Aurora Feint

Written by Kris Rosado  on March 01, 2009

Reviews: Gaming Target is reviewing a new iPhone game each day of March, so to start our 31-day streak, we review the original Aurora Feint.

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Though it doesn't have the most desirable name in the world, Aurora Feint is actually a really addicting game. Even though the combination of fantasy and puzzle elements have been done before, this is the first time it has been done on the iPhone, a device many speculate could become as legitimate a gaming platform as the Nintendo DS or the PlayStation Portable.

Starting a new game requires you to pick one of two characters, an antler bearing man or a forest girl. From there, the game goes into a tutorial where players can learn how things are accomplished and then upon reaching their first level and building their first tool, they are set free to do play as they want. But let's backup a bit. After choosing a character, players are bought to a map with the locations of a Mine, Store, Smith, and Tower.



The mine is where players will mine for resources by playing a puzzle game sort of in the vein of Bejeweled. The idea here is to get matches of elements in rows of three or more. As you do this, you will gather resources to be used later on as well as crystals which you will use at the store. In addition to accumulating resources, you will also increase your Уprogression barФ, which when full, means you get to level up. However, if the rows hit the top of the screen, it's game over. It's very simple, yet incredibly addicting. Risk taking players can even tilt their phones sideways thanks to the game's use of the iPhone's accelerometer. Doing this changes the way you mine, since everything now moves from left to right. However, this isn't something that is recommended because of how much faster the rows move to the end, but if you want to take the risk for bigger combos, you can.

Once you've leveled up, you get to upgrade a plethora of tools and masteries, which as ever every fantasy game player knows, is a nail-biting task. You want to make sure you make the right choice, because there is no-reallocating of points. Tool upgrades come in the form of hammers, skulls, etc and offer up different abilities such as slowing down game play. Masteries on the other hand, deal with the blocks themselves. As you can higher and higher masteries of an element, that element becomes worth a lot more than it did before.

However, no matter what you upgrade, the effects are not immediate. First, you have to make a run to the Store. The store is where you will spend your accumulated crystals to purchase either УblueprintsФ for upgraded tools or УmagicbooksФ for elemental masteries. As you can imagine, the cost of blueprints raises for each iteration; but surprisingly (and almost unbalanced), magicbooks stay the same throughout.

If you choose to do blueprints then you are to head to the Smith. Building each tool requires a (high) cost of your resources, so messing around while building is not an affordable option. To build your tool you will have to collect a certain type of resource in a certain time, the better the tool, the less time you have to collect more resources. While it may seem a bit difficult, it's nothing compared to what elemental masteries have to do in the Tower.

Ah, the Tower. This place has made fools of manyЕ or maybe just me. Upon paying the allotted cost of resources to learn your mastery, you engage a puzzle that uses turns in the place of time. The idea is to clear all the orbs in a set amount of moves. Everything you do counts as a turn, even using the accelerometer, so choose wisely otherwise you fail and have to spend more resources to try again.