Save The Sea Creatures From The Evil Dr. Urchin In GlowFish
GlowFish HD ($6.99) by MumboJumbo is a glowing visual feast masquerading as a fun underwater adventure game for your iPad. If you’ve played and enjoyed games like Osmos, then you’ll love what GlowFish has to offer.
The evil Dr. Urchin has kidnapped GlowFish’s lady friend Coralline, and enslaved all the sea creatures in the depths of the sea. It’s your goal to help GlowFish rescue Coralline and free all of his fishy friends from the wicked echinoderm.
The controls for the game are simple and well executed. GlowFish can be controlled from anywhere on the screen, using a directional pad that pops up wherever you place your finger. I chose to use it with my thumb on the side of the screen, but you can play in any way that’s comfortable for you.
Using the directional pad, you swim around through maze-like levels, collecting little fish to deliver home, gathering gold coins, and avoiding enemies like jellyfish.
Two buttons on the bottom right give GlowFish abilities beyond simple swimming. The speed button bestows him with a burst of speed for quickly swimming past foes, while the orbit button will cause his gathered fish to swirl around him, laying waste to enemies in the vicinity and revealing new friends.
If you get lost, there’s a map button that shows the entire level as you explore it, so you can figure out where to go next to look for lost fish. When all of the fish have been collected, they can be delivered to houses to unlock new areas. Eventually, you will find all the fish and be able to enter the whirlpool, which signals the end of a level.
Running into enemies will cause GlowFish to lose track of his fish, and they will need to be picked up again. Walls can have the same effect (when spinning), so it’s best to avoid them. As GlowFish gathers more of his friends, they can swirl around him with a greater radius, to defeat larger enemies. Some of your enemies, like jellyfish, will not turn into friendly fish when hit, and they need to be avoided completely.
Other enemies are much too large to defeat, but they can be attacked by swimming in circles around them to shoot bubbles, which will make them smaller and easier to eliminate.
Later in the game, there are Glow Chums that will help you along the way, and the coins that you gather are used to upgrade them. There are also various fruits to pick up, such as sticky fruit which will slow an enemy, and fortune fruit, which will make GlowFish invincible.
I’m a huge fan of this game. The adorable GlowFish looks like a cross between a jellyfish and a big-eyed, floppy eared puppy. He’s hard to resist, and so are his finned friends, who are equally as cute. The glowing graphics are amazing, the music is soothing, and the gameplay is great thanks to plenty of control customizations.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it, even though it’s a tad on the expensive side, as far as iOS games go. There’s a lot of content here with 50 visually stunning maze-like levels and a ton of achievements to earn. The content, graphics, well-designed gameplay and fun characters make this game a must have. Download it today and join GlowFish in his gorgeous underwater world.
