Welcome Time Wasters!
I am mixing it up this week by checking out a game that isn’t out yet. However, I’m still sticking to my current goal of looking at more smartphones games. This week I was given the chance to try out BB Takes Flight, which is a game from the newly-created Dr. Seuss Studios.
As my regular readers already know, this isn’t a review. It’s not fair to review a game that is still in testing. Instead, I’m offering some thoughts about the game. Dr. Seuss Studios says they are looking for feedback for the game, and I hope they are ready for this.
BB Takes Flight is not the type of game I was expecting the Dr. Seuss name to be attached to. That’s because the game is just a simple clone of Flappy Bird. Yea, Flappy Bird. The developers behind this game are trying to make a clone of a game that experienced a brief period of viral success back in 2014.
It’s already bad enough trying to ride the coattails of a game five years after its success, but there are other problems with BB Takes Flight. Among these are the sheer amount of ads in the game. I hope you like getting hit with ads after every death. That frequency is dang annoying for a style of game where death comes quite often. Oh yeah. Let’s also not forget about the constant banner ad at the bottom of the screen. It’s there right at the title screen and persists throughout the actual gameplay as well. These banner ads are the worst because they actually block of part of the screen during play. At least other ad types wait until I’m not in the middle of play to bother me.
Looking at the finer aspects of BB Takes Flight also doesn’t leave me with much hope for the game. The hitbox for BB is rough to say the least. The game also uses a weird camera angle for the obstacles that have them at a slight angle instead of straight from the side. That leaves the perspective feeling a bit wonky and makes the collision boxes for these objects unclear. These are problems that more time in the oven can solve, but they still won’t change the core concept of the game.
It’s also worth noting that there are plenty of other aspects of BB Takes Flight that feel dang rough around the edges. Among these are the animations for the obstacles themselves. Sometimes the obstacles are actually creatures from the book Happy Birthday to You! You would think that there might be some animation for these creatures, seeing as they appear to be in motion, but there’s not. BB also has only the most basic of animations as well. Plus, the music and sound effects are incredibly generic. I hope the game’s not close to release, but it seems like it might be.
I really wish I was kidding about this, but I’m not. The game doesn’t try to be original in any way and instead just feels like a quick cash grab. If this is what Dr. Seuss Studios has planned for future games, then they should just call it quits now.