Sticky: Ramp Champ: The Review. Plus WIN A Copy! [WINNERS ANNOUNCED] [Updatedx2]

Posted on August 30th, 2009. Written by Connor.

This Contest is Now CLOSED. Thanks for Entering!

Ramp Champ: Beautifully designed, no doubt. You can tell from the screenshots alone! But, how does the gameplay stack up against the visuals?

I purchased Ramp Champ as soon as it came out, due to my favourite artist (and employee over at Iconfactory) David Lanham tweeting about his involvement with the title. Plus, it’s skee ball. Who doesn’t love skee ball?

When I first launched the application, I was greeted with an incredibly nicely designed carnival-style interface, with fonts to match. It all looks incredibly impressive, and believe me, eye candy is important to me. A game can have amazing gameplay, but if the UI looks like it was done by a five year old, I’m bailing. So, needless to say, my attention was had.

Essentially, the game is just skee ball. Now, I’m not saying that in a negative way, but some people have cried out in a thirst for more variety. Luckily, the game comes with four themed ramps, which, surprisingly, add a whole lot of variety. The four ramps are Clown Town (which seems very familiar to a lot of real-life skee ball machines I’ve played, with clown cutouts), Breakwater Bay (with an underwater theme), Space Swarm (with a space invaders theme), and The Icon Garden (with pixelly icon-esque targets).

I soon discovered the “Add-ons” menu item, and explored further, only to find that you can purchase two more ramp packs (each with two ramps, some challenges, etc…) for $0.99 each. This is cool, in that it keeps things fresh, but it also sucks, in that these were on sale at time of release.

This means that these ramps were all finished when the game hit the app store, yet they still decided to charge extra for them. I could understand charging for DLC if you were still working on it during the release and had to release it later on down the road, but these things were finished, and they didn’t just include them in the game. That irked me a bit.

And, while disagreeing with this practice, I still shelled out the extra two bucks to get the full experience. (And to bring you the full experience. I was only thinking of you, dear reader.)

There are two things that keep me coming back to this game (other than the fun gameplay and amazing eye candy) – Tickets, and challenges (which, as I previously mentioned, you also get a few more of with the DLC). Challenges are incredibly time-consuming, and require pinpoint skee ball accuracy.

A lot of the time, to achieve a challenge, you have to hit multiple targets with one ball. It really gets tough, and I’ve only unlocked a few so far, but with every challenge you get a trophy in your loot to display proudly to… Yourself. I guess. (You can also get a few trophies with a nice little easter egg.)

Tickets, on the other hand, are easily obtained, but take a bit to be worth anything. For each 500 points in a game, you get 1 ticket. So, if I roll a 2750 game, I’m getting 5 tickets.

With these tickets, you can redeem neat little prizes that sit in your loot. These vary from the Twitterrific bird icon to a pot of gold to a giant, smiling tooth. They’re all so much fun to look at, and fun to try and “win.”

When I completed my very first round of Ramp Champ, I was greeted with the amazing looking ticket dispenser. The tickets fly out of the machine, all numbered to show you how many you have, and all perforated to convey realism. There is a big “Try Again” button above the dispenser, allowing you to try your hand at another round.
Now, I think the developers missed a huge opportunity here — you cannot tear the tickets out of the machine. Yeah, really. I tried for like, five minutes to no avail. They just sit there, and are added to your collection when you hit “Try Again” or “Menu” or whatever you want to hit. I was incredibly disappointed. (So, devs, if you’re reading this — please implement that. It will make your game 10x better, all by itself.)

Now, one major problem I found with Ramp Champ is how crashy it is. On my 1G iPod Touch, it crashes every… Maybe, 10 minutes or so. It’s incredibly disappointing, especially how this happens mid-round essentially every time. I’ve had reports of it running fine, with only a few crashes, on an iPhone 3GS, so if you’ve got one of those, you should be fine. But for those of us stuck in the theoretical stone age of the iWorld, crashyness is a given, and it’s a problem.

That out of the way, Ramp Champ is, all-in-all, amazing. With incredibly addictive gameplay, and prizes to keep you coming back, this one is sure to stay on your iDevice for a good bit of time.

Update: I have been told by @AndyL19 that version 1.01 has been submitted, and it fixes the crashing problem! Hoorah!

Update 2: Ramp Champ 1.01 pushed through yesterday! And, guess what? — No more crashing!
Oh, and… You’re in for a surprise. You can now tear tickets! Yeah, awesome, am I right? This game. Is complete.

If you haven’t picked up a copy as of yet, now is the perfect time to do it. I cannot recommend this game enough, especially after this awesome update.

Current Status: Highly Recommended

Reviewed at: v1.0
Reviewed on Firmware: 3.0
Download size: 21.5MBs
Released on: 21st August 2009
Retails for: £1.22 / $1.99

Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G / iPhone 3Gs

AND THE WINNER IS…

It took a lot of waiting with a good bit of entries, and we finally have our winner.

The winner of the Ramp Champ promo code is… Jayson Biadog! Congrats!

I’m emailing out your promo code now! Thanks to everyone for entering! Best of luck next time!

ORIGINAL CONTEST

WIN A COPY!

The developers of Ramp Champ were kind enough to give me a promo code to give away to one lucky reader. So, who will it be…? Only time will tell. All you’ve gotta do to enter is leave us a comment on this post, saying something not spammy about Ramp Champ.

The competition will be closed a week from today, on the 6th of September.

Terms and Conditions

• This RazorianFly contest is open to all residents worldwide. Although, please be aware a US iTunes account will be required in order to redeem the promo code and you must be 13 years of age (or older) to enter.
• Judges decision is final.
• Winners will be contacted via e-mail.
• 1 Winners. The winner will receive a promo code for ‘Ramp Champ.’
• Winners will be selected randomly.
• Prizes used for contests are NOT redeemable by RazorianFly.com or it’s representatives.
• One entry per contestant.

Full terms and conditions for all contests RazorianFly.com run, can be found at:
http://www.razorianfly.com/contests/terms/

Best of luck!!