You Are The Anti-Katamari In Giant Boulder of Death [Review]

By

Giant Boulder of Deat

I’ve played as a lot of things in my gaming career. I’ve been vampires, I’ve been space marines, and there was even a brief time back in 1993 where I was a walking circle with sunglasses. I’ve never played as a rock, though, so developer PikPok’s latest offering, Giant Boulder of Death, intrigued me right away.

Giant Boulder of Death by PikPok
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: Free

The makers of the Erasure-loving endless runner Robot Unicorn Attack series have moved the camera around to the back to create an “endless roller” of sorts in which players control a giant boulder on a mission of revenge.

The plot — yes, there is one — is that the denizens of the village below the boulder’s mountain have stolen his girlfriend (a slightly smaller boulder with a bow) and used “her” to make a statue of their local military hero. Boulder immediately swears vendetta, freeing himself from the mountaintop on which he is precariously perched and setting off on a rampage of rolling crushery.

It’s pretty much as fun as it sounds.

Boulder has three control schemes available, but the only one I needed was the default: Tilt your device back and forth like a steering wheel to turn, and tap the screen to jump. It also offers a couple more using various hot zones and virtual joysticks, but the motion-plus-tap made the most sense to me.

Everything gives you points, even tiny fences, trees, and dogs.

As the angry rock barrels down the mountain, your goal is to hit everything you can to gain points. And everything gives you points, even tiny fences, trees, and dogs. As you cause more damage, a meter on the left of the screen fills up. This increases your score multiplier, and when it reaches the top, the boulder becomes the Invinciboulder, a powered-up version that can even take out the traps and spikes that would destroy its normal self.

The craggy hero can also collect coins for power-ups and gems for continues, and the game gives you challenges to complete along the way (e.g. “Roll for 3,000 meters in a single run). The challenges are usually fun, but you can only complete one at a time. On several occasions while I was playing, the next goal to open up asked me to do something I’d done on my previous run. Some of the more frustrating tasks involve the collection of randomly spawning items like gems, and I couldn’t unlock the next objective until I’d won that particular lottery several times over.

All told, however, Giant Boulder of Death is a mostly harmless diversion that’ll keep you amused while you’re waiting for a bus or sitting down for a few minutes somewhere. If you catch my meaning.



Giant Boulder of DeathGame Name: : Giant Boulder of Death
The Good: Quick gameplay, good controls, plenty to do.
The Bad: Occasionally unfair objectives; unbelievably annoying music at the end of each round.
The Verdict: It’s an amusing, simple, fun game that’ll work well as a standby, just-have-a-few-minutes-to-fill title. And you play as a boulder, so that’s new.
Buy from: App Store

[rating=game4]

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.