Part Time UFO
Adorable alien is eager to please
$3.99 Developer HAL Laboratory, halegg.jp/eng Made for iPhone, iPad Needs iOS 9.0 or later
E.T. has a fight on his hands for the title of most benign visitor to planet Earth. The protagonist here is a sentient spacecraft that’s eager to help humans with odd jobs. Equipped with only an arcade game-style claw crane, you’re tasked with picking up objects and transporting or assembling them.
The genuinely odd tasks you’re asked to do include lifting a cheerleader squad into formation, rebuilding a toppled museum exhibit that’s broken into pieces, and carefully balancing assorted animals on a pole held by an elephant that’s balancing on a ball.
The game is fairly flexible with how you accomplish each stage’s objective. You can arrange the cheerleaders in all sorts of implausible ways, for example. They and other objects you move are rigid shapes, though they react to bumps and gravity, making it possible to undo your hard work if you’re careless.
Each level has three bonus objectives, for which you’re awarded medals. These include assembling the cheerleaders in a way that exceeds a minimum height, putting the exhibit’s pieces back together in the correct order, and ensuring no animals fall off the elephant’s pole. The game is soon finished if you concentrate mostly on core objectives. However, it’s satisfying going back to try your hand at the rewards you previously missed, which extends the fun and value.
the bottom line. A short but sweet physics-based arcade game, Part Time UFO is charming, accessible and rewarding.