Developer: Bankroll Studios
Price: $0.99
Version: 1.0
App Reviewed on: iPhone 4
What would creationists make of a game like Scuttle? Dinosaurs using laser-guided egg-launching bazooka like pool cues to snooker baby dinosaurs into the safety of caverns? It’s certainly an unusual spin on what came before man, but Scuttle is sadly not quite as curious as its premise, although it is a perfectly kosher pool game.
Take the color and curiosity of Scuttle aside, and what you have are slightly odd physics alongside a few interesting spins. It’s the physics which provide disappointment for me. Aiming my dino artillery then drawing back on a pinball-like launcher is simple enough, but translating that into getting the little baby spheres to go where I want them to can feel as disconnected as certain groups’ religious claims. Acute angles don’t come off as they should, and the pseudo-magnetic nature of the cave-like holes screws up as many good shots as bad ones it saves.
On the plus side, although not exactly overwhelming it with weight, are those interesting spins. There are flower patches which when run over boost the balls along, and similarly there are tar patches that stop them dead. Each level has a light maze of obstacles to make shots difficult, but too often it feels like grinding through an underwhelming but niggly mini golf hole. As for the rewards, there are gold, silver, and bronze medals to be won on each level, but each hole has its own specific par, as it were; one hole might reward me with gold for completing it with one shot, but the next with two. That’s actually a neat touch, but were that it went to something more than aesthetics.
Scuttle comes in at minimum price and while it doesn’t match the fun of its premise the issues won’t bother you too much through its 54 levels. There are a plethora of better quick fix games out there, but not that many snooker or pool types. And hey, as far as I’m aware it’s the only prehistoric pool game out there – I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong on that – so that’s got to count for something.