Published by:Gotta Pea LLC
Genre: Physics Based Puzzle
Platform: iOS
Play it if: You want a decent thinking game.
Skip it if: You can’t stand puns or green legumes.
[rating:3.5/5]
Peas may not be everyone’s favorite veggie, but the folks over at Gotta Pea hope to change that. Peakour stars a smooth-talking, pun-wielding pea named PeaG that also happens to be a parkour artist, or in this case, a “peakour” artist. Get it? Good because the puns don’t stop there. This iOS game may draw inspiration from the action-packed sport, but Peakour is actually a decent game that’s great for physics puzzle enthusiasts.
Each level requires you to place various items along PeaG’s path that will help him reach his target. After placing all your items, you then press the play button to let PeaG take over and start his parkour race. You can’t control him, so all you can do is watch and hope your item placement is correct and leads him on the right path to victory. If he fails, you can simply continue fiddling with your items until you get it right. An added challenge is to also collect three bottle caps per stage that unlock additional levels and the ability to create your own puzzles to share with friends.
I found the levels in Peakour to be somewhat difficult at first because you are essentially guessing where PeaG will go before you see him in action. Luckily, you can always check out his skills list to see what he will do when he runs into a wall or a slope, for example, and you can press play before setting any items to see where he will end up going. Do this enough times, and the game losses its difficulty and simply becomes a trial-and-error experience reinforced by the fact that you only lose points the longer you take to get to your target. Because your score only determines your leaderboard standings, you might end up just focusing on getting all the bottle caps and not care about your finish time.
Another thing I noticed is that the game’s controls actually make it difficult to drag items to where you need them to go. I had to tap an item several times to finally grab it, and even then I started thinking I wasn’t actually tapping its required area on the screen. Some items are quite small on the iPhone, so successfully grabbing them is quite a challenge in itself.* Also as you may have noticed earlier, the game is chock-full of pea puns that get annoying each time the loading screen tells you to “Peas Wait” or reminds you that PeaG is a trained peafessional. It’s a game about peas. We get it.
It may be marred by unnecessary jokes and sticky controls, but Peakour manages to give you a solid experience with over 100 levels to play through and the ability to create and share your own stages. It makes for a great pick-up-and play game that’s actually pretty inexpensive for the amount of content you get. Don’t judge Peakour by its looks and frivolous jokes – this smart little game is definitely not for peabrains.
*It’s worth noting that the game’s control issues only happen on the iPhone and that the developers plan to release an update soon.
Hi Blast Magazine,
Thanks for reviewing our game, and we’re glad you mostly enjoyed it! We wanted to let everyone know that we have an update coming to the appstore soon that fixes a lot of the issues everyone has been having with the game. For the iPhone version we are updating the touch sensitivity and radius, as well as giving players a couple of options for how they want to add pieces to the levels. We’re also working on a fix for some memory issues with older iPads, iPhones and iPods.
We’ll also be introducing some pretty cool social features to the create a level, as well as looking into implementing some Game Center stuff as well.
Thanks again for checking out our game and we hope everyone enjoys it!