Flip Disc: iPhone/iPod Touch Game Review

Hi everyone Gazmaz from the UK here, Well this week I’m again reviewing a game for your iPod Touch or iPhone.
Flip Disc comes to you from Polar Motion and Chillingo Ltd. Now Polar Motion first developed this game for windows and PocketPC/Windows Mobile, but I won’t let that sway my judgment.

So what is Flip Disc?
“Flip Disc is an innovative game with a fine blend of puzzle and action elements. Rotate the five concentrical discs and take advantage of the special gems in order to form lines of gems of the same color. Sounds easy? Every level the gems will be popping up faster and faster! Conquer the 10-levels journey and become a Flip Disc Master.”

Well that doesn’t sound to bad does it now? So I downloaded the app and opened it up on my Touch. The opening screen is very comic like in appearance and very nice to look at. From here you have choices of New Game, Options, Credits, Instructions, High Scores, Resume Game or Exit.

So what options do we have? Basically at the moment you have 2 Music Volume and Sound Affects Volume. So what does the instructions screen look like? Well you get 11 or 12 straight forward pages on how to play the game. Silly annoyance here, once you go into the instructions you have to page to the end before you can quit, but that is a minor issue of course.

You get 10 levels, each with different background music, so when you press new game you get a count down from 3, 2, 1, Go, and the playing area screen opens up. Across the top you have the level indicator, the lines you have completed and your score. You also have a pause button. Along the bottom a completion bar so you can tell how much of the disc you are currently playing is completed. You also have a box which tells you what color ball is coming next, and the disc and 4 controls. The controls, one on either side, for moving through the discs either closer to the outer rim or into the center, and one either side to rotate your selected disc clockwise or anti-clockwise.

You have 8 outlets from which differing colored balls slowly move to the center of the disc. The aim is to line up the differing colors and when you have all the discs in one line with one color, they scroll down and disappear into the center of the disc and that’s when you gain points.

Now the first time I played this I thought, “wow hang on!” “How does this control those discs?”, “Crikey, they are coming to fast!” “Which way should I go?” “How on earth can you play this game?”

But the trick is not to panic, think ahead, look at the the balls that are coming and learn the four controls. Once I got the hang of these I started to rack up the scores and was able to move onto the faster levels.

My very first impressions of the game was this has no depth and I’ll soon get bored, but to be honest, after a couple of goes, and realizing that I needed to change my strategy, I enjoyed the game much more. It does have some difficulty and you can get a little flustered if you get behind and start getting lots of balls and are unable to clear, but when I started to use the bonus balls that came in the right way, I again found some depth to the game.

One or two small issues. Sometimes I felt that the buttons didn’t react to my tap’s, but they may have been my panicky tapping and annoyance if I didn’t get the ball in the right place. The other small issue is if you want to put your name in for the high scores it is rather annoying having to tap an up and down arrow to get through the alphabet. My name being Gaz means that after the A I’d prefer to go backwards through the alphabet to get to Z but your unable to do so. A small quibble but a quibble all the same.

I liked the style and the graphics. I would have liked the Disc to have been a little bigger and I feel they do have room to do this, but again, that’s a personal preference and doesn’t distract from and enjoyable game. Currently the game costs $0.99 but I believe this is a promotional price.

Tags: flipdisc, game, iphone, ipod touch, polar Motion