Antimatter

After their physic-based water simulation puzzler Enimgo [App Store], Pangea Software brings yet another unique title to the table. Antimatter [App Store]. Guiding a piece of antimatter around a baron cosmic environment, antimatter sees you trying to change the molecular properties of cosmic strings.

Entering Antimatter you'll be able to see that a lot of time has clearly been spent on making it look visually stunning. Sitting at the main menu you have two game play options; be guided through a tutorial, or play an actual game. My betting is your going to want start off in the tutorial to familiarize yourself with how to play Antimatter.

The game is simple. You control a ball of dust or - antimatter. By guiding this around the screen, your aim is to turn all of the blue light strings to red, before your energy meter (top left) runs to zero. To turn a string from blue to red your antimatter has to come in contact with it. Careful though, if it comes into contact with an already red string, it will react with it again causing it to return to blue. The game ends when all the strings on the screen have been turned to red.

Moving your antimatter is as easy as touching and dragging. Saying this, your probably not going to want to start flailing your finger up and down the screen, as fast as you can. This is because as with most Pangea titles, the game uses a seemingly sophisticated physic based engine, similar to that seen in Enigmo. What this means is your cloud of antimatter reacts (in real time) to impact and force just like any other floating object would. Taking into consideration that the game is based in space, there's also a sense of weightlessness to your matter which adds yet further change to controlling it..

See it in Action:

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Along the way you'll come across in-game pickups. These pickups can have two effects on the game's elements. The first kind of pickups are length adjusters. These will change the length of these cosmic strings - making it relatively easy to hit them, while others will try to reduce the surface area, causing you to panic. Frantically.

I'm really implying this game is enjoyable, but the truth is. It's just not. I admit it was for a while, but the game's sheer repetitive nature soon found me becoming increasingly frustrated. The reason? I think it lies in the game's objective. I think it's because the game relies on such a simple concept, the only way to increase difficulty levels is to add more strings into the mix. As soon as that happened, the game stopped being a game for me and instead became a straight chore.

In summary, there's no doubting antimatter is visually highly polished. The concept on which the game is based upon is pretty unusual, but again unique. The thing which stops antimatter from being an enjoyable game (for me) is the lack of game play goals.

I think it's because the game is set solidly around a goal which is so simple, this is why you might lose interest when playing it. Straight alongside this is the game's difficulty level. The difficulty increases to such a point, in some respects the game becomes near impossible to complete.

Pangea really needs to get it together on this one. They need to think about how they can extend antimatter's overall game play, while still ensuring the game is enjoyable. It's a hard situation to be in, as the game itself is centered around such a simple goal. However, as it currently stands I have to say antimatter is really not worth it's dollar.