Twisted Paths is one of those games you fall in love on first sight and after playing it for a couple of hours– you fall in love with it even more.

It is a well thought out game that has all the elements of a great game: a solid gameplay, quality controls, good visuals, nice music and a couple of twists
which will keep you interested for a long time. To say the least – Twisted Paths is a great game.

This is a 2D arcade platformer, developed and published by Skakac Software for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

The premise of the game is simple: your goal is to guide a small white dot through a series of obstacles as long as you can. The dot will move horizontally, from left to right, until you press the single control movement button. Pressing that button changes the direction of the dot diagonally. First press, and the dot goes up diagonally, second press is down, third is up again, you get the picture.

Guiding the dot through obstacles means you need patience and good reflexes because while some of them are simple and static, others move around the field or rotate.

Neon is the way

When having such a simple game design, it’s easy to mess up the visuals and have the entire game collapse. The game is centered around a simple dot, which the player puts the majority of his focus on, so having too graphics can draw his attention away and he’ll end up dropping the game altogether. Twisted Paths makes no such mistake and creates beautiful, simple graphics – with a touch of pure class.

As you progress through the game, the surroundings will change colour almost insensibly. The colour types are mild, with a ‘neon glow’ feel to it, without drawing too much attention to it or being agonizingly bright to the eye. It’s a great final touch to an already solid design.

But that’s not the only detail I spotted that separates this game from the others. A lot of thought has been invested in the music, as well.

There are a lot of games with short ‘rounds’, where a player makes a mistake early in the round and is forced to start all over again – think of Eskimo Fishing.

What makes these games additionally annoying is the music, which is restarted together with the round. Sometimes you’ll just end up replaying the first ten seconds of the music background for hours, just adding to the frustration.

Twisted Paths has a cool, Daft Punk style background music which plays on even if you lose. It creates the feeling that even though you lost and have to start over again, you’re not really starting over again.

Twisting and turning

There is another detail worth mentioning. I’ve seen, more often than not, games similar to this one get published without any extras – power ups, boosts, bonuses, anything that spices the game up. It’s a shame because simple, straightforward games need that little ‘extra’ something, otherwise they get really boring, very fast.

Twisted Paths (again) makes no such mistake, and offers a range of boosts and power ups to add another layer to the game and it does it with great style.

While moving through the game, you can collect coin like fragments, which can be traded in the shop later. The shop offers three power ups: Magnet, which draws all nearby fragments to you without you actually needing to pick them up, Ghost – to let you walk through obstacles for a few seconds, and Shield which serves as an extra life, in case you hit a wall.

I really like this approach – it rewards you for playing the game and motivates you to continue playing, as with power ups you can reach bigger high scores and progress even further. The game links up with your Google+ account and there are two leaderboards: a global one and one for your friends list.

Well done, lad

Twisted Paths is a game that has it all – great gameplay and good controls. It has quality graphics which are accompanied by suiting and pleasant music, and various power ups and boosts are the proper icing on the cake.

While reviewing, I was trying my best to analyse every aspect of the game and looked for any areas it could be improved. Honestly, after a couple of hours spent with the game, I can’t think of anything.

Twisted Paths is a well built, finished and polished product that has everything it takes to become great. It’s a perfect mobile game.

The post Twisted Paths is the perfect mobile game appeared first on SOOMLA.