Sonic the Sketchhog is part of a free app for the iPhone that celebrates Sonic’s 20th anniversary and while the game itself is completely free, it’s not a reason to give it a good look and find out whether or not this Sonic game is worth your time! Hit the jump to read on…
Sonic the Sketchhog is pretty much the most adorable Sonic game ever conceived by a human mind and is a lot of fun to play. The graphics try to emulate the style of sketches and succeeds at it quite well. While the game lacks any colours and animations are scarce and basic, the visuals have an unique charm to them and really deliver. Sonic looks cute, the two enemy types there are in the game look adorable too and that’s pretty much it in the visual department. No backgrounds are to found here, only platforms, spikes and the occasional bridge. Everything is basic, but charming. Same actually goes for the music: It takes the nostalgic tune we all know and care about and turns it into a wind-up music-box version. It’s so adorable, you’ll want to hug your iPhone!
Gameplay also happens to be basic, but fun. The one level the game has seems to be endless and you rack up points by getting as far as possible. At the end you can even tweet your Highscore! Sonic runs on his own at a constant speed and all the player can do is tap the screen in order to make him jump. You can tap a second time for a double jump, but that’s pretty much it. Even though the game is simple, it doesn’t mean it’s easy. After a short time, the difficulty goes up and the level becomes harder and harder. The game also tracks the number of enemies you destroy and the number of rings you collect. Oh, and one basic rule of pretty much any Sonic game has survived in this one: If you get hit while carrying rings, you lose them. Get hit again and it’s game over. As simple as that. If you fall into a pit with spikes, you get restarted at the nearest safe platform, which is a great gesture in order to prevent frustration. Still, you need to get rings as fast as possible, if you want to survive.
While there isn’t much variety to be found here, this game is everything it sets out to be: A simple nostalgia driven homage to the blue hedgehog, that is always great in short bursts. It fits that purpose in an admirable way and for that, I give it an almost perfect score!
Final Score: A
if only i had an iphone…
Wow a good and free Appstore App by Sega, I thought this day would never come.