Review - Darklings

by Matt Taylor

Format reviewed on; iPhone 5 running 7.0.4
Developers; Mildmania
Publisher; b27
Formats; iOS
Darklings is an iOS game developed by MildMania, the first title available on iOS by the Turkish company. As a game made for a touch screen interface, it has accurate touch detection, but seems to suffer from an inherently mobile gaming problem. 


You play as Lum, who’s job it is to save the world from the Darklings, a collection of shadowy souls that are roaming the levels of the game. Lum is controlled by copying the pattern that each of the enemy characters carry on their foreheads. When the player preforms the pattern onscreen, Lum teleports into the creature and destroys the darkness from the inside out, in the process releasing stars that you can collect with a brief swipe of a finger.

Besides the occasional boss battle and backdrop change, that’s it.
The sound effects made by the onscreen monster killing are adorable, but the killing itself can be frustrating. When an assaulting wave of enemies approach at the same time it can be difficult to distinguish different patterns and it quickly turns into a mess of halved targets. Add this to touch controls that ask you to be pin point accurate which can often leave you squiggling the same pattern multiple times, I never felt truly in control of the little hero.
Picture
Mobile games are hard to get right, and it’s very rare that they last on my phone longer than a few weeks. I find that the “point” is either forgotten or was never there to begin, and it’s hard to put hours into something that doesn’t give me a point or aim. Looking at the successful mobile applications on the market, they are often story driven or have some special, new design feature. I found it challenging to want to give Darklings my time. I’m asked to collect stars; to earn power ups; which are then used to collect more stars. While not a diabolical task or request, I wasn’t driven by the game to continue collecting. I guess I’ll never unlock that Darth Vader mask. Sorry Lum.
Good - Backgrounds, character models and the aesthetic all work really well together, and give a cute but creepy feel to the whole game.

Bad - with frustrating swipe controls and no real point to the whole thing, I can’t really recommend that you spend the time required to unlock anything worthwhile

2/5
Game from Mildmania
Images - from Publisher