Spin Up! by nØ Sheet. takes a simplistic-styled gameplay, and jazzes it up with some awesome sci-fi action. You take control of sliding walls to help an daring astronaut as he travels up a perilous journey in an alien spaceship, to save mankind. The game features a “DJ-like” gameplay style, where you can spin parts of the spaceship to allow your astronaut to climb up the ladders, avoiding aliens and deadly spinning fans.  Spin Up! has something unique to it, which isn’t expressed in many other games, that allows players to keep coming back to play it.

While playing, you’ll encounter three power ups: a weapon which kills the aliens, a slow down power up that decreases the rate the ship breaks, and a jetpack, which allows you to fly to a certain height. When the ship starts breaking at a acceleration rate, you’ll be dying for a slow-mo power up. On the journey, you need to help the astronaut kill as many aliens as possible, as well as hijacking computers.

In addition to cool spaceship themes every 100 meters, there are unique characters to be unlocked whenever you rank up. Characters have special abilities, such as starting a certain height, better and unique weapons, and better jetpack. There is a downfall to some characters, which is that they are heavier, meaning the half-broken ladders will last shorter. After every game, you gain a certain amount of experience, which depends on how many monsters you killed and the amount of sabotaged computers. Skipping aliens will result in less exp, but it’s sometimes necessary to survive.

The music is hip-hop and retro-styled, fitting for this fierce, action packed game. The visuals aren’t completely stunning, but they are well polished and well designed.  The main menu is impressive, combining  a flowing “hypno” background with an arcade cabinet with an iPad as the screen. Sounds like an iCade, no? Unfortunately, there is no iCade support, because I don’t think the controls would perfectly fit the game, but it could be done. My idea would be that you can control the layers of the ship by holding a button, and moving the joystick. Holding a different button would change the layer being rotated. There are stats, plus Game Center leaderboards. Overall, this is a wonderful “pick-up-and-play” game fused with a “just-one-more-try” game, a perfect combination. Spin Up! has a simple, yet intuitive gameplay that keeps everyone coming back for more, and I recommend it to everyone with an iPad. Looking forward for iCade support!

More information on Spin Up! is available on their official website. The iOS version can be found on the App Store for iPad for $0.99.

]]> http://mobile.indiegamemag.com/spin-up-review-intense-action-packed-into-a-retro-styled-game/feed/ 0