Gameplay Today - Because You're Always Gaming

Have you ever wanted to play a light-hearted game consisting of several puzzles in which the main goal is to slingshot wingless birds into simple complexes made of basic building blocks, collapsing them and thereby killing their limbless pig inhabitants? Perhaps these birds would even be agitated in some way and that might be their motivation for going after the pigs. I can't think of anything fitting that description on the iPhone, but Trucks and Skulls comes pretty damn close to making my fever dream of a game into a reality. In fact, aside from replacing birds with trucks, pigs with skulls, and light-hearted nature with testosterone-infused metalhead mentality, this game is identical to the one from my imagination.

There are some differences, but the properties of trucks you are given in Trucks and Skulls almost exactly mimics the types of birds I thought might be provided if my idea ever came to fruition. There are ones which speed up, split apart, drop a bomb, dive, or explode when you touch the screen, each of which have different weights and sizes. This game is also significantly easier than the one in my head. Although a different strategy is required for beating each level as efficiently as possible, I solved most of them using a single truck and was never forced to actually use all the ones I was given. The already low difficulty of this game only decreases when nuclear reactors are introduced. If any object lands in these, everything on the screen is automatically destroyed. At that point, it becomes a game of resetting the level until you can land something in one of those on the first shot and thereby easily getting the maximum possible score each and every time.

Trucks and Skulls fully commits to its heavy metal style. Everything from the backgrounds to the stuff you're destroying to the trucks themselves look as though they came straight out of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The sound design in Trucks and Skulls is similar in its attitude, never missing an opportunity to play an electric guitar riff, rev and engine, or detonate something in a fiery explosion. It's a good thing that those explosions also look as good as they do considering a second rarely goes by without something blowing up. All objects in fact, are highly detailed in both their models and animation, rivaling the graphical fortitude of my imagined game featuring ill-tempered wingless fowl.

This game, while offering a lesser challenge than the one I dreamed up and totally doesn't really exist, can still be a lot of fun. Featured here are 181 levels to go through and the promise of more to come with future updates. This is a highly original game with no rivals on the iPhone app store. However, having envisioned my game of infuriated flying animals for so long, I can't help but feel that I've played it all before.