Cronk Review

There are very few people who have wasted time on a computer and haven’t tried a game like Zuma or Puzzle Loop. And this genre is perfect for the mobile play, especially on the great screen and touch control capabilities of the IPhone/iTouch. We’ve seen a few of these games already, and now it’s time to take a look at one of the early entries in the App Store that’s been given an update&#8230- Cronk.

Cronk is a caveman who (for reasons unknown&#8230- I mean this is Prehistoric times after all) he has to stop a chain of brightly colored rocks from rolling down a path, thereby saving some of your tribal villagers. To do this he throws more colored rocks hoping to get more than three of the same color together so that they’ll explode and go away. Man&#8230- cavemen had a rough, confusing time of things.

The throwing takes place by tapping on the screen where you want your stone to go. It’s simple device and one that does away with the aiming arrow that you often see in these types of games. I like the change and it seems to suit the way the touch screen on the device works best.

Graphically the game is sound. The layout of the paths look good and have a nicely textured feel to them. The rocks also look nice and you can change to have them smooth or rough. I would have liked to see something that fit the theme a little more than just “colored stones” &#8211- something a little more “primitive”, perhaps. Also, there is still not much for colorblind players. I was expecting the update to address this better, maybe in the next round.

The Sound is good for the game, but I would suggest listening to your own music if you like music with your rock throwing. I also thought that the sound of the rocks hitting together sounded a lot more like bowling balls hitting together than stones. But the sound is crisp and it works for the game.

The game plays pretty much like you would expect it to play. There aren’t a lot of new innovations added to the game. You’ve got the same sorts of power ups you’ve seen in other games like this (bomb, reverse, pause, etc.). The developers could have really made use of the theme and come up with bonuses that fit it. Just think how cool it would have been to see a Pterodactyl come flying in to snatch some stones, or an Ice Age to freeze things instead of just a “pause”. The game had so much potential with this and instead took the easy way out.

There are two main gripes that I have with this game. Both are fixable, but both are also inexcusable in my opinion.

First, while playing the game you’ve got no way to pause it. (EDIT to pause you simple tap Cronk himself- How I missed that is beyond me Sorry!)

The second goof is that when you’ve got a colored rock that won’t help you your instinct is to just throw it away and get another color. Yeah, that would have been good. But Cronk just keeps giving you the same color. Throw that rock 100 times and you’ll still have a color that won’t help you. This is very, very frustrating. I’m guessing the same person who decided to scrimp on programming a pause button also decided to cut corners here.

These two flaws really bring down what could be a fun game. I’m hoping that they’ll take this into account and put these two features into effect. They’ve done one “major” update and I can’t think that this would be “major”. I’d also love to see some more thematic elements put into place. There had to be some reason the developers wanted to use a caveman&#8230- let us see why.

Fans of this genre will have a good time with the game once things are fixed. . But until then, I really think that if they truly are fans they’ll get tired of throwing the same colored rock over and over again and will start considering throwing their phone instead.

The Good

Tap controls work well
Graphic layout is good
Sound is crisp (though I don’t care for the Bowling Ball sound)

The Bad

Doesn’t change color on “throw aways”
Doesn’t use theme well