Cover Orange 2 Review

Developer: FDG Entertainment
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 5, iPad 2

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Fruit has had a contentious relationship with mobile gamers over the years. We all remember gleefully slicing fruit in Fruit Ninja back in 2009 and the years since. Lo, fruit was to be destroyed. But oh have the tables turned with the Cover Orange series, where fruit has suddenly become a thing worth protecting, as if to atone for the sins we’ve committed against fruit-kind.

Such is how it goes in Cover Orange 2, the latest in FDG Entertainment’s physics puzzler series. I enjoy games that say exactly what they are on the title, and the objective of covering oranges lest they be killed by a cloud that drops spike balls on them certainly qualifies. Players have to drop a series of objects in sequence with the end result hopefully leaving the oranges all safe from harm. Levels add complexity in the addition of movable parts, and objects that may need to have an effect later than another object’s dropping, which means playing with where the objects (which include oranges) are to be dropped.

The game definitely gets a variety of puzzles involved. If there’s any ways to cover an orange that aren’t covered by Cover Orange 2, then I imagine it’ll never be uncovered. The physics are used for evil as well as good: a stray spike ball bouncing off of an angle can frequently be the casue of orange obliteration. All is fair in the world of Cover Orange 2. The ability to customize oranges is a nifty feature as well – that there’s no unlock system involved to make a pirate orange with an eyepatch holding a mace is almost miraculous.

The timing-based puzzles wind up testing the game’s controls, especially on the iPhone: frequently it’s needed to drop one object, then to rapidly tap elsewhere to drop the next object. On a small screen, inaccuracy will happen. The time when spikes are dropping from the cloud on to the oranges feels unnecessarily long, and the addition of having to search for a star among the level feels like it was there solely to make the wait in this section worthwhile. It just feels kind of dull and unnecessary, like the game just had to have three stars to earn in it because that’s what every other game has.

Cover Orange 2 gets a lot of mileage out of its concept by being willing to be varied, and that makes it worthy of a download for those who still haven’t gotten enough of casual puzzlers, or feel the need to save fruit instead of slicing it up.