A lot of mobile games don't make sense. Why are pigs and birds enemies? How many times do you need to keep running through that temple? What's a science lab doing with so many electrical zappers?
Jool, a new iOS game by a German developer named ROSTLAUB, makes the least sense of any mobile game I've played. But it's somehow still kind of awesome.
Let me do my best to describe this game to you. Jool is an endless runner/platformer in which you play as a two-sided bird that is part good, part evil. Kind of like CatDog except 100% avian.
You hop and dash between platforms, collecting totally random objects like diamonds and hearts and coffee cups. There are also some special objects that do strange things. Sometimes you summon monsters who pop up in the back of the screen and play around with proportions Sometimes you pick up Yoda icons that turn you into a magnet so you can collect more of these objects. I still haven't figured out what most of them do.
As you run, platforms will shift and disappear, screwing you around and eventually making you plummet to your doom. When you do take a fall, the game will ask you to flip your phone/tablet around, and suddenly the screen will flip. The other bird thing will take over. If you were good, you'll be evil. If you were evil, you'll be good. And suddenly you're running in the other direction.
If this all sounds confusing, that's because it is. I've spent about an hour playing this trippy platformer, and I still don't really know how it works or what everything does. It's not quite as sublimely smooth as, say, Jetpack Joyride, but Jool is a psychedelic bit of fun nonetheless.
Jool
- Genre: Platformer
- Developer: ROSTLAUB
- Platform: iPhone, iPad
- Price: $.99