Str: Bontãgo [by Circular Logic]

Game Review: Bontãgo
Release: 2003
Genre: Strategy
Developer: Circular Logic
System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003; DirectX 9.0b; CPU: 800 MHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor; RAM: 128 MB; Hard Drive Space: 100 MB free hard disk space; Video: 16 MB DirectX 9.0b compatible video card; Sound: DirectX 9.0b compatible sound card
Price: Freeware


My first impressions on seeing screenshots of Bontãgo was “wow!” The playing board has gorgeous lighting effects and there are some fantastic back drops to feast your eyes on. The visuals, however, are the most impressive part of Bontãgo and once you get through that glossy, beautifully rendered exterior, you will find there is little meat on them bones.

The game play is surprisingly complex for what is essentially a block-building game. The basic aim is to encompass all the flags on the board with your “controlled area”. You expand your controlled area by placing your blocks – which appear on your cursor every few seconds – within your colored area, and the taller the structure you build with your blocks, the more your area is expanded. There are special blocks which drop from onto the playing board every now and again, and if you cover one of these you are able to drop the special block where you like within your area. These special blocks include a volcano, a rocket, an earthquake, and various other means of disrupting your opponent’s blocks. To add to all the mayhem there are special blocks which cause the playing board to tilt, which means blocks slide all over the place and crash into opponents area’s with devastating consequences.

Bontãgo is a multiplayer game, but with a single-player mode, allowing you to play against computer-controlled opponents. The AI is generally quite good although the computer players all always follow the same strategy and more or less end up doing the same thing. But Bontãgo is best played against your mates, and grab a few people for a LAN or Internet game and you can have some great fun.

Bontãgo makes good use of the Tokamak physics engine, and the gravity and block movement is generally very realistic. There are a few flaws though, in that there is seemingly no limit as to how high you can build towers providing you manage to balance one block on top of another, which means you are able to build huge structures on top of a tiny base, which although makes for great fun when destroying them, is very unrealistic. There are also a few bugs with the physics which means occasionally a block will not settle on top of another and just vibrate until it eventually falls off, which can be very annoying.


Graphics 9/10
The graphics are truly spectacular and very professional. This is the kind of game you will want to play just to get a glimpse of those juicy visuals which will make you forget all about the game and just sit back and gawp. You also have a nice moveable camera so you can get different views of the board, which helps immensely.

Sound 6/10
For some reason Vivaldi is used as a backing track for Bontãgo, which whilst a slightly curious choice, actually works quite well. However, there are very few special sound effects and so the game suffers a bit for that, an original sound track wouldn’t have hurt either.

Game Play 7/10
Game play is smooth and quite relaxed really. There isn’t much spark for really competitive play and most of the time you’re too busy building your own tower to notice what the other players are doing.

Value 9/10
This game is very polished and professional, and although it has a few bugs, runs generally very nicely. It is completely free to download and whilst it isn’t the most durable of games, will provide you with a good period of fun with your friends or colleagues before the concept gets a bit old.

Concept 8/10
Bontãgo’s roots probably come from the classic block-building games such as Tetris, as the concept of rotating and placing blocks to achieve a goal is not dissimilar. The concept Is very clever and well thought-out, however it lacks depth and extra features needed to keep the player interested. Once you get bored of placing blocks endlessly on top of each other the game doesn’t really have much more to offer apart from a bit of experimenting with the game physics. The idea is good, but not really good enough to sustain interest.

Fun 7/10
Bontãgo will give you quite a few hours of enjoyment, and if you play against other people then there is the potential for some really good multiplayer action, but single-player is very boring and can get very monotonous. There is also no way of browsing internet games and so you have to know the IP address of the server you want to connect to, which allows no scope for playing against strangers.

Overall 7/10
This is definitely worth a download, and is a fun game to play. With a bit of refinement and a few extra features I would have given Bontãgo an 8, but for me it just didn’t have the spark and the competitive aspect that is needed for a game that relies heavily on its multiplayer option. The graphics are really nice, and it all adds up to a very polished product, but the game play is not nearly fast or exciting enough to make you want to play more.

Added: March 19th 2004
Reviewer: Robin Spottiswoode
Score:
Hits: 6464
Language: english