Game review: Minigore - iPhone / iPod Touch

The sole aim of this game is to blast the murderous furry creatures coming after you into squishy red messes.

Forget the mini part of its name, Minigore contains plenty of gore. There is lots of blood and killing. Luckily it’s not too stomach-churning for squeamish people like me. In fact, even though they are mean and creepy looking, the little monsters are quite cute in their own vicious way.

In Minigore you play as John Gore, a block-headed little dude who has bravely (or stupidly) decided to wander aimlessly around the shadowy landscape found within the game.

Intent on turning John into their next snack are the hordes of bloodthirsty little hairy beasts whose tempers are as sharp as their teeth.

As John roams around the creatures appear and give chase. If John receives two bites then he’s dead and the furries get to eat him – cue gruesome feeding noises as our hero is devoured in a bloody feast.

To improve his chances of survival, John is armed with a machine gun which has unlimited ammo. Later on there is a shotgun and exploding traps which can be used.

There is also a limited-time power-up which is activated if John collects three four-leafed clovers dropped by creatures. This turns John into a raging bull and he kills furries simply by running into them.

Controlling John is done using the twin-stick method which is becoming commonplace in iPhone/iPod shoot-em-ups. A control pad in the bottom-left corner controls John’s movement and a pad in the bottom-right controls which direction he fires.

I’ve found the controls to be easy to use and generally responsive, save for a few frustrating moments. A couple of times I’ve got my moving and firing muddled up, while on certain other occasions I’ve not been able to move or rotate John as quickly as I would have liked, resulting in a premature removal of limbs from body.

There is nothing to fault Minigore on when it comes to looks. While the concept of Minigore is very similar to many other shooters, the game has a very distinctive, surreal art style and the graphics are superb.

There are areas of the game environment which offer better visibility than others, while there is nice detail such as trees and rocks. One minor complaint is the play area is too small. It doesn’t take much movement to hit the sides.

The music in Minigore is excellent and creates an epic atmosphere during the game. On the other hand the voice effects are pretty lame, with John Gore sounding more like Scooby-Doo than Rambo.

As it stands there is a lot to like about Minigore but with only one mode at present, single-player survival, the game is very shallow.

Many games, Minigore included, sell for ridiculously low prices in the App Store, providing lots of fun for very little money. iPhone/iPod gamers are a lucky, albeit spoilt, bunch to get such tremendous value, so it’s hard to come down too hard on any game for not having much content.

But it’s all relative of course, and when this initial version of Minigore is measured against many other new games on the same platform it falls short.

Minigore suffers from a lack of variety and depth. I’ve probably spent a couple of hours playing it and already the novelty value is wearing off.

Apparently it was a deliberate decision from Minigore developer Mountain Sheep to release the game with a “limited feature set” because people were getting impatient to play it after months of hype.

The company now plans to expand the game on an episodic basis, with new characters and modes being added gradually.

This tactic of putting a half-baked product out isn’t really to my liking, but obviously people were eager to play Minigore as it has already rocketed into the top five paid-for apps. Early sales have clearly vindicated the decision to release the game minus some components.

Popularity is important of course but a game needs substance to be considered a genuine leader in its genre.

When the additional content arrives Minigore has the potential to become one of the stand-out shoot-em-ups on the iPhone/iPod platform. However, in its current form, the best I can say about this unfinished article is that it’s a decent starting point to build from and it will be very interesting to see where it goes next.

Minigore, published by Chillingo, is out now in the iTunes App Store.

Verdict: I’m told the next episode is already in the pipeline, bringing a new character into the game (a lizard called Lizzy from an excellent iPhone game called Sway). This could be an ingenious addition. With regular updates along these lines Minigore could be turned from a good game into a very good game. It has a lot of untapped potential but as it stands it gets a score of 7 out of 10