Burst

Dracosoft
Rating:@@

The startup screen says it all: 'Pay me money or get lost forever.' Yes, software authors need money for their efforts and should be paid, but there are classy ways of going about it, and then there's this. Further, the game will time out not after a month or two weeks, but after one hour!

Fortunately, your current game will not be interrupted. You'll only hear the bad news next time you try to start the app.

Everything in Burst is graphics, except the REALbasic footprint: 2.2 MB. There are no NIBs, no text strings, nothing of the kind. It's all in 62 PNG files and three AIFF files in the 'Data' subfolder ('Resources' is used only for the icon - good thinking Dracosoft). The object of the game? You're supposed to line up balloons of the same colour, whereupon they 'burst'.

And there are tons of extra features to help you burst the balloons, such as tornadoes, flying saucers, and lightning bolts - in other words, exactly the kind of stuff you normally associate with balloon bursting. (There's even more, promises the author, if you pay him the $9.99 for the super-duper version.)

The game's timing and multithreading makes it almost impossible to not cheat, as it's very apparent how the 'timed version' can be easily tricked.

Bottom line? It's fun - many games are for a while - but it's not worth the $10. The programmer's effort is worth double that, but he should have made his case a little clearer.