Chee Ket Yung’s Spree Pop (out now, free) is the sort of game that everyone should have on their iPhones. It’s a vertical shooter that’s simple enough that you can instantly jump in and have fun for a few minutes, but addictive enough to keep you hooked for hours.
In it, you pilot a dinky orange spaceship against endless waves of alien monsters called “Sprees”. The objective of the game is to survive as long as you can and score as many points as possible by taking out enemies. Using intuitive one-touch controls, you steer your ship from left to right and blast aliens as they hurtle towards you.
Rather handily, each Spree displays a number which indicates how much health they have, so the idea is to begin by targeting the weaker ones. When destroyed, some enemies drop helpful power-ups, which do things like temporarily increase your ship’s rate and range of fire or slow down the next wave of attackers.
Spree Pop will likely be too simplistic and bare-bones for some player’s tastes, but personally I really like it. The clean, colorful visuals, jaunty soundtrack, and addictive gameplay all add up to a fun time. In fact, the only real gripe I have with it is the distractingly large ad banner that’s affixed to the bottom of the screen at all times — and thankfully that can be removed with a $1.99 IAP.
Verdict
Spree Pop is a stripped down, simple arcade shooter with fun game mechanics and colorful visuals. Delightfully easy to pick up and play but hard to put down.
