Blowfish Meets Meteor Review

Sky Tyrannosaur tries its hand at making a unique block-breaking iOS game with Blowfish Meets Meteor (BMM). The story goes a little like this: a meteor crashes into the bottom of the ocean, trapping hundreds of mermaids in debris, and it’s up to the player to take that meteor and bust the mermaids free, reuniting them with their family.

Each level has you playing as the father of the trapped mermaids— a scuba diver armed with the bouncing meteor. Much like the Arkanoid series, your goal is to maneuver left and right, continually bouncing the meteor into bricks, around obstacles, and through evil sea creatures like piranhas, in order to free your offspring. Players are bound to the bottom of the screen, and if the ball passes them, it shatters the glass house you share with Mrs. Mermaid and your daughters. Other debris will fall as well and you’ve got to catch it before it breaks the house, adding a level of difficulty and making you feel a bit like a little kid playing “Don’t let it touch the ground!” with a balloon.

Sky Tyrannosaur

There’s an entire world under the sea, which BMM recognizes by providing six zones with ten levels each. Along with the large amount of levels, there are little power-ups, like TNT you can throw for more precise destruction and additional objectives to help mix things up. Gems are rewarded for doing well which allow you to… acquire an unknown prize, which is very intriguing. The gems fall into a cavern and you have to accumulate a certain amount before you know what the reward is.

Sky Tyrannosaur

BMM’s controls have some serious issues. They’re simple enough once you know what they are, but they’re not exactly intuitive. Since there’s no in-game tutorial the only way you’re going to figure out how to do things, like chuck explosives, is if you find the help page within the game’s menus. [Ed.'s note: Sky Tyrannosaur reached out to let us know the tutorials have been added in a new update.] Once the search to discover how the controls work is over, players will find a reward of sluggish controls. The scuba diver is supposed to follow the player’s finger swipes; but, just like a manatee with ADD, it’s always takes it a second to respond. The ball moves pretty sluggishly as well and there are a lot of bricks needing busted so it can sometimes take a while to beat a level. Then a lot of the time, your view of your slow-moving scuba diver is obstructed by your finger, making it hard to know exactly what you’re doing. One cool and unique aspect of the controls is that players can summon their meteor back to the scuba diver, giving them an extra degree of control compared to other block-breaking games.

Sky Tyrannosaur

Blowfish Meets Meteor may have a nonsensical name, but one thing that makes perfect sense is its gorgeous animation. Every character, background, and special effect look great, with sea creatures that are cute, menacing, or menacingly cute. The levels are bright and colorful, creating a fun world to splash around in. On the audio side of things, the music shines nicely, and the sound effects do their job… though one particular sound effect will quickly grow to grate on the nerves of every player— your mermaid wife crying like a baby when you lose a level. The sound effects and music are capable of being turned off thankfully so you don’t have to listen to that horrible cry all the time and just enjoy the music.

While this isn’t the most fast-paced title on the app store, its colorful artwork, easy difficulty curve and large amount of content make Blowfish Meets Meteor a good choice for anyone looking to kill some time by bouncing a ball into bricks. Sky Tyrannosaur has been extremely receptive to feedback by adding Game Center abilities with achievements and audio settings, so perhaps they’ll get those sluggish controls fixed as well.

This review was completed using a download code for Blowfish Meets Meteor provided by the developer for iOS.