Magic Ring review

Magic Ring, released by EW Medien und Kongresse GmbH, is a fun app available on the iPhone and iPod touch for $0.99. Magic Ring is a game based on careful tilting and patience. Guide a magical floating ring on a path that the ring cannot touch. The path is formed from a wire and you tilt your iDevice to steer the ring. Collect powerups to help reduce the difficulty that will build as you play.

To move, tilt your iDevice left and right. The ring will tilt in that direction and will stay in motion. The path will bend and you have to make sure you don’t touch the path or you will lose some ‘health.’ There are powerups that can help you out too such as autopilot, straightening the path at rough spots, or the shield which prevents damage when you mess up.

Artistically the game looks like paper cut outs in a child’s pop-up book. It’s sharp, colorful, and I actually really do enjoy simplistic backgrounds. It helps make the gameplay elements stand out better. The ring and the path have a nice glossy look and it gels well together. Powerups are relatively easy to remember after a few games.

The gameplay does drag a tad. When you have a game based on precision, you run into balance issues like how fast the ring can go before players get frustrated and how difficult the whole thing is before players stop playing completely. Magic Ring isn’t frustrating to play but it has some hitches. When you hit the line, the ring resets and the game pauses for a bit. It can be disruptive to the overall game and really slows down a slow paced game.

Don’t play this game when you are in a hurry. When you want to relax, reduce stress, and slow down, this is a great app. Don’t take this wrong, but this is a really good game to play when you are about to go to bed. Get some extra visual and mental stimulation without all the explosions, adrenaline rushes, and scary monsters and it’s better than watching TV and staying up till 4am.

Try Magic Ring out and check out a more relaxing game. If you are low in patience however, you might want to avoid this app.

AppSafari Rating: 4.5/5

AppSafari review of Magic Ring was written by Joseph Ho on May 16th, 2011 and categorized under App Store, Games, Physics Based, Puzzler. Page viewed 6106 times, 2 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.