To get your game to market at a suitable time is key to success. Some game releases coincide with major games from Gameloft and Electronic Arts. Games can have even worse timing such as releasing a sniper game following a major shooting in the US. King of Terror surfaces right after the earthquake killing as many as 200.000 people in Haiti. Releasing a game that lets you wreck havoc on the population of the Earth a couple of weeks after a tragedy of the magnitude of Haiti is not a good business model.

In King of Terror you have 15 minutes to destroy the Earth, or at least kill as many of the Buchi inhabitants as possible. You can also play any of the challenge modes giving you harder goals to meet. To kill the Buchi you can either use natural disasters or go for them one at a time by simply tapping them once you zoomed in. Using the gestures for zoom in and out you change the weapons at your disposal. You can also create earthquakes by shaking the iPhone, and the more you shake the worse it gets. Drawing circular motions over water creates typhoons, and you can then direct it over land. Rubbing volcanoes set them off, and you can even melt the glaciers at the poles by rubbing quickly.

Graphics are quite ok with a cute cartoon style reminding somewhat of “I love Katamari”. It takes the edge of the seriousness of the game not having humans as torture objects. The game constantly throws text messages across the screen, and the small Buchi keep commenting on the abuse you put them through. No music to speak of, and the sound effects are quite annoying with squeaks and squeals. I rather drown it all out in my own music.

King of Terror is not a fun game, and even worse after the tragedy in Haiti. It is also a pain to play as it takes a lot of effort rubbing the screen to melt the glaciers. Once I figured out that melting the ice is a really efficient way of killing the population there hasn’t been any reason to replay the game.

I can’t recommend King of Terror as it is not fun to play, lacks challenge and feels wrong to play at all. Only the most eager twisted sadists will enjoy this one, and at least it might save the lives of a couple of kittens.

Final Rating

1pt5-stars

The King of Terror $0.99 Limited Sale price
Version: 1.0
Seller: Firedog Computer Entertainment Limited.

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The King of Terror review

Written By: Torbjorn Kamblad
February 10, 2010

Jake

This is not a professional review, as you let emotions get in the way and gave it an unfair write-up. I have released an iPhone game before, and in case you didn’t know, sometimes you have to wait a few months before it’s released, and Apple doesn’t allow you to dictate when an app should come out. The fact that a disaster game coincides with a real-life disaster should not affect its score, as the author is clearly not trying to cash in. I think this game deserves to have a new review written in a few weeks or months.
Tim

I don’t mind sadism. I think the important thing here is, “I can’t recommend King of Terror as it is not fun to play, lacks challenge,” and that doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with emotion. Hypothetically, as a game designer one would have to realize the effect this sort of game could have on an audience.

Disasters happen…they’re rarely very far from us, whether they be earthquakes in Haiti, hurricanes in Louisiana or Typhoons in Thailand. I’m sure we’re all aware of those things in real life, so it’s not inconceivable people will have a hard time swallowing something that seems to make light of those real-world situations.

I feel like if this were a kick-ass game it would have gotten a good score regardless. In any case, a review is a statement of opinion, so if we’re searching for complete objectivity, I think we’re going to find we’re out of luck. The fact remains, however, that the opinion of an experienced and well-regarded critic usually is seen to be more objective than that of someone who has a good deal of time and money involved in the project reviewed.

So…this game is probably not very good. Sorry to say, but at least a developer could try to improve his or her project through updates. Or cut their losses and get back to the drawing board.

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