Sprinkle has long been a favorite of mine, since the very first time I played the Tegra exclusive version on Android. Despite being a casual game, the attention to detail was fantastic, and the water physics just superb. The good news is that Sprinkle is back with an all new title; Sprinkle Islands. I say all new in the sense that this is a sequel, not a reinvention of the original. It's definitely more of the same, but that's not a bad thing. Not at all. What the developers have done is taken everything that made the original a great game – basically everything – and added to it. There's more interaction in levels, there's more of the levels, generally there's more. Let's take a look.
The graphics in Sprinkle Islands are immediately familiar to anyone who has ever played the original. The same cutesy style has been applied, and everything is bright and colorful. The water physics are just as impressive as they ever were, only now the game is set on an island, there's some rippling sea beneath too. The controls are simplified a touch from the original; now instead of manually moving vertically and changing the angle independent of each other, you move up and down and the angle changes with your height. Some folks might not be so keen on that, but I like it, especially on the iPhone. The original felt too fiddly at times trying to get set up just right, Islands takes some of that away.
The levels in Islands are much larger than in the original game. No longer is your little fire truck rooted to the spot, it moves across the level putting out the flames in a variety of different locations. There's also more interaction from the player with the levels. Platforms to move, drawbridges to spray water at so they drop down for you to drive over them are all here, along with the kind of boulders we saw back in the original. As with before, the challenges get increasingly tougher as you progress, and you need to keep one eye on your water level before it all disappears.
The good
- Looks fantastic as ever
- Water physics still very impressive
- Bigger, more engaging and more challenging levels
The bad
- No complaints
The bottom line
If you ever played the original Sprinkle game, you'll love Islands. If you never played the original, you'll still love it. This is a great example of a casual, pick-up-and-play mobile game that offers enough of a challenge to keep you interested, but doesn't have much of a learning curve at the beginning. Great stuff once again from the folks at Mediocre.
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