Spirit is one of those games that is an excellent game in every regard. It does not fall short or underperform in any area and it is a game that you don’t want to overlook! It is also unique as well, there really is no other game in the App Store quite like Spirit made by Marco Mazzoli. Spirit has you using your finger to encircle enemies with a wormhole like vortex that rips the fabric of space and time to suck your enemies into oblivion. Yes, It is that intense and awesome! You create the vortex like wormhole by simply making complete loops. You can make the loop any shape and size you want all as long you don’t run into any enemies or move too slowly. You get a visual confirmation of the loop from a trail that is tailing your spirit whenever and where ever it moves and you only get so much time to complete the loop before it dissipates and disappears, causing you to need to start a new loop. The full loop is completed when you touch any part of your trail that hasn’t dissipated or disappeared. A good thing about the wormhole vortex is that you don’t have to worry about being sucked up as well. You created it, and it is your life saving friend. When you do go into it though, your spirit will just spin around in circles on screen until it disappears, but that doesn’t effect how it moves. Movement for your spirit can be done by touching anywhere on screen, but the gameplay area is limited to a predefined rectangle like shape with a solid border that you can clearly see and can’t pass through. Why this poor spirit is being attacked in such a defined area and how it is able to create these wormhole like vortexs, we may never know, but it certainly doesn’t hurt or take away from the games greatness and overall fun.

One of the greatest things about Spirit is that it has increadibly smooth gameplay. The game utilizes the properties of the iPhone/iPod Touch perfectly. It uses the touch screen to its full potential, from corner to corner and with every pixel inbetween. Your on screen spirit follows your finger like a dream. You can also use relative movement to keep your finger away from the on screen spirit, instead of right on top of it, so you can see where the spirit is going. On top of that, a recent update has made the game even better with several different changes. It was good before, but it is fantastic now. The online leaderboards also confirm this. There are no controls for tilt movements using the accelerometer in the game, but the on screen touch controls have been tweaked to make them nearly perfect.

Another really great thing about Spirit the graphics! They are incredible and completely amazing. Everything in the game glows with a beautiful neon aura that is really pleasant to look at. Even the wormholes will glow with a different color based on the level you are on. The graphics just couldn’t be better and popout at you with an awe inspiring and brilliant shine. The music and sounds are equally amazing. The game has some really nice and relaxing music that clams you down and puts you in a serene state. All of the ingame sounds are also equally good and fit the game nicely.

Spirit also has plenty of challenge. There are many different enemy types, each with a different quality from some that will follow you to some that will try and shoot you and more. Each type of enemy is easily identifiable because each type has their own glowing color, shape, speed, and method of trying to kill you. You start out with only 2 lifes, but can pickup extra lifes by detaching them from enemies that will popup with the extra life attached to them with a glowing string. But be careful when you are doing this because you can also suck up your extra life and lose it to your wormhole vortex. The game will end when you run out of lifes.

In between stages which have multiple levels, there are also bonus levels that let you try and just collect points without the need to worry about running into enemies. The game also uses a neat scoring system that makes use of links and combos to amass huge scores. You create links by creating multiple vortexs that you link together when you move over them and are sucking up enemies. You create combos by sucking up more then one enemy at a time. You can then combine the two for some really nice scores.

At the main menu, you can learn how to play, start a new game, go to the options, or go to OpenFeint. Learning how to play the game is totally simple and it takes no time to dive right in and start playing. The options let you change the sound effect and music volumes as well as change the movement sensitivity. You can select a new game from the choices of the two game modes: Normal and Extreme. Normal mode starts out really easy and builds up difficulty. Extreme mode starts at a harder difficulty to get you right into some heavy action. Also, a resume function lets you resume your last game where you left off when you exit the game. OpenFeint is included in the game so it has online leaderboards and the other nice features that OpenFeint provides. There are no achievements for Spirit yet, but they are coming in the next update! Achievements will further increase Spirit‘s overall awesomeness. This is really a fantastic game that everyone should get and not pass up!

Spirit on the App Store.