Today’s game is Spectrum Sprint by Ludibrium, a platform runner. Overall Score: 2.5 / 5
Spectrum sprint is a platformer with a small twist (read: this ain’t mario): you have to choose the color of the runner, and only platforms of the same color are solid to you. If you are green, and you fall on a platform that’s blue, you will just fall through. (So don’t jump onto an icy platform when you are green with envy.. I digress.) As you keep playing, your speed increases, which makes the game challenging.
The idea is simple, which makes the game readily accessible to people. There are no powerups… but there are some coins you can grab along the way. The coins do.. er.. nothing. (Given the inflation, this is understandable. I guess.) I could not find what good they were. The game progresses horizontally, and the platforms appear sometimes above you and sometimes below you… except when they appear below you they are obscured behind the advertising.
Spectrum sprint gameplay screen. The Orange man jumpeth onto an orange platform.
I found that the jump button was a bit hard to touch sometimes, resulting in my character falling to a painful death. From this stems the fact that if your finger slips from the jump button area mid-jump, the character will start falling, and you can’t jump in mid-air, resulting in a sudden unexpected death. Increasing the hit detection area would help.
Spectrum Sprint is fun when the speed increases (like Superman). Though, I felt that the speed did increase quickly to a fast speed, and stayed at that fast speed for a while. Maybe a more gradual increase would make it feel fairer.
While Spectrum sprint is fun to play, the novelty dies of really really quickly. Add to the fact that there are no powerups, that the ad control remains active during gameplay and obscures the lower platforms, and the small hit detection area of the jump button, I give this game a 2.5. I would be willing to revise this score once the game updates, though.
Spectrum Sprint is available free from the Zune Marketplace.
