Gunpowder Review

Developer: Rogue Rocket Games
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.6.16
App Reviewed on: iPad Mini Retina

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Overall Rating:

Gunpowder is a lot like playing a cartoon, which is a great starting point for any game. It’s a physics based puzzle game, but thanks to such delightful visuals it feels like more of a breath of fresh air than usual.

Across 125 levels, your mission is to blow up a safe with gunpowder. The trick is to set up a trail of gunpowder from the spark to the safe, blowing up things along the way. Placing the trail is a matter of dragging your finger around to place gunpowder, with a limited supply meaning you have to plan carefully. There are barrels to drop too, potentially inciting a chain reaction of events.

Early levels are incredibly easy, probably too easy in fact, but it soon becomes a trickier affair. Chain reactions are key here, enabling you to traverse water or other major obstacles. As always for the genre, there’s a certain amount of trial and error too, but it’s pretty fun to experiment.

Much of this success is thanks to how great Gunpowder looks. Unleash the explosion and things pop out of the screen, looking really quite impressive and stylish. It’s all in keeping with the cartoon style aesthetic and means you don’t begrudge multiple attempts. Things such as flaming wagons and cannons add to the variety of what you can tackle, and it’s great to see how things play out.

To add to the challenge, you can work towards collecting piggybanks that are also scattered through each stage, extending the longevity of Gunpowder and giving you a sense of further accomplishment. Really though, there’s sufficient content to keep you entertained for a long time. While Gunpowder might seem more pricey than most puzzle games, it’s easily worth that, even with the in-app purchases for extra chapters included.