Overview
Everyone has an appetite for alien stories, games and movies as it is the only thing that tickle our brains with the question ‘Are we alone in the Universe?’. A question I hope to get an answer before I meet my end. I’m pretty sure that given the billions of planets in the habitable zone it’s improbable not to have at least some form of bacteria developed on one of them, but proof is proof and until we find it the question remains unanswered. Every year there is at least a blockbuster focusing on advanced alien civilizations that try to conquer the Earth, but it’s just fiction, fun fiction. I say fun because without aliens even games would be boring. With hardware advancements in smartphones and tablets it’s now easier than ever to hunt down aliens in games, as there are literally thousands of them. ‘Flip the Aliens’ is one of those games for Android (and iOS) that has a twist though, instead of hunting down aliens you have to help them get back to their world by flipping them to the correct teleporter.
Design and gameplay
Flip the Aliens is a free game for Android where you, dear player, have to help some aliens to get back to their home. They look kind of like Spongebob and ‘walk’ by flipping over, your goal being to help them reach the gate to their home. When a level starts you will see a grid board with one or more alien sources (where the aliens will come out from) and one or more colored gates. The idea is to guide the aliens to the gate bearing the same color as that particular alien. Each level has its own goals and these increase in difficulty as you progress through the game. If for the first level you only have to help 4 aliens, all of the same color, to reach a single gate, advanced levels will have dozens of aliens of up to 4 different colors that need help. The video below shows the gameplay based on the first levels:
The game has over 40 levels divided into 3 worlds, out of which in the free version the first 8 are playable (you’ll need to upgrade to play the rest of the levels). Each level can be played in different ways, as there is more than a single path you can create. Typically you’ll have some arrows placed on the board, alien sources and alien destinations. You control the game by moving the arrows in different spots on the grid, and whenever an alien passes over it, will follow the direction in that arrow (i.e. for down arrows, it will start flipping towards the end of the grid). There are larger maps in advanced levels and you can use the game’s zoom-in/zoom-out features to see the details in a particular section of a map. Here are some of the features ‘Flip the Aliens’ has:
- Easy gameplay. You can see this from the short video tutorial that it’s not a complex gameplay. Basically you control the aliens by moving the various items that you have at your disposal, from directional arrows to accelerometers that speed up the alien movement.
- HD graphics. The HD version is recommended for tablets and its graphics are eye-catchy. There’s also a non-HD version if you want to install the game on your lower-resolution smartphone, the only difference between the two versions being the graphics.
- Soundtrack. The game has its own soundtrack, you can disable it if needed from the options section of the game where you can also control the difficulty of the game (from 1 to 4, depending how challenging you want the game to be).
- Dynamic zoom. In some levels the board is changing dynamically. You can also control the zoom yourself as for each level you have at the top a zoom-in/out option. That will come handy when you have large maps. If you don’t like where the map is shown, you can tap on it and move it anywhere you want on the screen.
- Multiple levels. The basic levels start simple and introduce gradually new elements. You’ll get to see throughout the advanced levels teleporters, electrified walls, mines, bonuses, speedups, magnets, ghost aliens and rampant weeds. The good part is that before a level that introduces a new item, you’ll get a help window with details on that particular item. Thus you’ll know how to use it before the level starts. No worries though, as levels are re-playable you can come back again and try to score better.
Screenshots from 3 different levels to see their complexity.
- Leaderboard. For each level it counts the time it took you to complete it, not score. The faster you finish a level, the better. Each time you replay a level you’ll see your previous record for that level. Your records might be high-scores against other players, and you can check that by tapping on the Leaderboard icon from the main screen. This way you’ll be able to see how well you did in the game compared to other players.
- Free. Out of the 40 locked levels, 8 are playable for free. You can play for free either the regular or the HD version of the game. If the gameplay gets to you and want to play all of the advanced one, you can upgrade to the paid version from within the free one.
Conclusion
‘Flip the Aliens’ is a fun game that tests your puzzle-solving abilities and reflexes. It’s not enough to figure out a path to send the aliens through, you also have to move items fast on the board to get the right aliens in the right gate based on the color of their…reptilian skins. The multitude of playable levels combined with 4 different types of difficulty will provide hours of fun – if you’re a type of player that likes to beat its own records, just replay a level as many times as you want.
You can read more about the game (and get a link to the iOS version if you’re not on Android) from the developer’s official website at http://www.marozugames.com/. You can also download the game directly from Google Play (the free HD version): Download Flip the Aliens
Name: Flip the Aliens
Developer: Marozu Games
Size: 22Mb
Package: com.marozugames.flipthealien.apk
Version: 1.0.1
Last update: September 7, 2013
Price: Freemium
