There’s no doubting that in the right hands Unity is an incredibly versatile and powerful development tool and has already been responsible for helping to bring some impressive titles to the PS Vita – both native games and through PlayStation Mobile. Bearing that in mind, developers Lightning Game Studios (referred to in the PSN Store as B.P.) took the Unity release of the PSM SDK and released their first seven titles for PlayStation Mobile simultaneously on 10th September 2014 but is it a case of quantity over quality…?
Being quite frank, Drop Baby is really the type of game that you’d expect to find running on Android or iOS as something that you’d load up as a typical timewaster rather than a full gaming experience. It’s an incredibly simplistic affair offering single-screen gameplay. Chosing single or twin modes to start off with, once you start playing the game, what you are supposed to believe are babies (more on this later) drop from the top of the screen and you save them by tapping on them. You score points if you successfully do this and it’s game over if any reach the bottom of the screen. In the Single mode it’s one baby at a time and Twin mode… well, you guessed it… two of them.
And that’s basically the whole game covered. No variety in the gameplay, no objectives to reach, no goals to work towards – just tap, tap, tap, game over, tap, tap, tap, wait for someone to prod you awake. The game exudes monotony throughout. While there have been games released through PlayStation Mobile in the past that have been based on or inspired by casual mobile phone games they’ve either offered some form of challenge to gamers, levels to progress through or at least something to keep the game interesting but there’s just nothing here at all.
The “music”, if you can call it that, is quite probably one of the most irritating things that you will ever hear coming from the PS Vita’s speakers and will have you lunging for the volume controls in a matter of seconds. It’s not just the fact that it’s an incredibly grating piece, but also the fact that it is incredibly short and lasts for under a minute so it will begin to fill you with rage. The sound effects are just as infuriating limited to endless baby gurgling and cries throughout (while still having to put up with the mind-numbing music). There is no option to turn the sound off other than the Vita’s controls themselves and you’ll never be more thankful that Sony added these than during this game.
Graphics don’t fare any better. The “babies” that drop from the top of the screen are represented by yellow squares with poorly-drawn faces on them, and the background is a simplistic affair with a tiled pattern repeating a smaller version of the faces and that’s all there is to the visuals. Short of PSM games that aim for an intentionally simplistic retro look like Snake, I don’t think that the developers could have gone for a more basic approach.
This is one of those titles that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and this is a pattern that follows throughout all of the other PSM games released by Lightning Game Studios at present. What’s most shocking about this is the price. Considering the appeal that this actually has and how long you’re likely to play it for should you have the misfortune to pay for it, the asking price of £3.39 is utterly obscene and I honestly can’t imagine what the developers were thinking when they wrote this. One to be avoided at all costs.
Simon Plumbe
At A Glance
- Title: Drop Baby
- Publisher: Lightning Game Studios
- System: PlayStation Mobile
- Format: PSN Download
- Cross Buy: N / A
- Cross Play: N / A
- Online Multiplayer: No
- Memory Card Space Needed: 30Mb
Fantastic Game Drop Baby is fenomenal fun. Soundtrack is very good! Thank Lightning Game Studios!!!
Seriously? Only anyone who would work at Lightning Game Studios could even consider recommending this to anyone and even then they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so.
This is the sort of game that – had it been released back in the 8-bit era as a magazine type-in listing – it would have been criticised even then for being overly simple and a waste of people’s time and effort.
Sadly, if PlayStation Mobile ultimately fails as a format, it’s because of titles like this harming the reputation of the platform and putting gamers off from trying out the real gems that are out there.