Soppy's Adventure is a Windows Phone game that has you guiding a lost water droplet, Soppy, across multiple levels of play that are full of dangers. The goal is to help Soppy get through three worlds of danger and back to his home world.
You guide Soppy by a series of screen swipes to keep the water droplet in motion. Graphics are nice, game play challenging and there is a slow motion mode available to help with multi-tasking. Available for low-memory Windows Phones, Soppy makes a nice first impression but takes way too long to regenerate gaming lives. Soppy's Adventures could make for a nice time waster of a game for either the Windows Phone Kid's Corner or your main gaming library, you just have to pace yourself a bit.
The main menu for Soppy's Adventure is somewhat minimal with options to rate the game, jump into game play and view other gaming titles by the developer, Loon Apps. You also have options to mute the sound and/or music.
Game play is spread across three worlds - Jungle, Ice Land and Volcano. Each world has unique dangers to avoid and each level has three stars to collect. The more stars collected, the better your score once you cross the finish line.
Dangers range from thorny bushes, bugs, rock monsters, lava fields, ice patches and more. To help add to the challenge of game play, each level has a timer you are racing against. On the plus side, each level also has checkpoints that will allow you to save your gaming progress within each level.
Moving Soppy around is easy but takes a little practice to get the hang of mechanics. You swipe at the screen in the direction you want Soppy to move and continue the swipes to keep him airborne or moving in a direction.
The slow motion feature kicks in if you swipe and hold the screen while Soppy is in mid-flight. This will slow Soppy down to allow you to tap to open doors, gates and other obstacles in your way.
Again, the goal is to guide Soppy to the Finish Line of each level and collect as many stars as possible. You also have coins, gaming lives and other items that can be collected along the way. You'll need at least one star to advance to the next gaming level and additional gaming chapters and worlds will require a specific number of stars to unlock. All of which means, you may have to go back and replay a level to earn more stars.
Should Soppy meet his fate before crossing the Finish Line, you have the option to return to the main menu or replay the level. Now here is where Soppy loses some of its appeal.
You begin playing Soppy's Adventure with nine lives. Each level will require one life to play or replay. You can build up your lives through in-app purchases, collecting lives during game play and in collection 100 coins you will earn an extra life. Should you run out of lives, it will take you three hours before a free life is earned.
I'm not a big fan of requiring lives or tokens to play a game but I understand the why. However, a fifteen minute wait to see a life regenerated is a lot more reasonable than three hours. You do have the opportunity to collect extra lives during game play but no matter how you slice it, a three hour wait is just too long.
Overall Impression
Soppy's Adventure is a fun time waster of a Windows Phone game. The mechanics and gaming controls are easy to pick up and the levels of play will test your skills at timing and patience. Based on game play alone, Soppy's Adventure has a certain level of appeal.
I think the biggest drawback for Soppy's Adventure is the gaming lives. This aspect needs to be fine-tuned to either shorten the delay or maybe awarding the life back when you successfully complete a level. As is, should you exhaust all your lives the only option is to wait three hours or buy extra lives through in-app purchases. Neither of which does the game's appeal any good.
Overall, I liked Soppy's Adventure game play and found it to be an entertaining arcade game. The game, at last check, is pulling down a 5 Star rating in the Windows Phone Store. As is, I would rate the game closer to a 3 Star rating solely because of the gaming token issues. If Loon Apps could shorten the waiting period to something reasonable, I could see the game being rated in the 4 Star range.
