Gyro: Twirl the spinner in this pure and simple addictive game!
As always we love indie games – especially the ones which are free because we think those developers are truly heroic. In this review we have a game made by Submachine Factory which is a 2-man indie studio from Poland. They must be drinking some special vodka because they’ve given the world a stonking good bit of fun! Read on to find out more…
Gameplay: The game revolves around a three coloured circular spinner in the middle of the screen. You can turn the spinner around its centre and the aim is to intercept the incoming orange, blue and pink circles. If you align the corresponding sector with the incoming colours correctly then you’ll start collecting points and you’ll add to your chain multiplier. Mismatch the colours though and your sector health will go down. If any of the sectors fully disappear then the game is over and your score is recorded to your top records.
Every good game always has some twists to keep the game invigorating, and this one throws special powerup balls at you. These extras will cause explosions, create shields or make defender satellites around your spinner. Then there are the skull balls – you must get them otherwise random unknown effects happen… “reverse steering” could kick in or the game goes into “overclock” and everything speeds up making it difficult to catch all the balls. It’s kind of hard to be sure if any of the specials actually help the player because for the majority of the time the “defenses” appear when you’re under control and instead of improving your score they’ll destroy the incoming balls thus reducing your chain potential.
Graphics: Minimalist is almost an understatement here. The overall style is simple sections of colour which move and interact with each other. You only ever see shades of three significant colours. But… that’s not to say the graphics aren’t polished. Even with such a pure setup, there are some subtle and beautiful additions: light trails, concentric circle explosions, glowing effects… it all swirls together delivering a complete game.
Music and Sound effects: These are much like the graphics… simple and pure. Very clean and generally neutral tonal sounds are blipped out as you collect the incoming spheres. Personally I find the setup quite elegant and it forms strong game character. But a slight demonic side of me somehow wishes there were some Eastern Europe club music pumped out in a special hardcore mode… it would make this difficult game truly hard to play though.
Interface: The spinner is made to feel realistic so your first touch on the screen will be like you just started touching the spinner itself. Then you can scroll around the centre of the circle to rotate the disc. There’s some realism built in so you can see that sometimes the disc will continue to move when you’ve let go due to the momentum. The game is inherently simple, so nothing much to report here apart from the fact that is intuitive and it’s probably going to be as responsive as your phone’s touch detection. One important thing to note it that it’s all single touch so it’ll benefit those phones out there which have bad multi-touch ability.
Gut thoughts: First impressions can be lacklustre for some people because there aren’t too many obvious thrills. However, download it and leave it on your phone and over time you’ll realise that this is a pretty fab game. The simplicity to it all makes it easy to pick up and quite addictive. Every now and then the game will shoot out a predictable pattern of balls which can induce some challenge. If you do well with the patterns it’ll make you feel good and want to play for that high score.
There is one negative I can think of… perhaps they could work on the sounds to be slightly more rewarding. The very neutral and dumbed down sounds don’t do them great favours. They could put in a little melody as the balls come in (like what happens in Jelly Defense when gems are taken).
Rating: 4/5 Gyro should be a keeper on every phone – it’s lightweight size and simple gameplay should work on every Android phone out there. It’s bizarrely addictive and is great for either a short or long train journey. If ever someone needed to prove that simple and clean gameplay can make a good game, then here it is!
Gyro Promotional Youtube Video
Gyro tips from Android Games Review:
The biggest problem for most people would be interpreting the spinner itself. The game sets everything up so intuitively that one would naturally start off by turning the dial like a disc. However, if you keep in the domain of realism then eventually you’ll give yourself blisters through rubbing your finger on your screen too much! So do the following to improve your score:
- Try to do all your touches close to the centre of the disc. This will increase your spin speed.
- Start by touching your desired colour and then moving in a straight line to the relevant place you want. Do this even if you move your finger touch in a line across the centre of the disc.
- Try and practise using both hands so that you can keep your hands generally clear of the screen. This will reduce the chance of your finger covering up a sneaky incoming circle.
- Practise makes perfect… Some patterns just screw with your head, and you need to get good at handling some set pieces as well as improving your ability to recover from any mistakes.
Developers: Submachine Factory
Gyro QR Code
(Click on the image or scan the barcode with your Android phone to goto Google Play)
