Review: Imperial Hockey

Imperial Hockey is more of a tech demo than a game.

Created with a cross-platform development tool called CatHide, Imperial Hockey is less a game and more a demo of just exactly what CatHide can do. Which is a shame, because apparently what it can do, it doesn't do well.

This is what you'll see the first time you start a game.

Graphics:
Not good. Two paddles, a puck, and a background, all of which look like they took a grand total of 20 minutes to whip up.

There's something weird about the text. I'm not sure if it's the font selection, but a lot of letters appear to have been cropped by a pixel so part of the outline is missing. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and say it was intentional, but I still don't like it.

Sound:
Four or five hockey buzzer and paddle click type sounds. They're appropriate to the game, and the fidelity is pretty good, which makes the sound the best part of Imperial Hockey.

Gameplay:
It's pong, only with worse controls and fewer options. You control your paddle by tapping it and dragging, but its hitbox is too small, so you're bound to miss it every now and then when you let it go.

There's only one version of the game, which appears to be the standard tennis version, even though it's played on a hockey rink. You can set your opponent to multiple difficulty levels, but controlling your paddle is so imprecise that the real opponent is the sloppy game design. And there's no way to win against that.

Technically, I won, but in Imperial Hockey, there are no winners.

What I liked:
-Sounds are okay.
-Multiple difficulty levels give at least some variation to the game.

What I hated:
-Bugs.
-Poor paddle control.
-Hit detection is sloppy.
-To "serve" the puck, you have to tap the screen, which means you lose track of your paddle and have to grab it again before the puck gets to you.

Final Verdict:
If this was supposed to encourage people to buy the CatHide development software, then it's going to fail.

Imperial Hockey is available for free from Imperial Penguin on BlackBerry App World
Reviewed version 1.0.1