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Escape Velocity : a fun flying survival game

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Escape Velocity Windows Phone

Escape Velocity Windows Phone

Escape Velocity Windows Phone

Escape Velocity. If ever there was a game that has serious, serious potential I think we may have found it. It’s a physics style game set in space. Your objective is to guide your ship through space without causing harm to it.

As stated above the premise of this game is very simple. Survive in your spaceship to the end of the level, or if you’re playing in infinite mode, just see how far you can get. The controls of the game are just as simple as the idea. Drag your thumb up to move your ship up and drag your thumb down to move your ship down.

The trick to this game is avoiding the planets. The idea is that you can use the momentum of the planets to speed along your progress by taking advantage of their gravitational field. You do this by getting as close to the planet as possible without actually touching the planet, kind of like a boomerang effect.

I really do feel that this game has some serious potential but there’s a few things that handicap it. The load times are absolutely unbearable. The game is Mango ready so you can take care of that with loading the game and keeping it running in the background, but sooner or later you’re going to have to load the game, and you’re probably going to pull your hair out when you do it. Yes the game does says that you can get faster load times by purchasing it but I do feel like until those little things are fixed I’m going to wait to drop those dollar bills on it.

[NOTE] Version 1.3 of Escape Velocity is now available that fixes some of the issue we have covered in the review [/NOTE]

Escape Velocity Gameplay Video

Escape Velocity Screenshots

Version Under Review : 1.1

There is a trial version available and the full version is available for $1.49, trial features Ads on level loading screen and level end screen.

Our Rating for Escape Velocity

Rating


Scan this QRcode with Bing vision ( Hit the hardware Search button and click on the small icon that looks like an eye ) on your Phone to download the App to your phone.

Price : $1.49
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  • http://bearisgaming.com Daniel

    Hey Everyone,

    I am the developer of this app. And I am super happy to see that Jace sees the potential in what we tried to do and I would like to explain the level load times issue. When we first released the game we had pretty well instantaneous load times at around 150-200ms but no ads or free version. A developer evangelist at Microsoft saw our app at a dev event and said if we put it out as hybrid free/paid it would probably get way more players. So in order to keep the UI clean in the actual game engine I added a loading screen with an artifically slow load so that we would have time to make an ad impression. I chose 20 seconds as the artificially slow time (hey, I am new at this too and am trying to find a balance) and I put the full version at 2 seconds. This made some sense to me as a regular impression should last 30 seconds before a refresh based on MS’s developer documentation, so I was already short changing them by 10 seconds. Based on this review and other feedback I have received from other players I am going to drop the load screen to roughly 5 seconds for Trial players and reinstate the near instantaneous loads for paid players which will bypass the loading screen entirely. This way free players can get reasonable loads and I can still get a few advertising pennies for my time that will help me make more apps. I really appreciate the feedback and if anyone has an issue with something feel free to contact us using the support email in app or pinging me on twitter @bearisgaming. Version 1.3 of Escape Velocity will include the load time reductions as well as some improvements for other common complaints. Most importantly a checkpoint in level 1 (systems check) that bypasses the tutorial portion if you happen to die and a wider steering contact area with the thruster bar ghosted on it so the control mechanism is more obvious. This version should be available within 1 week (have to wait on MS approval, I am already finished the changes).

    Thanks for reading,

    Daniel Baxter
    Developer – bearisgaming.com, @bearisgaming

    • http://bearisgaming.com Daniel

      Sorry, missed one other point Jace brought up in the video. We forced Landscape Right as the display orientation to specifically avoid the accidental back/home/search key hits that come with a game that controls on the edge of the screen. Originally we had it Landscape Left knowing people generally go Landscape Left by default but on most phones our controls would cause frustration when people accidentally hit those face keys. So that was a product of testing to make it less likely that a player would accidentally exit the app. I can include both directions enabled in the 1.3 update when I submit it this week, honestly it is a super simple change to make and I am happy to support it if people really want it to work that way.

      Daniel Baxter
      Developer – bearisgaming.com, @bearisgaming

      • http://www.1800pocketpc.com Saijo ( Cyb4n )

        I am quite sure giving a choice of both would be a better option :)