Nooms for iPhone, iPad Review

Our rating:

By: Mike Mellor

Version #: 1.5.0

Date Released:

Developer: By Mike Mellor Games

Price: Free

User Rating:

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In the 90’s there was a charming puzzle game that put you in charge of the fates of little green lemmings. You would assign tasks and maybe even sacrifices some to make sure they got from the door that dropped them out to the door that led on to another crazy map. Nooms advertises itself as a Lemmings clone, one that brings the essences of the original but without directly lifting content. Nooms has all the tools from it’s predecessor and even packs a few extra surprises. The question is; can Nooms stand up with it’s forefather, or does this game need to drive itself off a cliff.

Nooms comes with a story about these pink creatures, that remind me of little unborn babies, living underground on the moon. One day a Noom stumbles upon a portal and all the other nooms are sucked in with him. That is nice and all, but what about the game? In Nooms, you have a number of little guys coming out of one portal and you need to insure their safe travel to the other portal. This requires you to assign tasks to nooms like digging, blowing up, blocking other nooms from certain death. Each level gives you a certain number of each task so you must utilize the jobs provided which is not always the more straight forward. This tasks in Nooms are mostly taken from Lemmings, but there are a few twists that add a fresh take on that classic. One of these is the jump task. When you tap on a noom with the jump task you are given a slowly increasing power bar. When you untap, the noom will leap into the air. Another one is the rocket launcher. this tasks stops the noom and he gains a three buttons two of them move a recital sight from left to right in a semicircle while the other one fires a rockets much like the jump mechanism.

The graphics are simple and remind me of flash games you play on newgrounds. The noom’s fetus resemblance is a bit disconcerting at first. I also found the controls to be too touchy. At times I would be scrolling around the map and would accidentally set off a noom with whatever task I had last selected. There should be a way to unselect tasks so that you wont have any misfires. Otherwise I found Nooms to be a fairly good clone of the puzzle game that I grew up with. It does lack that wonderful confetti we loved to see when a lemming died. I also noticed there is a lot less sacrificing of your nooks which means this game will probably appeal to younger audiences that would have a hard time dealing with that aspect. The game is free and that gives you the first twenty-five level which is more than enough to figure out if this app is the right one for you. There are two more map packs that cost a total of $.99 so you can try the game risk free, and if you like it more levels are easy to add. If you were a fan of Lemmings, or maybe you are just looking for a fun action/puzzler then you might give Nooms a try.

We rate this app 4 out of 5 stars.