Cut the Rope HD Review

Chillingo seems to have found their next Angry Birds - take a game with a simple yet unique concept, layer complexity on top of it, add some colorful graphics and charming characters, and watch it shoot to the top of the charts. Cut the Rope follows this formula to a T, and it works brilliantly.

Cut the Rope has you trying to get the piece of candy in the level from its starting point into the mouth of Om Nom, the adorable green creature in each level, while trying to collect stars scattered throughout the level to unlock more levels. Your main tool to accomplish this is via cutting the ropes that the candy is suspended from to navigate it through the level. The later levels introduce new tools like bubbles, air gushers, adjustable length rope, and more. Of course, to keep things saucy, you have hazards like spikes, electric fields, and spiders that climb the ropes to keep getting the candy into Om Nom's mouth more than just a simple goal.

Cut the Rope is just simple bliss to play. The way that you have to solve some of the puzzles require planning and/or quick reaction times, and getting all 3 stars on the more challenging levels is extremely satisfying. Succeeding at this game just makes you feel ingenious for having solved something that seems impossible at first glance. It's all a great formula for an addictive game. The graphics and animations are great - the game is very colorful, and Om Nom is very fluidly animated, cutely changing expression whenever the candy gets near. While the game ships with 100 levels, the developer promises more levels coming soon.

The main problem with Cut the Rope is that you often have tight spacing or timing windows, and it can be easy to accidentally slash something you didn't mean to, or to accidentally slash a rope when you wanted to rotate a lever to raise your rope. Although you can easily restart a level, it is still frustrating when you have a plan and can't execute it because something else was slashed when you didn't mean to do it. Also, the game occasionally features large levels that scroll, without any way for you to scroll around and view the rest of the level before you get there besides the view at the beginning of the level.

Cut the Rope is ingenious, following a similar formula to Angry Birds - charming graphics, simple gameplay that gets complexity steadily layered on top of it in a way that feels natural, almost without even feeling like it's getting more difficult. That is just brilliant game design, and with more levels promised, Cut the Rope has an exciting future, but is still great with even just the core game content.

Note: While this game was reviewed on the iPad, the iPhone version has the same gameplay and levels, and is available in the App Store as well.