Lion Pride
Blue Fang Games
9.1 MB
$0.99
Lion Pride is a new fun take on the very popular line drawing genre for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It blends line drawing with a fight for survival as you take on the task of managing a pride of lions trying to survive on the unforgiving African Savannah. In Lion Pride you control all of the lionesses in the pride. Initially, you only have one lioness, but it does not take very long before you will have three to manage. The male lion of your pride is not under your direct control, but he is an important part of your prides survival and the success of your hunts. Just like with real lions, you will need to be strategic in your hunting; ruin too many hunts and the entire pride could wind up starving. Also, your lions aren’t the only predators on the Savannah. Hyenas are a powerful rival and they will eat or chase away prey animals so you must deal with them swiftly if you hope to succeed. To direct a lioness, simply draw a line away from her and she will follow; however, the game expands on that and uses a simple mechanic to let you decide whether she moves stealthily through the grass or charges in for the kill. If you draw at a slower rate, her path is repres
ented by white dots and she will move unseen through the grass. Draw more quickly, and her path is shown as red dots as she runs in for the attack. Your hunting success depends on more than your ability to have a lioness chasing down prey. To be successful, you will need to use stealth and strategy. Have a lioness move in close and then run in for the kill before her unwary prey can move. Alternatively, position other lionesses at key points and use one lioness to startle prey in their direction. The Savannah in Lion Pride is populated with a number of different animals to hunt including warthogs, antelope, zebra, and cape buffalo. Zebra and cape buffalo present their own challenge because they require multiple lions to coordinate for the kill. You must have two lions to take down a zebra or it will escape your grasp. Cape buffalo are even more devastating. They require three lions to kill them; anything less than that and the buffalo will throw the lion off and stun it for several seconds.
The game has eight stages and a Survival mode. As you progress through the stages, which all must be played to unlock Survival, new game elements are introduced. This offers a nice learning curve on how to deal with all the things you will see brought together in Survival mode. In addition, each Stage awards you with points, stats, and a letter grade showing how well you did. This definitely adds to the challenge if you want to try and get all A’s. There is also global scoring for Survival mode so you can see how well you stack up against other players.
Lion Pride features polished looking, cartoon-like graphics in an overhead view of the grasslands. The graphics give the game a cute and fun appearance that offset its more serious themes and are a pleasure to look at. The game’s background music consists of some unobtrusive jungle beats, but it is the animals that provide the bulk of the sounds. All the animals have their own unique, realistic vocalizations that really help set the tone of the game.
The games touch controls are really sensitive and it is sometimes hard to control the speed of your loins. Going slow will not count, you must move your finger extremely slow in order to sneak up on prey. Also when you are drawing a line and you place your finger on the lion, the first few dots may appear red then go white. This causes nearby animals to become startled and flee, thus lowering your prey for the pride.
Lion Pride is a fun game that brings a unique twist to the line drawing or routing management type game. If you enjoy these types of games but want to do something more exciting than just docking ships or landing planes then you should try this fight for survival. Your success will depend on more than your ability to draw routes but also on your ability to make sound tactical decisions when hunting. Overall, Lion Pride is definitely a worthwhile game with lots of polish, challenge, and replayability.
9/10 - For sometimes hard to use controls.
