There's a point that a shameless rip-off of a more well-known, established game can be not quite shameless enough to be barred from Apple's App Store. And Mooncraft knows the point well.
The game is a shameless rip-off of indie smash hit Minecraft. Utterly shameless. From the world design to your inventory management to your movement to the art style, this is Minecraft, only on the Moon, and it's called Mooncraft, not Minecraft.
If you can get over the blatant intellectual property theft on display, Mooncraft actually serves a very practical purpose, in that it gives iOS gamers a smooth, stable Minecraft-esque experience on their phones or tablet. I mean, instead of building a house you're building a base, and instead of being some guy you're now some astronaut, but the gist of the games are almost identical: forage, build, survive.
Mooncraft even adds a few cool features to the standard Minecraft experience, capitalising on its sci-fi setting to give you immediate access to both a gun and a jetpack, which you can use to fly around the world.
Controls are smooth and responsive, even on the iPhone, and as a cute touch (my standards for cute here being the degree to which other games are stolen from) the on-screen movement buttons have little pictures of Mega-Man on them.
You can get an ad-supported version of Mooncraft for free, or pay for an ad-free version.
Mooncraft [Apple App Store]
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