Aqua Forest

By Jeff Scott on August 1st, 2008
Our Rating: :: RECOMMENDED
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Aqua Forest by HudsonSoft is a different kind of application — part puzzle, part physics experiment, but all fun.

Developer: Hudson Soft
Price: $7.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Aqua Forest is an oddity in the App Store. Reminiscent of physics simulation based games such as Crayon Physics or Falling Sand, the basic premise is that you add materials to the screen and the see how they interact both with each other and with gravity. The iPhone OS adds an interesting feature with the accelerometer — as you can change the gravity direction by changing the orientation of the screen.

In this simulation there are a large number of materials that you can add — each one has it’s own properties on how it interacts with the other materials:

Water – Draws water.
Wall – Draws a wall object. These objects do not move no matter how much force is applied to them.
Rigid – Rigid objects do not change shape.
Elastic – These objects change shape when a force is applied to them. They attempt to go back to their original shape when the force is no longer applied.
Mochi (Rice Cake) – These objects lose their shape like mochi (Japanese rice cakes).
Rice – These objects change their shape in the same way as rice.
RigidAxis – These objects are rigid and rotate about their centers of gravity.
Spring – These objects expand and contract. You can attach them to rigid objects by drawing them on top of the rigid objects.
Viscous – These are highly viscous liquids.
Tensile – These are liquids with high surface tension.
Powder – These objects are powders. They explode when they come into contact with Fire or Heater.
Weak – These objects change shape when a force is applied to them. These objects fracture when a force that is stronger than a certain threshold is applied to them.
Dense – These are liquids that are heavier than Water.
Light – These are liquids that are lighter than Water.
Inflow – These gush out Water.
Outflow – These delete objects that come into contact with them.
Heater – These change Water into Gas, make Powders explode, and ignite Fuels.
Cooler – These change Gases into Water.
Fuel – These ignite when they come into contact with Fire or Heater.
Fire – These are flaming objects. These ignite Fuels, change Water into Gas, and make Powders explode.

But be warned — add too much to the screen and the simulation will start to slow down. You can also save any setups and load them back at a later time.

Here are a couple videos that show you how the materials are used:

In addition to a free drawing mode where you can place any of the items on the screen and interact with them, there’s a puzzle mode. The puzzle mode includes 50 levels where you have to achieve some sort of goal. This usually involves finding ways to move water from one location to a goal. The levels are great, fairly quick to progress through, and leave you wanting more. They also give you good ideas of what the different materials can do.

I’d love to see a way to upload and download new levels and would hope Hudson Soft is looking at doing that.

Over all I think this is a really fun and interesting simulation to play and it works great on an iPhone size device.

Aqua Forest

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Buy Now: $6.99

Our Rating: :: RECOMMENDED
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2008-07-11 :: Category: Games