Who would have thought that you could experience curling in the comfort of your home, or work or anywhere. No, you don’t have to go watch it at the Olympics. No, you don’t have to travel to Norway to watch or play it. You can now download it onto your iPhone or iPad and play away. The download I refer to is Curling Buddies.
It’s a new app that puts the curling track in your hands. Cartoon-like in nature, Curling Buddies sets you up with a simple curling track and provides you with a default player. As you complete the various playing levels, you earn coins or would could be construed to be medals, and this opens up more variety in terms of players and tracks. The one gaming environment I found very interesting was the Zombie package, which helped change the game up a bit.
The app itself is free to download and play. You can even get to the various players and game packs simply by earning enough stars and diamonds. It may take some time, but you will eventually get there. What I liked was that the game provided guides, if you will, in the form of arrows, so you knew where you needed to aim your player, which ends up being the curling stone. At first, I thought this was kind of odd to be tossing a person over ice, but hey, it’s a cartoon!
When you play the regular game, you are playing it the normal way. The track is ice and the “stone” is your player. You swipe on your player to move along the ice and collect diamonds on the way and reach the concentric circles to complete your roll. Then as you complete more of these, the tracks suddenly become littered with items like people and cones. You must avoid these to make it to the end of the track. You get about three throws per set, from what I could judge. Then the set it over. You can replay to get past that point.
The Zombie package was tons of fun to play. This package takes you off the ice and into what I like to call a post apocalyptic city. The track is now the streets and you aim to reach your target while avoiding any obstacles that may hinder your journey. As you earn more stars and diamonds, you also get coins. These coins unlock interesting players and opens up the Zombie package, as well. You can even watch an add to score 30 coins.
Some of the players are only available with the Zombie package, so you will have to earn enough points to cover both upgrades.
If I could wish for anything in this app, it would be to get some instructions, tutorial or guidance on how to play. It ended up being a trial and error for me. The real key, which comes with practice, is to know just how much to swipe. What I did not like was when we had to do a double swipe, as in the case of having to relaunch your player once she hit a ramp. That was not apparent to me for about 15 tries. Then I tried it and my player was able to get all the way to the end circles.
Once I got past that point, all was good. I kept on playing, kept on trying and go through the levels. It really is a neat new game that’s unlike others I’ve seen. A good change of pace if I do say so myself.