Going old school seems to be a common trend with games nowadays. The charming 8- or 16-bit artwork, music and play style of the 90s is not only nostalgic fun for those who played the NES and similar game consoles back in the day, but provides a fresh and different experience for the recent generation of gamers.
One iOS game that does a remarkably good job of bringing the retro feel to the masses is Super Crate Box. It’s a frantic, fast-paced, and quite fantastic game that embodies the comeback of arcade age.
Starting Up
From the very beginning, Super Crate Box looks different when compared to other iOS games. They’ve purposefully made the graphics pixelated in a way that replicates the art style of the 90′s games, and it’s beautiful indeed. Sometimes going the simpler route is better, and this is certainly one of those cases.
The Start Screen
The options page allows you to turn the music and sound on or off as well as tweak the controls. There’s also the ability to completely delete all player data if you want a fresh start.
Level Select
The level selection screen is simple and allows you to quickly start a game. There are three different levels, and three different game types. Of these, the latter two of both need to be unlocked as they aren’t available from the start. Depending on which level and game type you select, games ranges from difficult to oh-gosh-this-is-impossible.
Level Selection
Normal mode is hard enough as it is, but they offer two other modes of increasing difficulty: SMFT, which if my opinion is just about twice as hard as normal, and Assault, which is just about close to impossible. But in Super Crate Box, hard isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s good. Real good.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Super Crate Box consists of running around collecting crates while avoiding and destroying all monsters you come across. The twist is this: you don’t gain points from killing baddies, but from collecting crates, and each crate you collect randomly changes the weapon you have, whether for better or worse. In addition, every monster you don’t kill will fall into the flames at the bottom of the screen, which causes that monster to reappear at the top of the screen, enraged. It’ll move twice as fast and is therefore twice as deadly.
Rocket Launcher!
This may sound complicated, but it isn’t; you only need to play a few rounds to get the concept. Simply put, any monster that you don’t kill will result in a much worse monster later on.
Now why is this game so hard? First, touching any monster will kill you, instantly. Game over. Secondly, since the point of the game isn’t killing monsters, you can’t just collect crates until you get a super powerful weapon, such as the minigun, then sit in a corner and blast baddies. Continually collecting crates means continually switching weapons, and some of the weapons are much trickier to use than others.
Game. Over.
The katana allows you to slash enemies in half, but can only be used at close range. The grenade launcher fires a small explosive that can blast apart multiple monsters, but you have to take in account how the grenade will bounce to aim properly. And the all-hated disc gun fires a projectile that will bounce off whatever wall you fire it toward, killing you just as often as it kills enemies.
You’ll certainly have favorites, since some weapons are more pleasant to use than others, but during gameplay you can’t pick and choose; you need to be a master at each and every one of the weapons to survive.
Unlockables
As you play, you’ll often receive a message at the end of a level indicating that you’ve unlocked a new weapon, level or character. If you go to the Stats option on the main menu, you can flip through to the Unlocks page. From here, you can see exactly what you’ve unlocked and what you haven’t.
Lots of unlockable characters and weapons.
As you can see, there are quite a few weapons and character unlocks. From my experience, you can unlock all the weapons in a short time, while the characters take quite a bit longer. By default, characters switch randomly each time you start a game, but if you have a favorite, you can select it from this screen and it’ll be used every game.
The Story Behind Super Crate Box
Splash screen artwork? Yes please!
Super Crate Box is the result of a collaboration between Vlambeer and Halfbot, both of which are brilliant game developers. The game was originally a freeware PC game created by Vlambeer (which you can still download) that then was ported to iOS by Halfbot. However, unlike so many ported games nowadays, the iOS version feels completely native; controls are intuitive, gameplay is smooth and I haven’t come across any bugs in my many sessions of playing.
Conclusion
I can’t get enough of Super Crate Box. Despite having little depth, it’s an amazingly executed game that’s not has its own funky style, but brings in elements from the good old days of Super Mario Bros, Metroid, and Donkey Kong. The controls are tight and familiar, the chip-tune music fits the feel of the game nicely and the overall polish is superb.
Yes, it’s hard as any game you’ll ever play, but in the best way possible.