Traverse is a easy game to get into. It features stylish, neon-cool visuals with simple but enjoyable puzzles and throws in a heck of a lot of content.
It’s a difficult game to explain the core gameplay, but after a few attempts, it becomes second nature. The aim of the game is to use basic physics to collect the maximum number of “orbs” possible. These orbs are placed in a variety of patterns – usually in the shape of some kind of famous landmark, artwork, or animal.
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| The almighty smilie |
Those orbs glow with an awesome neon effect. On the black background, it’s a pleasant modern and minimalist art style. The music suits the action, even if the single track it uses grows old after extended play time.
To collect these orbs, you’ll tap the iPhone screen twice to set up to waypoints. A third tap sends your icon hurtling towards the first way point, collecting orbs along the way. Then the icon will head back to the original starting point, which is now moving towards the second waypoint.
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| Colours everywhere |
It sounds more complex than it is, but in execution, it’s a really simple idea. Of course, like any good puzzler, doing well within that simple idea is challenging. It requires very precise placement of the waypoints to collect all the orbs within each level, and getting 100 per cent on all 120 levels is going to take a great length of time.
Those levels are split across “Puzzle” and “Challenge” modes, but there’s not a great difference between the two. So, while there is a mass of content, there’s not a lot of variety. There’s GameCenter and OpenFeint connectivity to show your friends how superior you are, but otherwise there’s little else in this package.
Not that we’re complaining. As a cheap downloadable title, you’ll have access to a solid, entertaining puzzler that, thanks to the huge number of levels, you’ll keep coming back to in those down times for some time to come.
It’s hardly essential, but it’s a nice, classy and more intelligent alternative to Angry Birds.
