AZ Rockets review
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AZ Rockets review

Our Review by Campbell Bird on April 12th, 2018
Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar :: NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
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This arcade looks really nice, but that’s about it.

Developer: Itatake

Price: Free
Version: 1.0.1
App Reviewed on: iPhone SE

Graphics/Sound Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
User Interface Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarblankstarblankstarblankstar
Replay Value Rating: starblankstarblankstarblankstarblankstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar

AZ Rockets is a minimalistic, one-touch arcade game all about launching rockets into letters or groups of letters to spell words and phrases. It’s strikingly colorful and has you spelling delightfully positive words, but beyond that, AZ Rockets doesn’t really have what it takes to sustain your interest for very long.

Shoot to spell

The setup of AZ Rockets feels almost like something out of a rhythm mini-game collection (thinkRhythm Heaven). The game presents a solid color background with a line pattern drawn on it. When the action starts, letters pop up on certain places on screen and a set of rockets begins moving along the lines almost like they are on a conveyor belt. Your job is to tap to launch these rockets so that they fly off their lines and hit all of the letters on screen.

There’s no specific order you have to hit these letters in, nor any specific rhythm to match your taps to though. You just need to make sure you hit all of the letters before you run out of time. If you are successful, you move to the next level to do it all over again with a new pattern and word. If not, you hit a game over screen where you can start the whole game over again or opt to watch and ad to make a checkpoint and resume from where you last failed. It’s very simple.

Line-drawn look

What’s most appealing about AZ Rockets is its visual style. It’s got a really flat and minimal design that really makes an impression. Aside from that though, the game has so little to it it’s very hard to stick with it for very long.

It's not just that the game is simple, either. The levels move in a set order, so you don’t even get the surprise of a new, random level when you decide to play. You just have the same gameplay on the same levels every time you play, and not so much as a leaderboard to have you at least be able to compete against anyone.

Offline offense

AZ Rockets is free on the App Store and has a single in-app purchase you can make in it. This purchase removes all ads from the game, gives you different rocket designs to play with, and allows you to play AZ Rockets without a data connection.

The good news about this is that opting not to pay doesn’t restrict you from any gameplay, but the idea of paying to be able to play a game without a data connection seems like a bad precedent to try and set for games, and most certainly doesn’t seem worth purchasing for a game as flat as AZ Rockets.

The bottom line

AZ Rockets is a mildly interesting premise for a game, but there’s not enough going on in it to feel like you should pay for it, much less play it for any significant period of time. There are just much more interesting games out there, a lot of which are also free and don’t ask you to pay to play them offline.

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