I once heard a colleague described how a guy was hitting on her by describing himself to be like an alpaca in certain matters. We had a good laugh about it so you can imagine how difficult it was to keep a straight face while playing a game that has an alpaca front and centre as its hero character (guess what, his name is Al Pacone the Alpaca) :P. Cheekily categorised as an APS (Alpaca Perspective Shooter), German-based b-interactive‘s latest mobile game, Alpacalypse, is a hoot to play.
The game is essentially an arcade style, side-scrolling shooter, with the exception that Al Pacone  is anchored to the left side of the screen, with a contionous bunch of grotesque human forms (like a South American nightmare of weird creatures) coming in from the right. Al Pacone’s basic armament is his spit, which is triggered by tapping on the right hand side of the screen. To handle the different shapes and sizes of his enemies, holding down on the left hand side of the screen will cause his neck to elongate, allowing players to aim better.
Even with the three different power-ups available, Alpacalypse is one tough cookie to crack. Beneath it’s pretty looking, and colourful 2D veneer, players will have a hard time dealing with wave after wave of enemies, as there’s always a chance of being overwhelmed, often from mistakes. The development team’s high score is apparently 290 back when the beta was out, and I’ve only managed to hit around 60-ish.
Speaking of the development team, I really like how they eschewed IAPs, and any kind of reward (mainly dressing up Al Pacone) the player can redeem is by playing the game. There’s one thing that b-interactive could have done better, which is to include Game Center-powered leaderboards in the game, I really hope to see that in future updates. Thanks to the comedic premise of Apocalypse (who doesn’t like an Alpaca), high difficulty level and beautiful 2D-graphics, Alpacalypse gets a 4.5 out of 5 from Nineoverten.com.
The game is available for FREE on the iTunes App Store, you can check it out over here:Â https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alpacalypse/id1004368560
