Orange you glad the ship didn’t self-destruct?

Fibble: Flick ‘n’ Roll review

By Angela Espinoza, Arts Editor

4/5

[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou may be surprised to learn that Crytek, the company behind Far Cry (2004) and the Crysis series, has recently tried their hand at iOS games. Even more surprising is that their first game is a colourful, family-friendly puzzle called Fibble: Flick ‘n’ Roll (released March 29).

In Fibble, you take on the role of the bouncy, orange titular alien. Fibble and his four pals have crash-landed into someone’s house, and now it’s up to the supremely little guy to reunite the gang and get out of there. Through a series of 30 levels, dispersed between four chapters, you charge up and zoom through obstacle courses with the help of your space-age buds.

The graphics in this game are absolutely gorgeous, with the beginning of each chapter featuring an animated cut scene up to console standards. As you progress, each puzzle gets more intricate, from simply launching in straight lines to maneuvering through multi-layered mazes. Points are either spared or lost as you place your talented group on the game board to move you along. Each character has a special ability (e.g. “Docto” can switch your direction, “Byte” operates as a spring), and certain levels will be designed so that you can either go without using them or are highly dependent on them.

While a great deal of time has clearly been spent on the design and presentation, Fibble is a very quick game to beat, even by iOS standards, clocking in at roughly an hour of play time. Fibble is definitely one to own, but wait for the $1.99 price tag to go on sale (especially if you own an iPad, in which case it’s $4.99—ouch!).