Hook Champ was my favourite iPhone game when I used to have my 3g. It was the only game I played at the time which felt like it was designed sympathetic to the device. The control scheme was perfect for a button-less controller with a simple tap to swing mechanic that was simple but deep.

Hook Champ also had a style of its own, yes it was 8-bit retro but within that style it had unique looking characters, funny dialogue and a vague, surreal Indiana Jones vibe. The game was also devilishly addictive as it featured hand-crafted timed levels which made the game almost feel like a racing game even though it was a platformer, it had a beautiful system where whilst trying to survive you are also trying to beat your fastest time, collect gold coins and maintain your momentum through many obstacles.

Hook Champ was a 10/10 game for the iPhone without question.

We live in a different iOS world now, we have Swords and Sworcery, Infinity Blade, Forget.Me.Not and Machinarium, all improbably excellent originals and surprisingly successful ports. I wondered how well a sequel to Hook Champ would hold up and if after 3 years my expectations had changed.

No

Hook World is fucking ridiculously good, I’m amazed RocketCat have taken the same core principle idea of swinging a dude and created 3 equally different and splendid games out of it. The idea with Hook World this time round is that of a pure ‘endless’ design style. I’ve grown tired of these endless games, Canabalt was great but there’s so many of them now; Jetpack Joyride, Goat Up, Rogue Sky, Temple Run, RUA…all good games but they’re all quite throwaway by default of their framework.

Surprisingly Hook World breaks away from this, the game is forever pushing you forward; get a new medal to unlock different world or collect enough gold to buy a new hook or always charming item of clothing – the pacing of how much you can upgrade and when is perfect, unlike with Jetpack Joyride where you will have to play it for hours (or pay real money) to collect enough gold to buy these sort of upgrades. Hook World drip feeds you stuff at just the right speed so you feel like you’re constantly progressing rather than just trying to beat your best survival time as with most ‘endless’ games.

I still much prefer the hand crafted levels of Hook Champ and Super Quick Hook, it’s great learning a level and trying to beat the ghosts of your friends list. Hook World actually ends up feeling like less of a game because of this and it’s initially disappointing. It becomes less disappointing when you start to play with the other 3 worlds and you realise just how much game is here.

There’s 3 main worlds, ‘Curse of the Watcher’ which features a character called Gramps who’s essentially just Hook Champ but with all the upgrades, he’s a viciously fast chap who has a recharging rocket booster. So far so Hook [game], the next world is ‘Bounty Gunner’ – now here’s where it gets interesting. This world is less about rope-swinging than it is about shooting, it’s the same format as with Gramps but instead the character moves slower and you have to shoot down enemies in your way. It feels like a totally different game where you’ve really got to be aware of what’s coming up and you have to manage your recharging bullets carefully or you may be caught running into a crab monster with nothing in your barrel.

The final main world is ‘Cybergnome 202X’ where the big feature here is gravity flipping. It gets all VVVVVV quite quickly except here you grapple hook upside down, which just looks and feels wrong. This world is more about timing your jumps and gravity flips, it’s also very difficult but the challenge is welcome in a game like this.

Each world introduces its own learning curve and layers of depth which is wholly independent of the others, there’s a lot of game here and the design of the randomly generated environments are handled with fairness and visual consistency. It’s an all-round polished product, lightning smooth and crisp – even scaled up on the iPad – speaking of which I’d love an iPad version.

While I would have liked some handcrafted levels and some more story to the characters I respect that this is a different game to Hook Champ and Quick Hook. If you’ve not played any of the games in the series I’d heartily recomment starting here and if you get a kick out of it (which you will), then you can jump into the other two.

These are the best phone games since Snake.

Hook Worlds [9]

About the author

Michael Manning

Michael is a sound designer and composer working in the games industry. His portfolio can be found at www.manningaudio.com