£1.69
Sprint, Jump, Die, Tweet, Repeat.
It seems Twitter has penetrated every aspect of daily life. If your plugged into the twitterverse you’ve probably heard of people running 1200 metres before crashing into a wall and tumbling to their death. This is the final part of every attempt at Canabalt; a run-em-up game of cartoon, urban hurdles which rewards patience and persistence with an auto-tweet button to show your friends how much free time you clearly have.
Canabalt is a single-level game where you control the jumping of a man sprinting from left-right. Your character is running for his life across rooftops, over sky-cranes and through windows as the city is torn down from beneath his feet by nameless invaders. You spend each level making Morpheus-like leaps between skyscrapers, jumping over crashed missiles and bounding over smaller obstacles. These come in the form of boxes and office chairs, which don’t kill you, but slow your momentum making the larger jumps more difficult, and often impossible.
The birds dont seem to mind the incoming war, but freak out as soon as they see you!
Each attempt creates a new level which begins with a dramatic sprinting-crash through a skyscraper window, and ends in the death of your character with a score in the form of meters ran. As each game lasts little more than half a minute, so it’s a good thing the game has some pretty neat visuals and music. Canabalt loads with a helpful note to wear headphones “for maximum awesome” and it’s pretty accurate. The minimalist graphics look great in motion with smooth animations and some very smart backgrounds that give the game visual depth. All of comes together to create a genuine atmosphere of trepidation and tension.
Canabalt was made in 5 days at Kyles Experimental Gameplay Project, and is free to play online here. It’s the sort of game the iPhone was really made for; short, cheap and infinitely replayable. £1.69 really is a fair price considering how much you’ll go back to play it. Let’s hope the platform allows for more of this experimental nonsense.
Danny O’Dwyer
12K? I can’t even break the thousand mark… It’s a fantastic game though, I especially loved the graphics.
@grey Yea I found that too. Especially when you have the window jumps1
@James 12K?? You beast man!
Hitting some of the smaller objects to slow you down occasionally will help you get further. Some jumps are just impossible if made with too much velocity, you skip off the roof before you can jump or hit above the window. When I was told about that I managed to double my best run distance with my next run.
This game is essentially electronic crack, except its a one off payment, and i can get it anywhere w/e i want.
I dont think ill ever beat my 12k top score, but that doesnt stop me spent hours a day trying
Played the Flash version of this and found it to be quite neat, though was unsure of its lasting appeal. Agreed, though – its price on the App Store seems pretty much spot on.
Idk if im down with paying $3 for a game could play for free online. Thank god for the bargin bin app =$
I’m glad they priced this at a good point, I enjoyed playing the flash version on the PC but a portable version sound like a great time waster.
These are exactly the type of things that should appear on the DSi..
Fun and simple, exactly what i like in an iPhone game, I’ll be picking this up soon.