Save Them All Review – Genre burn out, but good nevertheless

Our rating:

By: Chillingo

Version #: 1.1.2

Date Released: 2012-11-13

Developer: Chillingo Ltd

Price: 0.99

User Rating:

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An early game for the iPhone, that has captivated many hours of mine was the infinite runner, Canabalt. In many ways, that title paved the way for many other runner apps that have even exceeded it in popularity. Most runner apps that come out lately try and add different elements to make them stand out from the growing crowd of similar apps. Save Them All has shades of Canabalt, in the theme, but takes the genre to an extreme level. Does this make it a better game, or will this game need saving as well.

Save Them All has a comic book style cut scene that shows you waking up in a lab or hospital in the middle of Armageddon. I am not talking about your run of the mill apocalypse, rather all the possible things you can imagine rolled into one bad day. There are runner games where you wonder what you are actually running from. Is it a Forrest Gump, “I just had to run”, or is there some unseen horror. Well, in Save Them All, You are running from zombies, aliens, nuclear war, and even meteor attack. That just gives you a taste of the insanity that you will be dodging while to jump from rooftop to rooftop.

Save Them All has only two buttons, The left is a jump, and the right is a punch, but this duo of virtual buttons is deceptively simple. Apart from holding and double-tapping the buttons, there is also swiping in almost every direction to activate special abilities. From speed boosts to flying through the air, some abilities use up energy, while others are temporary effects that activate passively. To gain this energy you must run into orbs you find along the path. The problem with this is that they are generally located so that you will miss the other thing you are trying to collect. Running around on these same roofs are people that need to be saved. Saving people gives you points to spend upgrading powers. So sometimes you need to sacrifice your points for the sake of earning energy to help you save more people. Point being; you can’t save them all.

The game has two modes; story mode which slowly introduces you to the various powers and obstacles, and endless mode. Endless Mode gives you access to more powers as you unlock them in story mode. Furthermore, you can upgrade your powers by spending points earned from saving people to help you reach higher scores. Chillingo opted to have Save Them All use GameCenter exclusively instead of adding support for their Crystal.

Save Them All suffers a bit from genre burn out. There are just so many endless runner games that most people have played to death, it makes it hard to innovate. It seems like this have some nice ideas and while the game is a solid example of the genre, I think the execution of those ideas was a little off. The screen become a chaotic mess later on and you are constantly swiping in front of the screen to activate your abilities. If you are new to the iOS and endless runner games, then Save Them All might be a nice intro for you. If you are a die hard gamer looking for the next big thing, I think you could find better.