Ms. Splosion Man iPad Preview April 8, 2012

As I’m sure you can tell from the video I took of Chainsaw’s live performance, I spent a lot of time at PAX 2012 at the Twisted Pixel booth. Let me tell you, I had a blast.

Twisted Pixel was showing off a lot of their classic games to the PAX crowd in exchange for prizes and praise by the developers. However, they did a lot more than just promote games that have already been released, they were also allowing demos of their latest project, Ms. Splosion Man for the iPad.

Ms. Splosion Man was a sequel to Splosion Man, which were both Xbox Live Arcade exclusive releases.

iPad in hand, I was given the chance to experiment with the controls. The game had a dynamic thumbstick, there were only two directions that Ms. Splosion Man could go, left or right, and moving your finger in the appropriate direction from wherever you felt comfortable holding the device seemed to work pretty well. Ms. Splosion Man does not jump, she explodes, and that is accomplished by tapping on the screen. Up to three explosions can be done before she runs out of juice and you’ll have to run around a bit in order for her to fully recharge.

Now, I’m ashamed to admit it but I went into playing this game on the iPad having never played the game (or its predecessor) on the Xbox 360. Because of that I paid very close attention to the instructions that the technician told me, but there were still several things I had to find out for myself, like wall bouncing.

The level I played was a very difficult challenge map. I have no idea if it was exclusive to the iPad version or if it had previously appeared in the Xbox 360 version (UPDATE: It was level 1-6 on the Xbox 360 version). The developer told me that this was one of their harder challenge maps (but not the hardest) and I was being timed and hopefully would complete it in under three minutes.

Having no familiarity with the Splosion Man control system, it took me a very short while to become accustomed to the way the game controls, but had I played the Xbox 360 version I probably would not have needed that time. In fact, since playing this demo on the iPad I went back and played through the trial of Splosion Man on Xbox Live Arcade and found I had the game’s controls down pat already.

I was able to complete the level, deaths and all, in about ten minutes, but that was not having any previous knowledge of the control system or how to navigate the level. Had I known the solutions to the puzzles before reaching them my time probably would have been a bit shorter. The solutions to the puzzles are not laid out for the player, but the level design does its best to hint to the player the solution on how to progress, of which there was only one (at least in the level that I played). The fact that I was able to complete the level cold was quite impressive.

Framerate was pretty solid, and there were plenty of great effects used. It wasn’t the smoothest game I ever played on a handheld device, but there were no hitches, slowdowns or framerate drops.

I don’t know which version iPad I demoed the game on but Twisted Pixel promised me that they would be releasing the game for iPhone, Windows Phone 7, PC (through STEAM) as well as iPad. No price point or release date was announced, but they said they were aiming for the summer. They also didn’t know if the game would support Apple Game Center integration for achievements.

I also asked if Twisted Pixel was planning on bringing any more of their already released games to multiple platforms following the release of Ms. Splosion Man (like for example, Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley), and while they made it clear to me that only Ms. Splosion Man was officially announced for the multiplatform re-release, that didn’t exclude the possibility that other games may get ports further down the road.