Review: MosKillTo
Score:
n/a%
Developer Sittiphol Phanvilai is perhaps one of the few celebrities in the Symbian OS world, with his Mobitubia being arguably one of the two most impressive applications of 2007, even winning a top award (Nokia Open C challenge). He's at it again, with an in-development game called MosKillTo, undoubtedly inspired by Mosquito, a camera-based game with similar objectives from the days before accelerometers (yes, yes, that long ago).
Over to Ewan Spence, who's been buzzing around his study playing the game for the last hour. What's the verdict, Ewan?
"Not long after the debut of Series 60 (as it was on the 7650), a bundle of concept games arrived on the handset. Programmers were playing around with the new toys in the SDK, and pumping out ‘I can do this’ style programs for others to build on. MosKillTo reminds me of those heady days for two reasons.
The first is that this is a concept demo, using the accelerometers of the current Nseries handsets to aim a gun around a 3D room. The second is you’re aiming the gun at a group of mosquitoes who are getting in the way. Putting aside the fact that a massive great big cannon against a solitary slow moving mosquito is a touch of overkill(!), I can also remember using the 7650 and the camera to look round by room to find ‘ghostly insects’ to zap with my trusty smartphone.
As a game, MosKillTo isn’t much to write home about – by tilting my N95 to the left, right, up and down, your gun points to different parts of the 3D room, allowing you to aim the cannon at the flying pests. Once I got over the fact that I was to tilt the phone, and not physically spin round holding the handset, I was fine, vaporizing mosquitos right, left and centre:"
Thanks, Ewan. Although there's a second level to advance to, this is, as the author points out, very much a demonstration of what's possible. In my own playtesting, the physics weren't quite right, in a final version I'd hope that spinning the physical N95 (or N82 etc) through 90 degrees produced a similar turn in the virtual room - the current linkage between the two is too low.
Still, it's games such as this (and developers such as this) that really get the pulse quickening and the mind thinking. Consider adding this sort of control to the existing Doom and Quake ports to S60. Then plug in a stereo headset. Now, that would be pretty darned immersive.
Kudos to the developer, I think you just kick-started a genre!
Steve Litchfield (and Ewan Spence), AllAboutSymbian, 2 April 2008
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at