Gaming is big. But probability equations do not give a very good idea about what works and what doesn’t. The best a developer can do is to create something that (s)he anticipates his/her target audience to take interest in.
Tweaking Technologies decided to take its chances by launching Poly Drive, its first gaming app for both iOS and Android. On the face of it, the Poly Art format car game comes across as a fairly straight forward shooting and driving game. But look a little deeper, and the ‘fineprint’ has a lot to offer.
Let’s be clear at the offset. This game is not for hard-core gamers. It’s more of a lightweight, easy-to-navigate, casual game for a person looking to unwind after a particularly stressful day or wants to ward away boredom between flights. You get the idea, right?
Now onto the matter at hand…
To quote the makers, “It is a Poly Art endless driving & shooting game”. Well, that doesn’t say much about the gameplay but describes what you can expect in a nutshell.
So, let’s dig a little further. The game uses the minimalistic Poly Art format to its advantage.
Your default car is a basic mini model. As the game progresses, you can unlock up to 9 powerful, superior poly car models by collecting coins while driving. The cars navigate through 3 environments and face obstacles in the form of traffic and fully loaded bunkers, which fire bullets. You can either dodge these bullets by swerving or shoot at the bunkers to avoid being wrecked.
As and when you knock-down a bunker or navigate through traffic, you will be rewarded with coins which will unlock more and more powerful cars for you. Herein lies the interesting bit. Each car has varying degrees of ‘health’ that determines their speed during gameplay. The superior the car model, the better your chances of surviving. Unlocking the superior cars entail that you negotiate thicker traffic, more frequent shooting from bunkers, and clever manoeuvres. The 3D gaming format replicates a real-world driving circuit quite credibly. It is definitely not an easy circuit to drive on. You have to use your imagination and road-sense to master the course and unlock healthier cars to proceed to the next level.
The gameplay gets even more interesting with several power ups like shields, nitro mode which can increase your car speed for short spurts, going invisible and an easy-to-use UI. Neat graphics and interactive play makes Poly Drive a decent car game for amateurs. There are no complicated commands to control the car movements either. However, you can customize gameplay controls from game settings.
We are not going to divulge more technical details. Play the game and see for yourself what it is like. We think it’s a pretty neat game with quite a few surprises!