, for the most part, quite simple, and it only takes a few seconds of thought and some deft tapping to finish them. The game throws a spanner into the mix by also adding coins to the levels, which are somewhat like the stars in Cut The Rope. Just like that game, collecting all the coins gives you a better level rating and an achievement if you collect them all for each level. This gives the game a nice burst of longevity and forces you to think up two solutions to the level, as you often need to complete them in a different way to get the coins. Its great fun to work out how to finish each level, and the game is very addictive.
Land-A-Panda features 4 worlds with 20 levels each, so it will take you a good long time to work though the game, even if you don’t get stuck few times, which you assuredly will.
Land-A-Panda looks great. It has a very colorful and distinct cartoony style, with lots of bright colors, simple soft shapes and neat effects. The pandas themselves are very cute, and small details, give the game a highly polished feel, and it's obvious that much time was spent on the graphics.
Sound-wise, the game is similarly well done. Each sound is clear and realistic and the pandas sound very cute. The only downside is that there is only one music track. A different one for each world would have been nice.
The Bad
There is nothing really bad about Land-A-Panda. It is a fun, well executed game.
Conclusion
Land-A-Panda HD is an excellent game that anyone with an iPad should own. It packs tons of gameplay into a very cheap package and has great graphics and sound to match. The promise of more levels is also a great sign that this game can only get better. Highly recommended!
