Think of Topple as a cross between Tetris and Jenga (but the bored, after-Jenga play, where you stack blocks to their noisy fall). Simply put, you have to stack blocks to a height goal. Like most good games, a simple premise usually means lasting power, which Topple has plus some fun visuals as well.
Each block has a spasmodic face that looks like it was designed by John Kricfalusi of “Ren and Stimpy” fame. If a block falls from the tower, it scrunches in fear or looks agape in horror.
When placed level, a block makes a “satisfied” face I like to call “post-potty”. Cuteness abounds! The accelerometer allows you to balance your blocks left or right to extend the life of your tower as you drop irregular chunks onto it, which adds to the cleverness of this app. On the downside, I experienced a bug while playing: music from your iPod might crash the iPhone to full rebooting. You can reduce the volume of the game music (why not just turn it off?) but that doesn’t seem to correct the problem.
“Lite” is appropriate for this fun, yet strangely obsessive strategy game. Galcon is one of those OCD games: it’s a poke-and-watch game which doesn’t lend much to game excitement, but the satisfaction of winning is like cleaning the bathroom. Job done! Oh no, Dirty again!
