Review: Canabalt






Canabalt

The maker of the game, Adam Saltsman, made a post over at the Experimental Game Project about the original version, "I made Canabalt in 5 very long days (at least 60 hours) – 1 day at the start of the month, two days at PromJam, and then this weekend. Danny B made the music for it tonight. It follows the theme (loosely I am sure!) by using only one button to interact, and by using only 6 colors to display everything. Also, the gameplay and graphics are under 100kb, the other 3MB is all sound files."

Just a testament that great things can come in some very small packages. Incidentally, if you aren't able to flee from the craziness behind you, you will inevitably face a screen resembling the one below.

Canabalt

With a fantastic soundtrack, this game birthed in Flash, has made its way to the iPhone. It is going for about 3 bucks and for a game with presumably a one trick pony you may think that's a lot of money. However, you will sink more time into this than you will realize. It has quickly stolen me away from Mass Effect, Doom Resurrection, Assassin's Creed, and Mafia Wars on Apple's gaming platform (Yeah, I said it. Because that's what it is. It just coincidentally allows you to call people). There's probably a deep and rich subtext here about the need to escape the unseen and the unknown, but really, I like to make up my own story that the main character is actually running away from the sequel to Stalin vs Martians.

You can pick up the title in the App Store, and you can follow the developer, Semi Secret Software, on their Twitter page and at their website. Try out the Flash version (and the mega version), and if you want it on the go - pick up the mobile version.. in all of it's five star rated glory.

Here are some more images from the iPhone version:

Canabalt Canabalt Canabalt