iDemolished

Back when I was a kid I had a bit of pyromaniac in me. We lived near a forest preserve and it was fun to go gather some dead brush in one of those under the road storm drains and have a little fire... or a big fire. I remember when my brother and I broke one of my Mom's plastic cleaning brushes and the pyro in me (and my brother) came to life. We decided to try and fuse the broken handle back together using the flame from the gas range. It didn't work out... the flame turned the green plastic and nice, dark black and we suspected that Mom might notice so we trashed it. And then she found it. Good times!

So who can resist a step up to a game like iDemolished? No more matches... on to the high explosives! In iDemolished it's your job to bring down old buildings by cleverly placing different types of explosives along the frame of the structure. The game has a nice three part tutorial to explain all of the controls and they're pretty simple. There's a selector for the type of explosive and in the early going all you have is basic dynamite. Then you can click to place or remove explosives. There's a reset button to start over. There's also a zoom in/out slider and you can drag on the sky to adjust your view. And, of course, there's the detonate button.

If it was just a matter of blowing things up that would get boring pretty fast, but in this game it matters in which order you place your explosives. You can even set delays. And you can tilt your device to gain some benefit from gravitational forces. On each level you have a certain amount of cash to use which limits the amount of bombs you can purchase, and different types of bombs cost different amounts of money.

So how is success measured? Essentially there's a height line drawn across the screen that appears when you detonate your explosives. If all pieces of the imploded building are below this line then you've succeeded and can move on... otherwise it's a do over. The further below this line the more successful you have been in leveling the structure and you earn medals based on this success. Unfortunately you are forced to work through each level to get to the end of the game's 60 levels. And from what I can see (you can look... you just can't touch) the end buildings such as the stadium look interesting. In the game's defense there is the aspect of acquiring more munitions along the way to maybe that's why they don't let you jump right to the end.

The game plays well and is heavily reliant on its physics engine. The graphics are good and even enhanced on devices that support it such as my Droid. There's not much to talk about regarding audio. And really... the controls are just clicking on various areas of the touch screen so not much to say there. The physics engine does a good job of collapsing structures.

My overall feeling for this game is that it isn't so much about the challenge... I haven't really felt that it's "hard" even playing on the highest of the three difficulty levels. It's more about the fun of blowing stuff up and that's surprisingly addictive. At present I don't really feel like I'm being too strategic in the placement of my explosives and it almost seems like trial and error when I fail. Perhaps in time that will change and I'll start gathering the nuances of building demolition. In summary, I'd give this a 4 out of 5... it's good and perhaps very good. It's just not great, but it is a keeper for me. Fortunately there's a free trial of the game available too and a video (below) to help you decide if this sounds like it's for you.