Wednesday, April 6, 2011 9:50 PM
Mos Speedrun contains 20 levels, each with 4 distinct goals to attain. There's simply completing the level, completing the level within the specified time goal, collecting every coin in the level, and searching out and collecting a hidden skull. The different goals are a great design decision, and give reason to play each level multiple times. You can leisurely explore a level collecting coins and looking for the hidden skull, but this also gives you a chance to familiarize yourself with its layout. Once you have a good feel for a level, you can easily go back on a different try and attempt the speed run with a better idea of what to expect.
The levels in Mos Speedrun are well designed, with all the usual trappings of a typical platform game. There's environmental hazards like laval pits and spikes as well as various enemy types which must be avoided. You can't kill enemies, and a single touch to an enemy or hazard will kill your little guy and end your current run. There's only movement and jumping to worry about, and in this way Mos Speedrun is platforming distilled to its purest form. There's even extensive underwater portions, which harken back to classic Sonic the Hedgehog levels where you must keep an eye on your oxygen meter and search out bubble areas to breathe from.
My much preferred control scheme is a simple virtual button setup, with left and right arrows for movement and a single button for jumping. This scheme works great, and approaches the tightness and responsiveness of the current King of platformer virtual controls League of Evil [99�/Lite]. My one small criticism is that I feel the area around the jump button could be enlarged, as I occasionally will fat-thumb it and miss the button altogether, but it's not really a huge issue.
Another point about Mos Speedrun is that while the ghost aspect is a neat idea, I didn't really feel like it added anything to the game and in fact found them to be distracting most of the time. They can be turned off, but I'd like to see options for seeing just the ghost for your current best run or maybe even a single previous attempt rather than all of them at once. Some players in our forums really seem to enjoy the ghost aspect though, so your mileage may vary with this particular feature.
Mos Speedrun is definitely another solid entry in the iOS platforming genre. The levels are interesting, the controls are spot on, and the game uses adorable pixel art graphics and an awesome chiptune soundtrack. Plus, despite not having a huge number of levels, the ones that are there will put up a good fight and are a joy to play through. If you've found yourself enjoying the many other platforming games in the App Store, and you're intrigued by the speed run aspect and the retro style of this title, then don't hesitate to give Mos Speedrun a try.
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