The other day, after several “trial” months, the Retry title from the new Rovio brand, LVL11, was launched all over the world. We have played it and are ready to share our impressions.
The new project from Rovio is stylized as an eight-bit game: a characteristic “wheezing” sound, a pixel picture, a soundtrack reminiscent of all the hits of the eighties at once.
The project has much in common with Flappy Bird and Swing Copters, so comparisons cannot be avoided. However, they are all (in our opinion) in favor of Retry. The level of difficulty, as in the mentioned titles, is far from casual, but there is no desire to launch a smartphone into the wall at the same time. The clumsiness of the character, which caused so much hatred in Nguyen’s projects, is present here, but to a lesser extent. The “Cornhusker” hardly gains altitude, glides gracefully, entering a peak and becomes completely uncontrollable only in a “dead loop”. A nice detail: in those places where the player lost control and crashed, there are translucent ghosts of the plane. He sticks into an obstacle with such a sound (we associate it with facepalm) that I want to throw my winged car into the wall again and again.
The issue of monetization in the game is solved very ingeniously. In-game currency – coins – are paid for checkpoints, that is, points on the route where there is an opportunity to save. Almost all coins are arranged in such a way that attempts to get them cause an accident. If you don’t want to collect or buy them – you can just watch a relatively short (27 seconds) video ad – the CTR in the game should be high.
In addition, the game has commercial levels. For example, one of them is paid for by YouTube. Your plane will fly past banners with symbols on its way and will collect recognizable Play buttons on the way for a prize – all the same coins. In fact, this is not even a level, but a real game advertisement (which, as we remember, sells better than usual).
Summing up: the Finns managed to create, even if not particularly original, but a charming game – thoughtful, solidly and soundly made, with a non-intrusive, but effective monetization scheme.
Other interesting materials on the topic:
- Rovio has launched a new publishing labelRovio has released Retry
- LVL11 is a publishing brand of the Finnish company Rovio, created to launch a project “different from Angry Birds”.
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