Cronk Review

Credit: Matthew Miller (ZDNET)

[See our video review of Cronk on YouTube]

If you’re new to webOS (or as my wife calls herself: “tech-stupid”), then you probably have no idea what Palm’s Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) is all about.  Well, you kinda should.

Basically, the PDK is a way for developers on other platforms to quickly and easily port their apps to webOS.  Because these apps have deeper access to core components on your phone (such as the graphics processor), they generally provide a richer user experience.

As evidence, I submit to you Exhibit A: Cronk ($2.99) by Mobile1UP. According to their own words in an interview with Palm News Daily, Mobile1UP was able to port this game (and nine others) to webOS using the PDK in five hours! Damn impressive.  We’re currently only seeing a few PDK products outside of the great games from Gameloft and Glu Mobile, but expect that to change with the next webOS update… we very well could see a flood of PDK apps (and not just games) very shortly!

…  But what about Cronk?  Is it any good?

Cronk is an action puzzle game…  think Bonsai Blast or Zuma and you wouldn’t be far off.  Basically, you’re a lone caveman who must prevent a train of boulders from crushing your village.  How to do that?  Why, by hurling color-matching boulders, of course! Get three or more boulders in a row and they mysteriously disappear. Do it quickly enough and you clear that level.  Random power-ups will be there to help you along the way.

There are two modes of play: Classic, where you fend off a finite number of boulder trains, and Timed, where you fight off endless trains of boulders and try to stay alive over a specified period of time.  I find the latter more challenging and fun, but the former is a great way to get a better overall feel of the game.

Gameplay is a pleasurable experience.  Detail is nicely rendered on the Pre’s smaller screen and the game itself flows well without any hiccups.  Another great detail: you can easily have other apps running on a Sprint Pre as this one seems to hog less memory than other PDK offerings. (Cue Hallelujah chorus) The soundtrack is very well done and doesn’t get old even over longer periods of play.

How does Cronk compare to similar action puzzle games?  Pretty well, in my opinion… but with some caveats.  For one, animations, such as of the caveman throwing  the boulder, are a bit slap-dash:  crude by comparison and not as smooth as I’d like.  Also, (and it could just be that I suck), the boulders are slightly “stickier” than they should be. Deviate ever so slightly from your target and the thrown boulder will “stick” to a wrong part of the boulder train.  Even with lots of practice I found myself making this frustrating mistake. This game requires a lot of concentration to play well, especially in more difficult levels.

Navigation around Cronk’s menus is simple enough. The one thing I had a tough time figuring out was how to go to the menu in the middle of a game. Turns out the way you do that is by tapping on your little caveman dude’s head. I thought that should have been a little more self-explanatory, but outside of that, this game is so easy to work that — I can’t resist! —  a caveman could do it. Ha!