STAMPEDE RAMPAGE: Loveley beasts scaping - First Impression by Urizen

   Apps are at a weird time. It is at that point in life where there is an app for everything. Want to order food? Use an app. Check the weather? There’s an app for that. Learn a new language? Sure! Duolingo can stalk you. It is pretty awesome to think that so much is this easy to access now.

   With all of these apps though, we also have the games.  No longer limited to just Snake, now you can play an ever growing assortment of games on your phone and tablet. There had been a time where mobile gaming was made fun of because it was just Angry Birds and Candy Crush style games, but now there are phones run games we play at home on consoles. You can go and play the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games or download and play the more recent battle royal game PubG. It is amazing to see how far things have come in such a short period of time.

   To continue my First Impressions series, I decided to go into the Google Play App store and go to the early access games to try some of these out. The first I am going with is by Tokyo Play and is called “Stampede Rampage: Loveley beasts scaping!” Not quite correctly spelled and not even totally sure what is meant here, but sure. Let’s see how this goes. It has animals and looks cute, might be fun.

   So the game wastes no time throwing you right into things. You are this small stampede of maybe three animals and you have to collect coins and fruit. Seems to be like your typical endless runner. It moves on its own throughout the course while you tap once to jump, hold to jump higher and hold then tap to double jump. As you collect three fruits of the same kind in a row, you unlock more animals to join the stampede.

   Well, seems as if I was wrong, it isn’t an endless runner, it is comprised of levels that you must get to the end of. After the first, you are forced to use your coins to buy this next animal, a zebra. I hate when a game takes you through a tutorial and makes you buy stuff. I just want to save my coins. Also the animal shapes give me Angry Birds mixed with Crossy Road vibes and I wonder if that was intentional.

   After getting the Zebra as your next stampede member, you are taken to a basic menu. You can see your stampede from there and view the animals. It looks as if there are 23 in the game. I wonder how hard it will be to get them, but also what will keep people playing after getting them all. There is also a map that you can view to reveal a bunch of different locations. From the menu, it gives you the option to move to the first real level.

   It looks like as you complete the level, you get purple gems. I’m not sure if that is just based on how well you do or not. One thing I do like is that you have to get the 3 fruit in a row to add to your in level stampede. They will occasionally have another kind of fruit in between two of the same kind, so it makes you have to actively dodge things you should be collecting just to get a completely different thing you need. You have to weigh your options.

  As you fall off or run into obstacles in game, you lose a member of your stampede. I imagine once you run out, it is over and you lose a life. Honestly, the game controls pretty easily and is responsive. Hasn’t been a moment that I’ve tapped and it hasn’t registered. There have been moments where I will collect enough fruit for another animal though, only to have it spawn off the level immediately which isn’t great.

   While level two gave us upper and lower paths to choose from, level three also added moving obstacles. I honestly have lost a few animals from some of the moving blocks, but so far none of the levels have been exactly difficult. Level three also introduced mines. Unfortunately the game never tells you what they are; you just have to figure it out yourself. Safe bet that if it isn’t a fruit, power up or coin, jump. When you have a stampede of eight or more animals though, getting hit isn’t going to do much to bother you. I did receive my first game over. It gives you the option to either pay coins to continue or just restart. Unless the levels get much longer, I don’t see the point of continuing. Also I find myself randomly dying and I don’t know why. Randomly I’ll see an animal get knocked out of my stampede, but I didn’t seem to fall off the level or run into an obstacle. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just missing something. I did miss that the other purple gems seem to be hidden through the level. Saw one in a hard to get spot while going.

   What’s really frustrating is the lack of variety in designs. The level layout changes with each level and does have additions to the format occasionally, but the backgrounds stay the same. So far I’m only on the first map, so maybe if I progress past that, it will change. Unfortunately as of right now, all the background has for me are a bunch of random buildings, and advertisements for what I assume is the developers other game. Constant billboards and blimps advertise this thing. It is frustrating and annoying.

   All in all, I have played ten levels of Stampede Rampage, and it’s fine. The game is pretty cute with some pretty decent designs to the animals, and nice bright colors. The gameplay, while repetitive, is easy enough for most anyone to understand. It certainly needs some improvements and balancing though. Within those first ten levels, they start to throw a lot of obstacles at you at once. One of those things was if you are very experienced with these sorts of games, then maybe it will go fine, but if you are a child looking at a cute animal game then you will have a hard time.

    The backgrounds get very boring to look at after a while, just repeating buildings and the constant advertisements to download the developer’s other game. On top of it all, the game will sometimes either respawn you above a hole or have one of your other animals get caught and fall off as you keep pushing on. Can make it frustrating when you don’t even know what you did wrong.

  Stampede Rampage certainly isn’t a game I can see anyone keeping on their phone for an extended period of time. While fun enough for a bit, there are plenty of other games that have the same formula that just do it better. I’d say unless the full release improves on a lot of the issues, this game is a bit of a dud that even an elephant wouldn’t remember.