Angry Bomber Review

Angry Bomber is a side-scrolling shoot’em up that puts the player in charge of their own aircraft, with the purpose of blowing up everything in sight. Unfortunately a couple of frustrating issues effect what is otherwise a solid game.

The game is set in the year 2025, and the world has been taken over by a company named Happy Corp. While they initially promised much, it turns out that Happy Corp is actually rather evil, capturing the population and killing those who show any sign of resistance. The player takes on the role of the last defiant group determined to destroy Happy Corp in a hail of fire.

The whole purpose of Angry Bomber is pretty simple: if it’s on the ground then it needs to be bombed, and if it’s in the air it needs to be gunned down. Doing this earns the player points, which go towards upgrading the aircraft’s engine and armour. Each of the levels has medals that can be earned by fulfilling objectives such as “destroy every building”.

In theory the control scheme is simple, but can actually prove frustrating. To move the aircraft left, right, up or down the player needs to touch and drag it to where they want it to go. To fire the guns the player has to tap somewhere up in the air, and to drop bombs the player needs to tap somewhere on the ground.

This never really gelled well with me, and I found myself forever hitting the pause icon. Another problem was that often if I tried to move the plane while dropping bombs it would just nose-dive into the ground and give me a “mission failed." What Angry Bomber needs is a virtual thumb-stick and buttons, which are actually shown on the YouTube teaser, but I was unable to find them in the finished game.

Something else I encountered, be it a bug or on purpose, was that my high scores for unlocked levels would reset to zero every time I shut the app down. This made buying upgrades, which use points as currency, an arduous task.

When it works, Angry Bomber is a solid game with an addictive idea behind it. It has a generous amount of levels too, with 30 on offer. It’s just a shame that the action is marred by control issues.

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