Recover The Missing Hat And Attend The Rites In Little Tribes
Little Tribes ($0.99) by Huazd Tech is a game made up of three different mini games where you will engage in running, jumping, and flying to level up and earn rewards.
The first thing that I noticed when I opened Little Tribes is that the game is not iPhone 5 optimized. The app description claims that the game is “iPhone 5 compatible,” which is true, but that does not equate to full screen.
Little Tribes has cute, cartoonish graphics with fun characters, but that’s about all that I can compliment when it comes to this game.
The idea is that you play as a little red spiky haired guy that’s a part of a tribe. It’s time for his rite to become an adult, but he’s had his magical hat that he needs for the ceremony stolen by a bully.
You need to help him get the hat back by training to become stronger by completing the same three mini games over and over again.
There’s a running game, a jumping game, a flying game, and a championship round. In each game, you try to get as far as possible to earn coins.
In the running game, you must avoid enemies while tapping to jump over obstacles. Two taps executes a double jump, and swiping forward is a speed boost. These latter two gestures cost energy, and energy depletes very quickly.
The rapidity of the energy drain means that you never get far before the level ends (since you can’t cross barriers without a double jump and the double jump takes energy), so you’re doing the same repetitive run each time, which gets boring.
The other two games are similar, except in the flying game there are poorly implemented motion controls. There are also enemies in each of these games to avoid, but this does not improve the gameplay.
You do earn coins after every level, which can be used to purchase food items. Food items level up your abilities, but this doesn’t have a noticeable effect on any of the different games. Each one is still ultra short.
Aside from the three mini games, there’s also a championship round. Unfortunately, you don’t actually get to play in the championship race, you just get to watch while all of the characters race each other. It seemed rather pointless.
One final complaint - the pause button is in a terrible place. It’s located on the right side of the screen where it is easy to mistakenly tap.
Little Tribes has potential, because it has great graphics and the mini game theme is decent (see Rayman Run for a game that does it well), but it needs some serious improvement to compete with all of the other amazing apps in the App Store.
