YouTube link for mobile viewing
Holy moly. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I downloaded this game. I've got this nice, shiny Thrive to check out tablet apps on, and this was featured, so I figured "Why not?" Lemme tell ya, as far as Android games go, one of the best decisions I could have made.
In Spirit (HD optional), you control this little ghost-looking guy, presumably a spirit via touch. He's a deceptively powerful little guy, creating black holes/vortexes/scary holes that swallow stuff whenever he makes two points of his movement trail touch. This is the key to your victory.
The reason he can make these portals is out of sheer defense, because there's shapes (yes, shapes) of various colors and abilities that are out to hurt you. One touch, boom, you're done. It feels very Geometry Wars in terms of aesthetic, but fortunately, the gameplay differs.
What I noticed in my time with Spirit is that the levels are seemingly random. One level, I faced these terrifying, red triangles that came at you like a booby trap from an Indiana Jones movie. That same level (the next time I played) had green laser shapes shooting, you guessed it, lasers at me. That was pretty refreshing, because it keeps working through the lower levels from getting stale.
There's also three modes of gameplay. There's Classic, Extreme, and Pulse. Classic is just what you'd expect: Good, ol' fashioned shape-destroying via scary portal. Extreme ups the ante, sending more deadly shapes your way. Move quick, or your Spirit goes bye-bye.
Pulse takes your normal system of gameplay and turns it on its head. Instead of being able to create portal by making circles, you need to fly into the circle pulse orbs that spawn. Hit one and you get a nice portal for a little bit. In the mean time, baddies of all color and variety are teleporting in, and it can get pretty hectic really quickly. It's incredibly challenging and definitely my favorite way to play.
Spirit is an awesome game, and I can tell why it did so well on iOS. What's really cool for us Android users is that if you buy Spirit, you get both the phone and tablet version with one purchase, so you can install on any device you have and you'll be able to play. Spirit is $1.30, and it's not priced unfairly.
Download links are after the break.
Reader comments
Android Game Review: Spirit HD
This was a pretty poor review for this game, the game deserves better. You missed out that you can control the Spirit from anywhere onscreen so your fingers aren't in the way. The Game modes are Normal, Extreme, and Pulse.
Game modes:
Classic: You draw portals around the enemies with your finger to suck them away - normal difficulty.
Extreme: same as Classic mode but a lot more extreme in difficulty.
Pulse: You fly into pulsing beacons to create the worm holes/portal, the more purple the pulse the larger the worm hole will be.
The game will rotate to ANY which way up the device is, so play in what ever orientation you like and which ever way round the device for you is most comfortable to play this game.
Online scoreboard is coming in the future and the developer is a great guy, chat with him on facebook.
This game has gorgeous graphics, great game play with a challenging control style to try to master. Highly recommended!
Pulse takes your normal system of gameplay and turns it on its head. Instead of being able to create portal by making circles, you need to fly into the circle pulse orbs that spawn. Hit one and you get a nice portal for a little bit. In the mean time, baddies of all color and variety are teleporting in, and it can get pretty hectic really quickly. It's incredibly challenging and definitely my favorite way to play."I'm sorry JonJJon (My name's Jon, too), but I fail to see how your comment provides any further information when compared to the posted review. The only sentence that could even possibly be considered at all would be the one about your finger not getting in the way of the view while controlling the game, which, although maybe not really mentioned in the written review, is pretty damn obvious from the video of the game posted within the review. Also, your utter amazement at how the orientation changes between portrait and landscape is kind of funny. Absolutely everything else you wrote is mentioned in the review, I'm sorry to say... :-\ might need to put your glasses on next time you try to 1-up the editors, man.
Also recommend this game defiantly for the price. It's a nice challenging little game to play whenever you want to waste sometime.
The developer has another game called Mixt which is also awesome, but more of an action puzzle game.