Rush Hour

Rush Hour clones are nothing new to the Android Market... from the glitchy Parking Droid to some basic freebies this genre is covered, or so I thought. I'm a fan of these games owning the Rush Hour board game and having a few of the clones on my Droid. Initially I hadn't planned to cover this one because it wasn't anything new, but author Mark Mainwood emailed me about it (he also wrote one of the Asteroids clones on the Android) and so I purchased a copy. Actually it's an odd story in that he's been the first author nice enough to send me a copy of the game, but I decided that one of the themes of this blog is that I don't get any special treatment that might taint my reviews and thus I went ahead and purchased it anyways prior to playing/reviewing it. I'm glad I did...

If you know how to play the game then skip this paragraph. If you don't here's a recap: There's a 6x6 grid (the parking lot) filled with cars (coveing 2 spots) and trucks (covering 3 spots). You want to be able to drive the red car straight our of the parking lot. Vehicles can only move in a line forward/backwards based on the direction they face. You need to move the cars around until the red car can get out (move it next to the red space on the board's perimeter).

The first thing that is great about this version is the 2500 puzzles broken evenly into four difficultly levels. That means if you spend a minute on each puzzle (and trust me... the hard one's will generally take longer than a minute) then you've got almost two days worth of continuous play here. That's a LOT of puzzles. But that's not all... each puzzle also include the best possible 'score' which is the total number of spaces that you move things. So once you complete a puzzle the game then tells you that there's a better way and it's back to the drawing board... at least if you're a perfectionist it is.

The graphics are nice and bright just like the Rush Hour board game and when you solve a puzzle it plays one musical score and if you solve it optimally there's another tune that it plays. The controls are a simple touching / dragging of the cars/trucks. At first I had a bit of difficulty with moving the vehicles as I was touch dragging a bit too fast, but the game has a little dingy sound when you connect with a car and slowing down a bit solved the problem perfectly. Another nice thing this game does is it lets you play ANY puzzle you want right away... no more working through countless easy puzzles to get to some hard ones.

Finally, I figured that with this being the official Think Fun endorsed game that it would cost $4-$5... nope... it's only $2. Move over Parking Droid... there's a new king of the Rush Hour hill and not surprisingly it's Rush Hour itself! This is a game I don't hesitate to recommend.