Keep An Eye Out For Your Friends Who Need Help Getting Home In Dolphin Ride
Dolphin Ride ($0.99) by Andy Reeves is a cheery arcade game where you have a dolphin whose only purpose in life is to help his friends get home; the same friends that rescued him from an oil slick. He wants to be helpful, but make no mistake, this is a game of survival.
There aren’t different levels; instead there is one long continuous level, which you must navigate for as long and as far as you can. This is by no means a bad thing, since there’s plenty to challenge you as you swim along.
The dolphin swims ever onwards and there are two things you must watch out for: air and obstacles. As we all know, dolphins are mammals and must breathe air to survive, if your air indicator at the top of the screen reaches zero, your dolphin dies. To avoid this, either take a breath by briefly resurfacing or swim into an air bubble.
To avoid hitting obstacles, tap the screen and the dolphin shoots upward very rapidly. The controls have a good balance to them being quick and responsive, which is really good. Touching any obstacles will end the game.
Air bubbles aren’t the only thing that can help you. There are stars all over the place; swimming into five of them will give you an extra life so that swimming into an obstacle or two isn’t the end of the world anymore.
There’s one more hazard to be aware of and it’s an important one: those friends that were mentioned earlier. You’ll come across a crab, octopus and starfish and you’ve got to get them home. Swim through them to collect them. When you reach their homes, swim through the home to deliver them. Not doing so will stop you in your tracks.
If the game does end, you’ll be sent back to the last checkpoint. This can happen as many times as you like, but there’s a catch. Each time your dolphin dies, his speed is increased slightly. Eventually he’ll be moving so fast, it will be impossible to make any progress at all.
Dolphin ride is a colorful app with upbeat music and is a great pleasure to play. The initial ease of gameplay belies its overall difficulty and replayability. There’s plenty on offer here.
