Simple concept, basic graphics, limited fun and limited lastability
User Rating: 3.5 | Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits DS
Mr Driller doesn't seem to explain the games concept at all, so on the first few attempts at playing this game, you aimlessly dig around and experiment. You dig to the sides and a rock crushes you, you dig down, and rocks crush you. Eventually you reach a situation where there are no rocks above, so you can just drill down as fast as possible with no danger from above. However, your air gauge declines over time, so you must pick up the air capsules or else you will suffocate. Some rocks cannot be broken easily, and if you do break these rocks, you will suffer an air penalty. All this means you cannot just find a situation with no rocks above and drill straight down, because you will stumble across these rocks, and also you must sometimes go out of your way to acquire the air capsules. Quite often, the game seems to come down to luck, although sometimes you can stop to think how to acquire the air capsules. But given the fact that your air is constantly depleting, and the main cause of death is rockfall, you may as well go for the quick option; drilling downwards and occasionally sidestep to dodge the falling rocks and the harder rocks. Drilling breaks a single rock, or multiple rocks if there are sequences of rocks of the same type, and falling rocks will join with similar colours, giving the potential for combos. Each stage has a certain distance you have to drill in multiples of 100 meters, and every 100 meters the rock layouts change. Certain layouts don't have many blocks of the same colour in close proximity, whereas other layouts will have large areas of co-joined coloured blocks. This means some layouts can be navigated at great speed, and others take some time. Initially, you start of with 3 lives,which seems a bit on the impossible side, but every metre you drill earns you points which you can spend in the Driller Store. After upgrading to 5 lives, extra air per capsule, and adding a protective bubble that prevents death from a single rockfall; the challenges seem more probable to finish. However, you can upgrade even further than this which starts making the game a bit on the easy side. In ways it seems silly to make the game easier as you progress with the game, maybe downgrading as you progress in favour of point bonuses would be a better situation. Overall, Mr Driller has quite a simple concept and basic graphics, but also features limited fun and lastability. It tends to feature mindlessly hammering the touch-screen/button and drill in a straight line without much thought.
