The Day After Tomorrow is Indiagames' mobile phone game take on the movie of the same name. In the movie, Dennis Quaid has to try to get to his son, who's trapped in New York when the environment goes haywire, causing an instant ice age along with a ton of other disasters. In game form, The Day After Tomorrow presents you with the challenge of making it through several disaster-themed levels, but the game's a little low on action and variety.
The game is a side-scroller, though unlike most action games, you aren't really facing any enemies in The Day After Tomorrow. Outside of occasionally getting attacked by a bear in one or two of the game's six levels, the game is basically an obstacle course that only has a few different obstacles in it. You'll have to jump over holes in the ground, duck under flying debris, push hot dog carts over dangerous terrain, and seek shelter when the conditions become too hostile. Various items, like chocolate bars and health packs, help keep you alive, as every little bump you take knocks off some of your health.
The levels are themed after different disasters. You'll start out by running away from a twister. Then you'll have to weather a hail storm. After ducking into the sewers, you'll be running to keep away from a flood. From there, there are two blizzard levels and the ever-popular "killer freeze." Despite a few graphical differences and the inclusion of animal attacks in the blizzard levels, most of the game is basically identical from one level to the next. The gameplay is functional, but wholly uninteresting from start to finish.
Graphically, the game looks good. In addition to all of the snow and hail falling, there are a lot of objects moving on-screen, and the game runs at a playable, though not entirely smooth, frame rate throughout. Sound-wise, the game has one short piece of music that it plays from time to time. When that music isn't playing, you get a few rudimentary sound effects. Overall, the audio portion of the presentation is fair, at best.
The Day After Tomorrow controls well and looks good, but the gameplay isn't deep enough to hold your interest for very long. You'll probably get through the game's levels in no time at all, and there's no real incentive for replaying the game, outside of trying to beat your previous scores. It might be worth taking a quick glance at if you're a big fan of side-scrollers or the movie, but don't expect to get much out of it.
