PDAMill released Xplodus, a Bomberman clone
By Werner Ruotsalainen, Submitted Thursday, June 1, 2006
http://www.pdamill.com/prod_xp.shtml?ref=newsletter#ss
There are dozens of Bomberman clones for the Pocket PC. (In addition to the Wiki article, which, unfortunately, doesn’t list online/Pocket PC games, I recommend this Flash animation if you don’t know the genre and want to quickly get familiar with it, without the need to download/install anything). The new title, Xplodus by the infamous Hungarian multiplatform games company PDAMill, is the latest release in this genre. The game is available here.
I don’t speak much of the game itself – if you know a Bomberman clone, you know them all. Also, you will be able to navigate the menus/setting dialogs after some seconds of starting the game so I don’t elaborate on them either. That is, let’s move straight to the pros/cons section – something a decent comparative review should always have.
Pros
- broad device compatibility: it’s compliant with even Pocket PC 2002 devices, which is admirable – and, also with the WM5-upgraded HP iPAQ hx4700. On all my six test devices (iPAQ h3660, h2210, WM5 hx4700, Pocket Loox 720, Dell Axim x51v, HTC Wizard), it works without problems
- doesn’t have high resource demands; works great for example on both my almost 5-year-old iPAQ 3660 and “slow” HTC Wizard
- your sprite can be, as opposed to most other Bomberman clones, controlled by the stylus. This also means you can play the game on devices with non-gaming-friendly D-pads (including the hx4700).
- it even has (a limited) pathfinding algorithm if you use the stylus - that is, it's much easier to control than most other Bomberman clones!
- pretty good in-game music (not stereo though)
- pretty cheap ($10)
- no multiplayer as opposed to Infinite Dreams’ Explode Arena or 4Pockets' Great Gold Rush, the two other, really good Bomberman clones
- QVGA resolution “only” – no Hi-Res version. (Nevertheless, it works great on VGA devices too.)
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Allen Gall's excellent review of the game can be found here.