I’ve long been a fan of puzzle games both on the iPhone and on most other gaming platforms. Vempire instantly appealed to me both in looks and as it was more of a column type game that I enjoy playing. Vempire mixes puzzle elements with item use to try and push out the longevity of the title. Here is a small bit about the game:
Help a young vampire become the emperor of the monster land. Defeat the other monster lords and conquer they land.
VEMPIRE is a puzzle game in which you have to rotate blocks to create rows or columns of 4 of more blocks of the same type. Delete enough blocks before the time runs out to complete a level.
Blocks can be of various types. Some are meaningless blocks; others represent mana energy of different colours or money. Money collected during the game can be spent in the shop to buy new creatures to summon during the game.Doing mana combos the player can summon creatures that will help the player delete the blocks or tackle the big bosses. The game features 6 different creatures.
In the 40 game levels you will be able to unlock artifacts. You will be able to choose which artifacts to equip before tackling a new level. Choose wisely. These artifacts give you various powers, like slowing down time or turning the blocks into mana.
Each game world is owned by a boss monster. This monster will appear every once in a while and will cast a nasty spell against you making the game harder.
The idea is to swap gems and shapes around the tiled board so that you can land them in a row to score points. In Vempire, you rotate blocks of four shapes at one time, when you get four or more of the object aligned you will get the points. Once this happens they vanish and more blocks replace them. The difference with Vempire is that you can buy power-ups that can act as spells whilst you are playing, you can also unlock Artefacts in the game which provide bonuses. Another difference from most games like this is that a boss character appears while you are playing during a round to distract you by flashing on the screen, considering this is a time based title, it does have quite an effect on the gameplay.
The power-ups that you can purchase tend to do one or two different things such as removing rows of blocks or replacing certain shapes with others. To use them though, you need to clear certain mana types, these are different combos. The first part of the combo only stays live for a short amount of time, so you need to get to the 2nd one as quickly as possible. Easy to do during the first few levels, increasingly hard later on in the game.
The artefacts that were mentioned earlier in the review are used for increasing the chances that various Mana types appear. This is all well and good, but making use of an artefact that brings in a different type of mana that doesn’t always appear in a level means that it becomes much harder to match the tiles in a level
There are some niggles in the game, some of which are a little strange. As mentioned, you get money in the game to spend on items, this is fine, but the problem here is that you can only ever get one dollar in the game no matter how many gold bar tiles you line up, so line up four and you will get yourself one dollar, line up six, you will only get one dollar. I would have liked to have seen more money for more gold bars removed.
Graphically the game looks good for what is a basic puzzle game, the background drawings look great as does the UI art. Sound is also decent, though the music does repeat too much, it would be nice to have a bit more variety in that area, especially as this is a game you are likely to play for quite some time.
So overall mixed views, on one hand I enjoyed Vempire a lot during my first few days with it, on the other it became repetitive quite soon after. The overall presentation is good though, and for those who like this type of puzzle game, you will get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
iTunes Download: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=335517748&mt=8
Conclusion
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Fun, cheap, more in-depth than a lot of other iphone puzzlers | Weird dollar decision, can be repetitive |
| Verdict | Needs a Trial! |
| Rating |
