EDITOR’S CHOICE
Loosely: in the sky, with diamonds
You don’t need to know much about Whale Trail. It’s a side-scrolling, one-button, cave-flying game for iOS. It uses the full resolution of each device and syncs stats via Game Center.
Willow the Whale floats across an endless sky; you tap the screen to make him soar, stop to let him swoop. Coloured bubbles keep him up, dark clouds bring him down. Fly too low and it’s game over. Simple to pick up, rewardingly amusing, this would only not be fun if it wasn’t carefully judged and beautifully designed, and it is.
The logical, forgiving response of Willow’s
trajectory, which always makes you feel you could have got it just right. The way Willow’s nose twitches when you tap. The gloriously silly soundtrack by Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. All things considered, instead of reading about it, you really might as well pay your 69p and play it for yourself.
Which brings us to the real point of this review, which is to ponder the bizarre state of the iOS App Store. There are now more than half a million titles available, and with the Store’s promotional spots awarded entirely at the discretion of Apple, there’s no direct way for any of these apps to make itself any more visible than the rest. That ought to mean anybody, not just big players, has a chance. But it’s getting perilously close to meaning nobody does.
Whale Trail is one of a series of self-commissioned projects from Ustwo, a UK-based studio that’s made ‘a shitload of money’ creating branded apps. While they can’t reveal much about these projects, they’re open about the fortunes of their own apps. A chart released on Twitter soon after Whale Trail’s launch showed sales spiking at over 11,000 a day, then dropping like a flying whale. At a selling price of 69p – of which Apple takes 30% – the app is a long way from making back the money Ustwo put into it.
As founders Mills and Sinx explain in a ‘making of’ video (bit.ly/uvXcNG): ‘Four people in their bedroom could probably make this for 50 grand, but for us it costs an awful lot more.’ Thanks to the overheads of running a professional team, Whale Trail needed around 300,000 sales to break even. It isn’t looking very likely to get there.
As we went to press, a huge update was in the wings, adding 32 discrete new levels. This should reduce the putdownability inherent in a game that starts in the same place every time, although Whale Trail was pretty addictive despite that. Whether this is enough to supercharge sales – well, you’ll doubtless find out at twitter.com/millsustwo. But when an app as shiny and satisfying as this can’t reach a sufficient audience, the adolescent App Store needs to grow up.
Adam Banks
Price: 69p
From: App Store
Needs: iPad, iPhone 3GS, or iPod touch second-generation or higher
Pro: Superbly designed + Simple fun
Con: Repetitive, but lots of new levels since we reviewed it
