The Touch Arcade forums are not my favourite place on the web. I’ve not found anywhere else with so much chat about iPhone games and there are some good posters, but there’s an awful lot of static in between the good stuff. Recently, an awful lot of that static has been about Minigore, with the anticipation thread especially being nothing more than a churning mass of adolescent hype. A lot of it’s been at least semi-ironic, but there’s no doubt that a lot of people have been hyped up to the eyeballs for the release of this game.

Which, of course, has made me very curious about it. That’s the thing about hype – it works. Oh, in the long term it can backfire, but for getting sales on the day of release there’s nothing like it. Even people, like me, who weren’t caught up in storm have at least heard the thunder claps a few miles down the road.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I bought Minigore because of the hype. And because it was only 59p. And because it’s absolutely bloody gorgeous. Take a look.


It’s not much of an action shot, because there’s no time to take a picture when stuff’s happening, but you should at least be able to tell that it’s a good-looking little game. It’s a simple twin-stick shooter, with a small level and a few different sizes of enemy, with the bigger ones splitting into smaller ones when you shoot them. There’s not very much to it, but what you get it is polished, fast and fun. Think Zombies & Me for a similar amount of game and polish.

It also uses the OpenFeint system for leaderboards. This is good, because it means there actually are leaderboards, but it’s got the usual problem of not showing your position on them. (It’s possible I’ve missed something every time I’ve looked at a Feint-based leaderboard, but I have my doubts.)

The developer is promising many updates in the future, including a co-op mode – though unfortunately that won’t be online. For now, we’ve just got one small level, two guns and a great power-up that turns you into a beast and lets you kill everything you touch for a few satisfying seconds.


So, it’s not the best iPhone game ever, but it is well worth checking out as long as you’re only expecting an unpretentious little shooter. It has to be said, though, that Isotope is the same price and is a much better twin-stick shooter with a lot more going on.