Video game number one hundred and sixty five: Space Ark

Video game review number one hundred and sixty five in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is"Space Ark".

Do you like to bounce? Then Space Ark is the game for you.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea of having tigers, zebras and leopards bounce up and down on a giant diaphragm collecting fruit and chunks of DNA, but bravo...they have created a new genre.

Basically, you are a jungle animal of some sort, and you're in a space ship. You're searching for new life forms and new civilizations, only you have no prime directive. When you find a new planet, your job is to turn it into a hospitable environment for animals to live on. Basically, this means you teraform each rock you land on, and turn them all into copies of earth. Reminds me of Avatar.

To accomplish your mission, you'll need to bounce up and down on a trampoline thing to pick up fruit, power-ups and DNA. Once you've collected it all, the world you're bouncing on grows a bunch of houses and trees and you get to move onto the next level.

Confused? So am I.

While the premise of this game might be incredibly confusing, so is Katamari Damacy...and that turned out to be a wonderful game. Space Ark is actually rather fun to play, in a mindless arcadey sort of way, and really...who doesn't like bouncing? This game seems aimed at kids (or stoned adults) and is incredibly simple to pick up and learn. At the same time, it's hard to master (bouncing ain't easy after all)....and I was unable to get "perfect" on any of the levels after the tutorial. I'm sure I could do it with effort....but that doesn't seem like it would be a terribly productive use of my gaming time. No, I decided just to bounce on through the levels, to see what I might discover. The result? More bouncing.

Overall.. 6/10. This is something I might play while on a phone call or possibly while intoxicated. I can't see shoving Split Second, Red Dead, Blur or any of the other games I'm dying to get back to aside to play more of this one though...so it gets a six.

Achievements? In a game based on bouncing...I managed to get an achievement for bouncing 100 times in a row. I feel proud.