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Review: Super Crate Box

Heyooo, time again for me to write another game review instead of actually making games! This installment will cover the “underground” PC hit with the most redundant/nonsensical name ever, Super Crate Box. Super Crate Box (hereafter, SCB) was released a year ago to critical acclaim by Dutch developers Vlambeer. Unfortunately, the first release was Windows-only, so I never actually tried it out (although there’s a Mac version now). Fortunately, Vlambeer decided to cash in a bit on the success of the freeware PC release by porting the game to iOS. So, how is it?

Well, SCB is a single-screen shooting game. The goal, as the name of the game might imply, is to collect “crates.” Nabbing a crate will increase your score by 1. Hey, it’s not quite that easy! To prevent you from becoming a crate-collecting master, baddies stream down from an opening in the ceiling (I don’t know how they got there). You can shoot or avoid the enemies, but if an enemy makes it to the bottom of the screen, it falls into a fire pit. Naturally, this enrages and teleports it back to the top of the screen, where it becomes even harder to deal with. Fortunately, every time you collect a crate, you get a different weapon to help eliminate the hordes of baddies.

Seems simple? Deceptively so. The fun of the game is the balance between killing enemies and collecting crates. While each crate gives a weapon that is better than the pistol you start with, some weapons are certified lemons. The disc gun, for example, will chop baddies in half, but it also ricochets and can slice you in half as well. Dual pistols just means that you can shoot underpowered bullets both left and right. Mines take a second to arm, which doesn’t help when there are enemies right on top of you. An average game means getting a good weapon (such as the grenade launcher) and clearing the screen, then picking up as many crates as you can until another good weapon appears.

SCB uses virtual “buttons” to control the action, and while physical buttons will always be better for playing games, Vlambeer has managed to make the controls not quite as painful as other iOS games. This is because the hit-detection area of each button is much larger than depicted on screen, so even if your fingers move around in the heat of battle, you’ll still usually be able to control the game. Every once in a while I’ll experience a “cheap” death, where my fingers migrated off the buttons, but most of the time my character bites it because I’m too greedy for crates.

The verdict is in, and that verdict is: get it. It isn’t too often that a “simple” game such as SCB provides such a level of addictiveness. And, as always, for $1, you can’t go wrong on price.

★★★★★ — Super Crate Box - Vlambeer

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