Hyperspace

Hyperspace from UK based Psychotron is among a handful of games that have achieved some level of popularity in the Android marketplace. It has an over four star rating and looks like a Super Monkeyball clone in space. Let's take a look...

Upon loading the game we're greeted with global leader boards so you can always see how you stack up to the competition despite this being a single player game. That's the first pretty cool thing that sets this game clearly apart from other indie games. The premise of the game is that you'll be rotating and tilting your Android phone to turn and accelerate your ball as it rolls along an obstacle course and you try to finish in record time. Along the way are stars to pick up for bonus points, but navigating to them typically comes at the cost of precious seconds. Then there's other stuff that gets added as you work your way through the game's many levels of play. Things like arrows that speed you up or slow you down, purple square that pop up and push you back, green jump squares, bombs ...etc. The accelerometer based controls are fantastic and soon you realize that going backwards (to pick up a missed star) is as easy as moving forwards. The controls are very comfortable.

The game features five levels of difficulty. I'm on normal (aka level 4) and it's quite challenging. I can't imagine what insane is like. And then one of the difficulty levels is doing the course in reverse. The game also lets you replay any level that you have unlocked as you compete for a better score.

One challenge I had with the game was when a pit or dark spot would appear almost out of nowhere because the action is so intense that I didn't really stand a chance of avoiding it. Losing a life costs more precious time. That said I suspect those with the highest scores are most a factor of having memorized the course in addition to having the needed hand/eye coordination.

A standout aspect of this product is how they've done so many of the things that I think are needed to properly promote a game correctly. They have their own website set up for it, they have nice looking screenshots in the marketplace, and they have a demo version available so you can try before you buy. Oddly enough though they just released another copy of the game for 2.7 euros vs 2.5 euros for 'those that can not find the original in the marketplace'. I didn't have any problem locating both so I went with the cheaper version of the two.

No doubt this is a game that deserves all 4+ stars it has earned in the marketplace and will hopefully earn more sales are the Android platform grows in popularity. As for me, despite not being a huge fan of this style of game, I give it a 5/5 because it's clear that it achieves everything it is intended to and does a quality job of doing so.