Developed by Brain Seal, Blow It Up is a blatant Angry Birds clone wrapped around a tightly designed over world map. There is a reason why Angry Birds has been so successful – it is a fun game, which means knock offs are inevitable.
Playing as a little bomb avatar guy within a voxel-based world, the player moves from stage to stage by navigating a simple overworld map. Then, completing stages rewards the player with a gold coin. Coins are then used to unlock more stages and new bombable characters until all 70+ stages are completed. It is a simple yet entertaining loop.
Just like Angry Birds, the player holds back the analog stick to launch bombs at destructible towers like aiming a slingshot. The challenge comes from destroying all the baddies while using the least amount of ammo as possible, again, just like Angry Birds. In fact, most of the launchable bombs mimic the different Angry Birds. There is a bomb that accelerates with great power. Another carpet bombs everything horizontally. Another drops vertically with one touch. By the end, the player has a wealth of attack options available so there often isn’t one clear way to beat a stage.
Even though gameplay is nothing more than Angry Birds, there are a few things that separate it, for better and worse, than Rovio’s smash hit. For example, all destroyable stages are composed of boxes which can fall in all three dimensions. So sometimes you’ll get a lucky/unlucky explosion that drops towers away from the screen instead of horizontally to knock down more towers. However, you cannot aim in the third dimension, only left and right. Falling away from targets can be enough to sometimes prevent a win, which can be frustrating. At least restarts are instant. The over world map is also small and quickly navigateable, but it is easy to oddly get caught on invisible borders of the environment. The main menu intro screen is also painfully boring and unexciting.
Perhaps my biggest compliant comes from the questionable choice of music. Pop Goes the Weasel, the famous children tune, is the main theme that carries throughout the entire game. It continuously loops to maddening effect. Silence would have been more preferred than this odd choice.
Blow It Up is far from anything original, it isn’t perfect, but still offers plenty of casual, addicting fun. The Steam version also only costs $5 while the console version are a couple bucks more. It is priced correctly and easily justifiable of a purchase especially when it goes on sale if you are a fan of Angry Birds or any of its numerous spinoffs.
Not As Good As: Angry Birds Star Wars
Also Play: Peggle
Wait For It: a 50% off sale
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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RATING
OUR SCORE - 8
8
SCORE
A carbon copy of Angry Birds, Blow It Up offers casual fun even though there is nothing original in its design.
Editor in Chief - been writing for mygamer,com for 20+ years. Gaming enthusiast. Hater of pants. Publisher of obscure gaming content on my YT channel.
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