You’d Better Run Fast To Catch Up In Treasure Tower Sprint

Treasure Tower Sprint ($0.99) by Sava Transmedia Inc. is an arcade platformer game for the iPad that has you collecting coins, slicing up enemies, and making your wishes come true. Don’t be tricked by Djinn the Genie. He offers you the universe, but it comes at a price.

Players are tasked with collecting all of the coins on each level in order to reveal a hidden staircase. Once you’ve found the last coin, you can head for safety. Just don’t get attacked on your way out.

To move around, touch the screen in the direction you want your character to go. The default control uses directional touching. However, you can switch to the virtual joystick in the settings menu. I immediately switched to joystick mode. I found the directional touch controls to be very awkward.

Players run around on each level, collecting coins and fighting bad guys. To fight an enemy, face it head-on. To evade an enemy, just stay out of its path.

You will be able to buy upgrades to help protect you from harm. There are only four different upgrades to choose from, but they increase in cost exponentially every time you buy one. For example, it only cost 50 coins to purchase the first attack upgrade, but cost 500 coins to purchase the second, and then 1,500 to purchase the third.

The price of upgrading your character is not really an issue since you collect a lot of coins on each level. Plus, there are bonus “Peacock” rounds every third level that provides huge coin loot.

There are 70 levels across four different towers and each new level offers challenging enemies that are stronger, more agile, and more difficult to destroy.

The controls on this game are not very good. I mentioned that the touch direction controls were awkward. The virtual joystick is equally irritating. If you lift your finger from the screen and then place it back down, the joystick is supposed to relocate to your new finger position. However, half of the time, when I placed my finger back on the screen, the joystick didn’t show up at all. I had to tap and touch the screen a couple of times to get it to reappear.

Other than the poorly executed controls, this game is fun and easy to play. You don’t have to have great reflexes or fast reaction. It is casual enough to make it simple to pick up and play, but difficult enough to keep you from getting bored. If you like simple, casual arcade games, this one does the job all right.