Octagon - A Minimal Arcade Game with Maximum Challenge Review
PROS
- Complete a stage is immensely satisfying.
- Pulsing, psychadelic colour pallete is kinda cool.
CONS
- Some of the swipe controls are unreliable.
- Forced to memorise levels rather than react.
- Soundtrack is a tad dirgy.
VERDICT
Octagon's tubular gameplay is a little too familiar to excite, and is undermined too often undermined by control issues.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
Octagon is a game of borrowed ideas. It obviously takes its inspiration from titles such as Super Hexagon and Boson X, putting the player a punishing set of reaction-testing trials.
Each stage consists of a tubular maze. You take control of a small octagon, which you must guide through the maze by swiping left and right. If you need to transfer to a platform directly above, then you swipe up to trigger a leap to the ceiling. If you can survive sixty seconds, you will cross the finish line.
Completing a stage is often a monumental achievement. While part of that achievement comes from besting the level itself, the other is a result of overcoming the swipe controls. Though the horizontal controls can usually be relied upon, the gravity reversal gesture is a little temperamental, and you'll frequently roll off a platform you were trying to leap from.
That's where the bigger issue comes in. Superficially, Octagon is a game about reaction. However, everything happens so fast that, rather than relying on speed and agility, you're forced to memorise each level by playing again and again.
While committing routes to memory can be a satisfying challenge on its own, the gesture controls can betray you at inopportune moments, causing you to fall to your death on levels know inside-out. Though tempering the speed and reworking the controls might have diminished the victory rush the game offers, Octagon's memory-based gameplay and imperfect controls render it an acquired taste, one that will probably only appeal to a niche audience.
Screenshots
$1.99
