I remember skeeball being one of my favorite games at carnivals and Chuck E. Cheese’s alike as a youngster. They seemed like the best way to get tickets and almost made you feel slightly athletic. After all, you were throwing a ball.
The Ramp Champ iPhone app (free) does its best to bring that carnival atmosphere into app form, but it falls short, though not for lack of trying. For a free app, the feature set is fairly robust. You have five different boards to play on, and each board has objectives you can follow if you like. From goals as simple as “knock down all the targets in the first row” to more mysterious goals like “Cultivate the Black Pearl,” you have options if you don’t feel like simply grabbing the best score possible.
Outside of the five boards you’re given at the outset, you can also purchase additional boards for 99 cents a pop. There are another handful available to purchase, which means that for around
$5, you’d have a considerable arsenal of very unique skeeball boards to play on.
The problem is that none of them are all that fun to play. Sure, it’s always enjoyable to see if you can grab the high score in something, but skeeball just isn’t as much fun if you’re playing it by swiping your finger across your iPhone screen. While so many iPhone games focus on games that are either out of the realm of possibility, like a shooting game, or based more on simple physics or puzzle engines, Ramp Champ is simply a unique version of skeeball.
That doesn’t make it awful, and because it’s free, there are worse ways to waste some time. However, there are simply too many other more interesting iPhone app games available to spend much time with this one.
