Brick People HD Review

The original Japanese arcade game of Brick People involved players physically stacking foam bricks up against the screen of the game. It was a quirky concept but it worked for that exact reason. The iPad version of such a title has to skip such physicality and thus the main appeal behind such a game is gone.

Brick People HD is an extraordinarily simple title and without the actual blocks to manoeuvre, it lacks any special element to make it stand out amongst the many fast paced puzzle games out there. All the player has to do is arrange a series of bricks to guide the hungry Brick People to their beloved fruit. A strict time limit means that players must complete each level quickly but that's not a hugely difficult task.

Structures can be built out of the bricks such as staircases or rudimentary towers. Anything goes, providing the Brick People can work their way upwards and in the right direction for the fruit that's scattered around. That's one of the problems. The Brick People really aren't very bright at all, frequently wandering in the wrong direction or simply not seeming that keen about retrieving fruit. There's no direct way of manipulating them which can get pretty frustrating when there are precious few seconds left on the clock.

Gameplay also gets quite tedious after a while with nothing really changing. Every few levels, a special mission kicks in requiring players to build a specific structure out of the blocks but this is just a race against time rather than anything challenging. With arcade games, players are used to relatively short bursts but on a system like this, longevity would have been nice.

There is the addition of competitive multiplayer modes where players can compete via Bluetooth or together on the same device but it's not enough to make Brick People HD an unmissable purchase. It just all feels a little too shallow.