Tornado Time Review

It feels odd to say that a free game doesn’t offer enough content to deserve a look. And yet, that’s Tornado Time's problem in a nutshell. But even if this free version was more than a glorified demo, the gameplay would still just be a passing breeze.

In Tornado Time, players use a handful of tornadoes at their disposal to cause as much damage as possible to an innocent small town. Players drag a path on screen for each tornado to follow, but they can only travel short distances. However, multiple tornadoes can be deployed at once, creating combo-filled concerts of chaos. Destruction is the only objective and players are scored on how much mayhem they make. Meanwhile, achievements like “God Mode” reward feats like successfully lifting a church up to the heavens before crashing it down to Earth. Especially wrathful players can even earn an additional tornado to unleash mid-game and improve their score. It’s a fun and crazy sandbox in the vein of Burnout Crash. The top-down view of the detailed little 3D environments, as well as the outlandish sound effects, truly makes the player feel like a cosmic deity with a sick sense of humor.

However, the few minutes it takes to play a stage is pretty much all Tornado Time has to offer. One can only annihilate a town so many different ways. There are no real side goals or upgrades or additional levels within the same suburban environment. Meanwhile the three other areas - a military base, a water park, and a nuclear power plant - must all be purchased separately. Unfortunately, even with four times more content players could still probably experience the entire game during a lunch break.

Tornado-based demolition is a great jumping off point for a hypothetical video game. Unfortunately, Tornado Time fails to stretch that concept into an actual video game.