Posted by Ryan Johnson on 09 3, 2010

Jungly Jump

Categories: Games, | 3 comments | |

Jungly Jump is a physics based strategy game involving Squaty and Spikey, you’re friendly neighborhood rabbit and porcupine. The two of them are hungry and to get dinner they shake the fruit trees and then hurl themselves high into the air to grab their prize. Squaty the rabbit has all the hops and uses them to leap from branch to branch, climbing higher and higher in the tree. Spikey stays put on a teeter-totter and when Squaty gets high enough in the tree Spikey signals him to leap onto the teeter-totter hurling Spikey high into the air so he grab dinner for them both.

Created by MEDL Mobile Inc., Jungly Jump is a game based on strategy, velocity, and angles. Unlike typical physics games where you commit to an angle and then just draw back a slingshot as far as you want before you launch, Jungly Jump requires you to not only pick an angle, but to tap the screen while Squaty is moving. To get the velocity that you need for your launch angle to be affective you’ve got to time Squaty’s launch perfectly. This added wrinkle makes the game more challenging than one might expect at first glance.

To advance past levels you need to collect enough fruit to move on. Earlier stages are quite basic, and after a few goes you’ll get through them fairly easily. It’s not long before the patterns of fruit become more difficult to navigate, and in addition become littered with inedible items that can both help and hurt. Coconuts serve as a barrier that ricochet you away when you touch them, honeycombs must be knocked down like a wrecking ball and can’t be penetrated with a single launch, cactus function like Velcro and when Spikey hits it he sticks, and worms that when touched cause the surrounding fruit to go rotten. These pesky preventers are not shy in where they lye, so for players that advance deep into the game, extremely challenging physics puzzles await you.

Thankfully there are some bonus items in Jungly Jump that can help make collecting fruit around the pesky bugaboos a bit easier. Mushrooms act as springboards and repel you in the opposite direction when you hit them, anti-gravity sends you ascending upward when you touch it, bombs take out pesky honeycombs that block your way, triple power, grow power, and bomb power all give you an extra try, as well as enhance Spikey’s effectiveness in getting knocking down barricades and collected large amounts of fruit.

Jungly Jump looks cuddly enough to be a 3 year olds best friend, but beneath it’s child-like exterior is a flat out tough game. Offering 12 different environments and 100 levels, you’re sure to get many hours and days of playability. Currently I’m only 17 levels deep and am already scratching my head wondering how to get past. Determining where in the tree to launch Squaty gets increasingly difficult as you get further in the game. At first I could launch him from the top over of the tree over and over again and would find a way to get past each level. That’s not the case later in the game because it becomes more and more critical that you take multiple angles to attack a puzzle. Many times you need to finesse your way in through a small window. Jungly Jump is a nice new addition to the physics based puzzle genre and without a doubt is worth the download. It’s well developed, has nice graphics, the puzzles are all very different, and it’s without a doubt a solid challenge for even the most skilled physics puzzler.

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