What happens when you take equal parts Tetris, Tower Bloxx, a physics engine, and random objects, mix well, and bake? I want to know too, so let’s find out as I review Crazy Construction.
Crazy Construction is a casual game that has you piling a bunch of objects to a precarious height on a series of insanely dodgy construction platforms that would be outlawed by just about any construction workers’ union on the planet. Somehow, once you’ve managed to balance the lot at a predefined height, a team of magical construction workers tun the mess into a building. Your object? Build a tower to the moon. Obviously. Your efforts are obstructed by a rival building company, and they’ll send their best worst team members to stop you. Because no one wants a tower that reaches all the way to the moon.
The game’s mechanics are just as insane as the premise, yet surprisingly simple. One by one, a series of inanely random objects will appear at the top of the screen, and you simply have to find a place on your mess below to slot it in. I’m not joking about how random these objects are. They range from office furniture, to vehicles, to sporting good, moai statues, cogs, wheels, and more. The trick is to figure out how best to balance the newcomers with what you already have. This works out to be harder than it sounds, since things get very unstable very quickly. On top of the chaos piling up on your lower 3DS screen, hazards will start appearing on your upper screen as you progress through the levels on your way to the moon. Crashing into these hazards will cause whatever object you’re lowering to lose control and careen into the palimpsest below. If things should fall off the sides of the building platform, a nuisance meter goes up. Fill the meter and its game over. Every five levels you’ll encounter a boss battle in the form of an employee of the rival company. They’ll attempt to screw up your construction by changing the game rules. For example, the first boss increases the falling speed of objects, while the second switches the buttons assigned to rotation.
Crazy Construction can be fun in short bursts, but it’s not the kind of game to keep coming back over and over. Once you’ve defeated the main mode and reached the moon, there’s an endless mode, but the nature of the game doesn’t change or evolve enough to keep it interesting. Yes, the difficulty changes with the increasing number of hazards, the increasing complexity of the object shapes, and the increasingly uneven building platforms, but once you’ve figured out the basic concept of how to build a steady base and get some height, it’s a simple game. Building a single level can get tedious sometimes, because nothing new is introduced within levels. The boss battles were far more exciting because the rule changes were sporadic and added something to the game that the regular levels lacked. I’d have loved to have seen a 2-player versus mode of this game, because that would have really added something.
Overall, Crazy Construction is simply slightly more than mediocre; there’s nothing game breaking, and the physics engine holds up well enough, if you’re up to the tedium of repetitively building the same mess over and over again. If you’re looking for something cheap and casual to play on your 3DS/2DS, I’d suggest giving it a go, but if you’re not into what amounts to Tetris with a physics engine, you’re better off skipping this one.
Final Score: 6 prawns stacked up to the moon…..out of 10
Detailed Information:
Developer: G-Style Games
Age Rating: 7+
Platform: Nintendo 3DS/2DS
RRP: (eShop download only)
Website: http://gstyle-games.com/en/3ds/crazy/index.html