Thread: Whale Trail

The developers at us two have unleashedtheir first full-fledged entry into the gaming category on the AppStore in the form of Whale Trail. Bringing the simple mechanics fromthe famous cave-flying genre and wrapping them up in gobs oftop-notch style and presentation, Whale Trail offers an experiencethat is practically as nothing else presently available on the iOSplatform.


We brought a pretty extensive feel atthe ins and outs of Whale Trail throughout our hands-on preview fromearlier this month, thus be certain to afford that a feel for as wellmore details. But to reiterate, Whale Trail employs cave-flyingmechanics, where touching the display causes protagonist Willow theWhale to rise into the sky, and allowing go drops him down. You mustapply this to ignore the evil dark clouds in the sky, which will justincrease in numbers the farther you travel.


Keeping you afloat is your magicalrainbow trail that flows from behind Willow. Your trail is constantlyrunning out, but you can hold it energized by gathering the manycolorful lines of bubbles that are laid out in your path in the sky.The dark clouds will cause your trail to disappear at a rapid ratelike considerable, and an errant turn into a group of clouds can endyour run rather suddenly if you are not careful.

Adding few complexity to the prettybasic cave flying is a multiplier system tied into the scoring.Gathering bubbles will fill a meter that increases your multiplierwhich in turn exponentially increases the points earned by picking upbubbles. Running into a cloud will drop this multiplier down a level,forcing you to refill the meter to get it back to where it was andaffording you till another reason to ignore the clouds.


Other game play components have theability to do a loop the loop, which can be requirement to follow thetrail of bubbles, but can as well completely throw off your beat; andboost swirls, which will propel your forward in a rapid burst and canacquire you higher into the sky to collect out of the way rewards,but can even create Willow more difficult to control.


Eventually, stars can be collectedalong your journey and acquiring sufficient of them will send Willowinto a state of temporary invincibility. Throughout this time, alarge invisible aura surrounds Willow which will grab bubbles as wellif he is not touching them, making it much simpler to catch them all.Even, you can blast straight via clouds although invincible, andthese give off a huge point bonus. A spell of invincibility coupledwith a particularly high multiplier is key to earning the type ofhuge scores that will create you stand out on the Game Center leaderboards.


The game play in Whale Trail issimple-minded but with subtle strategies, and really nails the typeof hooks that keep you wanting to play over and over again to improveboth your skills and your score. About the only thing I do not likeis that a run can bring a fairly long time to complete, and thedifficulty ramps up a bit too slowly. These are easy things toforgive, but some sort of quick play option that throws you rightinto the heat of the later parts of the game might be a neataddition.


But besides being as a freaky LSD trip,Whale Trail is even extreme endearing. It is the sort of game thatonly creates you happy when you play it, as well if you can notexplain why. Willow is adorable like a main character, and you detectyourself rooting for him to succeed, and attempting additional hardto igno clouds so that he does not acquire zapped by them. Theexcellent folky soundtrack complements the visuals perfectly, and alljust arrives together as a cohesive experience.


Whale Trail comprises everything thecomponents of a hit iOS game – colorful visuals, catchy music, acute main character, and game play that is easy for anyone to pick upbut hard to master. But somehow, it handles to not look forced orcontrived, and instead sticks out as something wholly unique fromanything else out there. It is an experience as much as it is a fungame to play, and for the low price of entry you should not hesitateto turn on, tune in, and drop out to Whale Trail.