Save Them All Review

Save Them All is an endless runner that has a lot to love...in theory. In the interest of not burying the lede, that means that this is a game with a few issues.

But there’s a lot to love! First, there’s the concept: players need to rescue humans, which goes toward a global counter of saving humanity. Leaderboards for “most humans saved” reset every 24 hours, so there’s more opportunity to save as many humans as possible. These humans saved can be used as points to upgrade powers and abilities – and yes, it’s possible to buy more of these through IAP. But there are even items that will unlock when the total population saved reaches a certain total.

Oh, and saving humans and staying alive is conceptually cool too. Save a woman by punching a giant zombie so hard that it explodes? Why yes, I will. Incoming meteor? Use bullet time to be jumping when it lands, then smash into it at the right moment. Save an abducted woman by jumping in mid-air and snatching her from the UFO’s tractor beam? Sure. Nuke coming for population: protagonist’s face? Smash that too. This game is designed to make the player feel really, really cool.

It just doesn’t play like it’s really, really cool. There’s overall a severe lack of polish (something surprising from a Chillingo-published title). It’s little things like starting out running, and suddenly going into bullet time because a meteor is coming in right away. The visuals and interface have an amateurish look to them, like there was a lot of placeholder art leftover before the smoother final version. Everything looks either generic or really cheesy. There’s just too much that the player has to control and do, as well; when a swiping control system involves diagonals to activate things, there’s a chance it may have gone too far.

This is again why I find myself surprised that this is a Chillingo game – the level of polish just isn’t quite there for Save Them All. Even the title belies its true potential. Again, this is a game great in theory, and smashing nukes with bare fists is never not just exceptionally awesome, but it only goes so far to raise the quality of the experience.