Super Crate Box

The premise is simple: Run, jump, shoot, avoid monsters, kill monsters, collect crates. 
It’s the ingenuity in the way that the basic elements have been put together, make Super Crate Box shine. Out for iPhone and iPod Touch, for $1, it’s an addictive gem that should not to be missed.

By Julian Møller

Super Crate Box is actually a very simple game. It has retro-like graphics, a four-button control scheme, one-screen levels and unintelligent enemies. It looks, sounds and feels like a classic arcade game. And it’s all about beating the high score.

It’s a casual experience that you can pick up when you have a spare minute, but it has hardcore elements as well. You die easily, but it’s easy and fast to start again.

Instead of getting points by how long you survive or how many monsters you’ve killed, you get points for how many crates containing weapons you pick up. When you pick up a crate, your old weapon is replaced with a new one. Because the crates spawn at random positions, you are forced to keep moving around the level, and you never get to keep your favorite weapon for long.

The three different levels all have a hole in the ceiling and one or more fiery pits on the bottom. Monsters emerge from the top and waddle either left or right, turning around when they hit walls. This way, they make their way downwards. If the monsters fall into the fire, they don’t die: They just get angry and respawn at the top in a faster and redder edition. The type and amount of monsters that spawn at a given time is random. The three levels are quite similar, but their different layout makes the pacing and the viable strategies a lot different.

The game has a vast arsenal of weapons, ranging from a devastating bazooka over a almost melee katana and ending with the unforgiving disc-gun and the difficult to time mines. The weapons have very different use cases and potency, which makes sure that the gameplay becomes varied. Somehow the game knows that whatever weapon you just picked up is your least favorite, so it punishes you with sending huge waves down from the ceiling. Or so it seems. The game is full of moments that make you go Oh sh**!, all based on the randomness of the weapons and monster spawns. The game is unforgiving and hard, but never unfair.

The flamethrower is one of the more tricky weapons, as monsters need to walk through the fire for a while before they die.

Super Crate Box is structured in a way that makes you keep playing. In the beginning you only have a single weapon, but slowly, more and more weapons are unlocked, as you collect more and more crates. You also unlock later levels, when you have proved your proficiency in the previous ones. And then, you can unlock the harder versions of the levels, making the challenge even greater. The game also rewards you with vanity unlocks in the form new playable characters. A number of are characters from indie games, such as Super Meat Boy and Canabalt.

When you first start playing the game, you die. A lot. But then, slowly, you start to die later and later. You learn the rules of the game. You get better. You develop strategies, you learn when to retreat, when to stand your ground and clean up, and when to press on towards the next crate.
You actually get better at the game, even though it has many random elements, and that feels great.

Super Crate Box’ single problem is, that the control scheme becomes a bit awkward once you try to get high scores in the difficult versions of the level, when the number of monsters become very high, and simultaneous jumping and shooting becomes required.

The rocket launcher kills everything within its blast radius, but travels and reloads a bit slow.

The only meaningful score I can give a cheap game like Super Crate Box is whether or not to buy it. In this case, the verdict is Buy!!. The game can easily entertain you for many weeks, until you have unlocked everything and raked in all the achievements.

After that, it might be shelved, because new content doesn’t seem to be coming. But — for $1 (6 DKK), this game is a well worth the money and delivers far more value than its price.