in Review / by walsh06

September 23, 2009

Foreword

Well its the craze for the iPod Touch and the thing i like most is that line drawing games are not really found on other platforms. A new genre has been founded. Anyway to add to this is Fare City, a game similar to Taxi jam, which is another type of these line drawing games.

Gameplay

Well you are running the taxis or the taxi service I guess seems as you control multiple taxis. The goal is simply to pick up and drop off your passengers. They are marked on the roads outside buildings and you must guide the car to them. Once they are picked up a circle will appear for where to drop them off. The way to tell each apart is by colour and there are a lot of colour variations so you can tell the difference between routes and destinations. The taxi will change to the colour of the passenger aswell. Each one gives a certain amount of money. If you get lots of fares in a row then you can get multipliers for more money.

You start off with only once car but you get more as time goes on so you have to manage more. The roads are double sided which means they can pass but junctions are where things get tricky. Two cars can turn into each other and both are eliminated with that. You get more lives as the game goes on which allows you to have on crash or more but keep going on. You’ll just lose those cars. There are online leaderboards which are great. I always like to see how I’m doing in comparison to everyone else.

Presentation

I love the graphics style in this game. It may not be for everyone but I really like it. The main color of the roads is black but then, as I said earlier, the cars and passengers are coloured. So they really stand out from the background and makes it easier to manage them. It looks great. There is some music in the game which is one of those cheerful tunes but nothing amazing. There are also some nice “Beep Beep” sounds and people calling for taxis. There is also the ever satisfying sound of Kaching!

Cons

Well one thing that I would like added is more maps. At the moment there is only one map and its just squares basically. I would like ones with maybe one way streets or awkward routes. It would add something different to the game and add some challenge to it.