With the success of Angry Birds the App Store saw a slew of games featuring birds of some kind. It’s just the nature of the system, something is popular and people try to cash-in, however a lot of these apps were junk. One game that has recently come about is called Blastix, and while it’s not going ever be the next “Angry Birds”, and does “feature” birds, it may be worth a look.

Blastix is a shooter type game where users slingshot rocks at groups of 3 or more like-species birds who are perched on limbs. The goal is to rack up the highest score possible, and it’s easy as can be to play. It doesn’t have much of a learning curve at all, and is fun for users of any age. It’s like many of the “matching 3 or more” type games that many have played via various online sites for years. I have always been fond of these time-wasters, and I enjoyed this one as well. Actually, I enjoyed it, my wife enjoyed it, my mother enjoyed it, and my kids love it. So it’s allows a pretty wide range of people to have some fun and at a cheap price as well.

There are two modes within the game, Blaster Mode and Bumper Mode. The first mode gets harder as you increase levels. Uses are given a number of targets to get within the time period, and as the user moves up levels the number of birds to shoot increases. It starts out easy but does become rather difficult later on. The second mode focuses on the timer. Users are given a short amount of time to find a target of birds to blast, and hit their target. As the user moves higher in the levels, it will decrease the timer at a faster speed.

The graphics of the game are very well done, actions within the game are smooth, and shooting with the game’s slingshot is nicely accurate, although I would have liked to have seen it done a little differently. Perhaps with a more animated pull-back approach. The music/sounds are appropriate for the game, though the music can become annoying if you play it too much (but this is true of any game with background music I’d say).

Blastix works on the iPad, but is a universal app that will work on the iPhone or iPod Touch…though it really lends itself to the screen size of the iPad in my opinion. As I said, this is not going be the most popular game in the world, it just doesn’t have the “it” factor, not by far. However, it is a nice game for keeping busy waiting at the doctors office, or for kids on a road trip.

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