Bobby Carrot 1 CLSX

My first encounter with Bobby Carrot was on my friend’s Samsung phone about 4 years ago. I won’t deny that I was slightly addicted to playing it on her phone so I was extremely pleased to see an iPhone version appear on the store. For those of you who have played in the past, you’ll be pleased (maybe) that Bobby Carrot remains as excruciatingly frustrating as ever.

For those of you who haven’t had the joy of Bobby Carrot in the past, a brief explanation of how it is played is probably in order. The basic idea is to either collect carrots or lay easter eggs on the level without becoming trapped. In each level there are obstacles such as suppressed spikes which you can walk over once but once you do they pop up and you can’t walk back over them. This results in you being forced to navigate the level in such a way that you can reach the exit without dying or becoming trapped. Spikes aren’t the only obstacle, but it’s all generally the same idea.

Bobby Carrot 1 CLSX, as it is officially known, features two game modes; carrots and easter eggs. In carrots you must collect all the carrots in the level without getting trapped by spikes or other obstacles. Easter eggs is a similar concept but instead you need to place easter eggs in nests without walking back over one of your eggs as well as avoiding any obstacles. I personally found easter eggs slightly more entertaining as it introduced newer obstacles more quickly, but there isn’t really all that much difference between the two. What I was a little surprised to find was that if you start a game of carrots, then decide to start a game of easter eggs, you completely lose your progress on carrots and are forced to start again next time you play it. It would be great to be able to play either and still retain your progress.

The controls are well thought out with three choices as to how you control Bobby. The first is with the joystick that you can see in the bottom of the screen-shots. This works as you’d expect with you pushing it with your finger. I personally found this inaccurate and I regularly found myself moving Bobby more than I wanted, which made for some frustrated grunts. The other two options are swipe 1 and swipe 2. It’s difficult to explain the difference as they are both very similar in that you control Bobby by swiping you finger in the direction you wish to move. Swipe 2 is less ‘responsive’ in the sense that it allows more fine grain control of Bobby where as swipe 1 tended to respond more quickly (but I found my finger regularly got in the way.) I found swipe 2 my preferred method of control, but it’s worth trying all 3 to see what suits you.

Graphically, it’s nothing ground breaking but it’s bright and colourful and fun to look at. The animations when Bobby dies or gets impatient are entertaining enough and the sound FX and music compliment the graphics well. Having said this, there is a really chunky border around the game screen which felt like a complete waste on the iPhone’s enormous screen. I get the impression that the graphics were ported directly from an older, pre-iPhone version, which is a shame as it would have been nice to be given a larger playing area with higher resolution graphics as to make the most of the screen estate available.

Overall, I found Bobby Carrot to be a great game. It is truly the most frustrating game you’re ever likely to play, but that’s all part of the charm. If you haven’t played Bobby Carrot before, I implore you to give it a go if you enjoy games of this nature. If you have played before, I’m surprised you’ve got this far into the review, go get it!