Adult Swim reveals what really happened to the dinosaurs in Velocirapture

Velocirapture is a new title published by Adult Swim and developed by PikPok, creators of recent App Store App of the Week Monsters Ate My Condo.The new game is a Universal download for iOS devices and is currently available for $0.99 -- 50% off what will become its regular price. Velocirapture's premise is that the dinosaurs died out not due to a natural phenomenon, but because of a Biblical-style Rapture. During this Rapture, the Hand of God lifted the righteous green dinosaurs into heaven while smiting the evil red dinosaurs into oblivion. It is up to the player to ensure that the Hand of God does its job properly. Velocirapture is based around a very simple control scheme. Green dinosaurs must be "flicked" into the waiting open Hand of God at the top of the screen, while red dinosaurs may be struck down with the full fury of the Lord by dragging a line from the Hand to the target. This line may be dragged through several dinosaurs at once to gain combo bonuses, though it may also strike green dinosaurs if the player is not careful. Making any kind of mistake, be it smiting a green dinosaur, flicking a red dinosaur into the Hand or letting certain red dinosaurs kill green ones, costs the player Glory and resets their combo bonus; when their Glory runs out, the game is over. Redeeming green dinosaurs allows the player to recover a small amount of glory, however. There are two game modes in Velocirapture. Endless mode is the only one unlocked from the start of the game, and simply tasks the player with surviving as long as possible against increasingly-difficult incoming hordes of red and green dinosaurs. Scoring set numbers of points on a single Endless stage unlocks different environments and, early in the game, also provides access to the level-based Story mode. Here, players only have to deal with a set amount of dinosaurs at once, and are then given a ranking between one and three eggs according to their score at the end of the stage. Completing all of the stages in a particular "world" unlocks access to "Super Smite" special abilities which provide the player with a significant advantage. The game features no monetization outside of its initial price, meaning that players must demonstrate their skill (and/or endurance) to unlock everything the game has to offer. Adult Swim and its partner developers such as PikPok have experimented with titles that both do and don't include in-app purchasing in the past, and generally don't force excessive monetization in where it's not wanted or where it would spoil the flow of the game. Some App Store reviewers are starting to respond negatively to games where unnecessary, game-breaking in-app purchasing is implemented, so it is good to see a developer paying attention to feedback. Socially, Velocirapture supports Game Center for both leaderboards and achievements, though the player is only ranked on Endless games, not the level-based Story mode. This is because there is theoretically a "maximum" score that a player can attain on any one level, whereas in Endless mode the maximum score is limited only by the player's skill and/or patience. At the time of writing, some very high scores have been recorded but there does not seem to have been any leaderboard hacking or cheating to attain unfeasibly massive scores as yet. This is becoming an increasing problem with popular Game Center-supporting games -- a look at the Pocket Planes leaderboards will make it very clear why this is an issue, for example -- so it is worth noting when a game doesn't suffer from this. Whether this situation continues remains to be seen, but for now the Velocirapture player base seems to be keeping it honest. Velocirapture is a good, simple game that is ideal for the mobile platform. The touch controls are well-implemented and the two game modes cater to both quick play sessions and longer, more competitive attempts. The audio-visual presentation is excellent and the game simply lets players get on with playing without nagging them for in-app purchases or to share things on social networks. It's a great addition to Adult Swim's library of quality mobile games, and sure to keep PikPok working with the developer in future. Velocirapture is not yet listed on the App Store leaderboards as a new title. Check back shortly to follow its progress with AppData, our tracking service for iOS and social games and developers.

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Adult Swim reveals what really happened to the dinosaurs in Velocirapture

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