Pudding Panic review

Pudding Panic is a 99¢ game app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad from Kunst-Stoff GmbH. You play as a small green dessert with eyes and you ride a roller coaster in the most dangerous horror carnival ride ever! Skeletons, demons, zombies, and witches will chase you as you ride around railing system that needs you to alter the turns to guide your giggly gelatin to safety. Sound weird enough yet!? Of course not!

First off, is this thing in the icon and in-game a pudding creature or a Jello creature? It’s green, transparent, and has the classic Jello shape so why is it called pudding?

So the game’s play style is a faster paced trail changing game. You set down track modifiers like left/right turners, straight paths, and your Jello/Pudding will always make right turns unless a left is the option and if a straight path is available, it will always go straight. With the rules established, you can manipulate your track in order to collect coins, which you can spend on a close-range snake bite attack or a speed boosters. You also must collect a golden ticket and sometimes run past red switches to complete levels, all while avoiding skeletons, demons, and witches through 48 levels in 4 different worlds.

Graphically, this is a stunning piece of art. A Tim Burton meets Ren and Stimpy (or for the younger crowds, those close up shots in Sponge Bob) dark exaggerated style. The bosses and enemy designs are both cute and menacing, and I can’t help but make the “Nightmare Before Christmas” reference. This is a spectacular look and feel and I think it was nailed down perfectly. Even your little green friend is cute, despite how incredibly surreal it is to play as a Jello with two giant eyes riding a snake spitting angry roller coaster.

The gameplay in Pudding Panic is challenging due to the need to move the camera to see threats coming as soon as possible while avoiding pretty difficult to evade enemies. Luckily, the health bar is respectable and you can still complete levels with some experimentation. The interface allows for most of the action to be done by your right hand which, if you are good enough, allows your left hand to control the camera for more careful planning, though most of the time, I just turned the auto-track camera on to just follow my Jello.

In all, I really liked the look, the tone the game set, and the monster designs. The gameplay is unique and for this low price Pudding Panic is a great buy.

Here is a video demo of the Pudding Panic app on the iPhone

AppSafari Rating: 5/5

AppSafari review of Pudding Panic was written by Joseph Ho on June 10th, 2011 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Games, Platformer, Strategy. Page viewed 8002 times, 3 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.