Modulo

Modulo doesn’t make a great first impression. You’ll probably get 5-star ratings on the first four levels and not know why. After that it’s far better to experiment than to look at the games Help within the pause menu. Not only because you’ll better understand the game but also because it’s a fairly lazy kind of tutorial. Both the game and the player would be better served with a 15-second video showing how the game works, ideally with a little narration. It would be a better tutorial, more quickly relate the crux of the game and make a better impression than simply using a nice cursive font for everything. On the off chance the developers are reading this: A little Zapfino goes a long way.

What do you actually do in Modulo? You turn all the half-red and half-green discs until the red halves are all pointing downward. Discs can be linked, causing others to turn when tapped. The tricky part is that while disc A might turn disc B, disc B doesn’t necessarily turn disc A; it’s as likely to turn discs C and D. If that sounds complicated that’s because it can be but usually aimless tapping gets you through with a decent rating. The only reason to take pride in actually figuring it out would be if there were a reward for performing well. There isn’t; instead the puzzle seeks to be it’s own reward.

The graphics have a nice butterfly pin and aged paper look about them, the Vitruvian Man can be seen in the menu screen and the edge of a wax seal is visible during play. These elements fit with the gameplay concept and each other, giving the basic idea some pretty framing.

The music on the other hand is wholly incongruous with the look of the game and should be switched off immediately. It’s not bad, but if you played it at twice the speed you could stick it in a Wipeout game. Does that sound like it fits with the look of the game?

There are only really four sounds in the game for the rest of the audio; page flips for going through options, clicks for making moves, a mini fanfare for completing a level and beeping to accompany the ‘Auto-Show Connections’ feature. These last two sounds are not offensive to the ear, but they sound like synth where the other two sound like recordings of real mechanical sounds. It’s like sticking some synth into Beethoven’s 5th; unless you’re Stanley Kubrick you just shouldn’t do it. So the problem is that the audio doesn’t fit with itself and there isn’t enough game here to stop you noticing that you’ve just spent 59p on a temporary curio.

Since this game is just one idea that’s maybe good for 50 levels, you can’t help but roll your eyes when you realise it has 180 levels. There simply isn’t enough difference between level 1 and level 180; no new mechanics are ever introduced, the look never changes, the music is always that same track. In short, there’s no sense of evolution. Even Tetris gets faster!

The basic concept is nice though, but you should probably skip 20 or 30 levels every time you think it’s too easy. So when it comes time to look at the apps on your iPhone (or iPod touch) because you’ve so many it’s impairing navigation, you’ll look at Modulo and think that it was alright, but you’ll delete Modulo before you delete Sol Free Solitaire.