Review: MUST.EAT.BIRDS.

Developer: Mediatonic

Publisher: Mediatonic

It’s yet another iPhone/iTouch-based catapult game, but this time, the feathered fowl are your fierce foes.

MUST.EAT.BIRDS. takes place on a picinic field with 2 forks set up with an elastic band to form a makeshift slingshot, and you must fire cute, orange, demented-looking furball monsters with massive heads, no bodies and miniature black holes (with teeth) for mouths to eat all of the birds trying to nom your delicious cake.  Fire up one nomonster (that’s what I’m calling them, it’s not an official name), then fire another one at it, and it’ll nom the old one, making it grow to twice the size.  Do this another couple of times and you’ve got one big-ass om noming machine.

It’s an interesting mechanic, and helps out in the later levels when you’ve got mahoosive big heffers and unhatched birds parachuting down for some nummy battenburg and chocolate sponge.  However, it can be a bit frustrating if you have a limited stock of nomsters and you end up missing your mark by a few millimeters.

You get 4 lives per level (i.e. 4 bits of cake) and you must swallow the birds before they reach the ground and munch on a piece of cake on a plate.  You can munch on falling cake for a points boost, or hit a bomb to clear a few birds in the immediate vicinity.  The nomsters will ricochet off the sides of the screen, and it can be quite thrilling when you’ve got a few on the go, but they’ll disappear off the top of the screen and not come back if they venture far enough. If they hit their head on a bomb, an eggshell (cracking the egg in the process) or crack their noggin on the ground they’ll fall and die and you’ll lose them.  Aww, poor nomsters.

If you om enough of the birds to set up a long chain, not only will you get a sweet multiplier, but a “MAXIMUM BAKE” mode lasting for a few seconds in which you can rack the points right up and your nomsters will ricochet all around, bouncing off and eating everything in sight.

Visually, it’s fantastic; awash with bright colours, the style is reminiscent of Japanese wackyness, and this shines through with the fonts. They are supposed to be Japanese kanji, and they’ve superimposed the English translation onto small black rectangles over the top.  Cheery and colourful is the name of the game in the visuals department, which is good, because it’s nowhere near a serious game, and it doesn’t pretend to be either.

The music direction is very oriental based, in fitting with the pseudo-Japanese theme, upbeat compositions that sound like you’d find in a Geisha house (not that I’d know what the mood music in a Geisha house sounds like…. ahem!).  The birds make chirping sounds, and there’s a weird and feint crunchy squelchy thing going on when you munch on one of the little blighters.  Also, the big mad “MAXIMUM BAKE!” voiceover guy is pretty cool, in the whole “Banzai!” shouty thing over the action.

Overall, it’s a fun little game that’s both frustrating and fun in equal measures with some variety in missions and ammo, but gameplay is essentially the same.  It’s definitely up there with one of the best iPhone games, but it’s pretty one-dimensional, so it’s not perfect, but is massive fun to play for a few minutes.

Mediatonic look to be making a name for themselves, and it’s good to see this UK-based Indie dev working hard to produce the gaming goodness, especially on the portable platforms.  I know they’ve had a history of in-browser games, so it’s nice to see them branching out and embracing the iPhone, and the PSP (their upcoming mini Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess looks SAWEEET, like DoodleJump meets Castlevania via Looney Tunes).