I was initially very excited to try Spoing HD, one of the latest titles from the publisher that brought Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. However, after paying $1.99 and spending a few hours with the title, I was left feeling a bit like this app should have more meat on its bones.
At the heart of this title is a platform game that uses the now-familiar slingshot mechanic from Angry Birds to launch your character Spoing through dangerous caverns while collecting gems. After completing each cavern, you’re given a score based on how quickly you completed the course and whether or not your character died along the way. Along with a one, two or three blue dot rating, you are given experience points or XP after each stage. The combination of XP and blue dots will allow you to progress further into the caverns.
The initial stages were relatively easy, with only a few attempts needed to get a perfect score. This was good; quite a good number of blue level dots and XP are required gain access to the next section of caverns.
The downside was that after the first dozen stages, I began to have the sinking feeling that I might get bored with the game before finishing it. Not helping matters is the monochromatic artwork, that tends to make each stage seem barely different than the previous one.
The difficulty does ramp up over time, especially when trying to get a master rating on the stage, but the accompanying story of little Spoing trying to recapture his lost diamonds is not very compelling, and could probably be summed up with a few lines of text at the start of the game.
Overall, I found Spoing HD to be a decent title, and I’m sure that many will find themselves falling for the cute little Spoing character for hours on end. For me, though, the theme that kept recurring was that I want more variety. I can respect a game that follows the principle “less is more,” but in the case of Spoing HD, less is merely OK.
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