Inside Social Games

Harbor Havoc is one of the more recent in a genre of iPhone (and Nintendo DS) titles known as “path-drawing games.” These games have been around since the early days of the iPhone, and primarily have you drawing a path for a selected object to get from Point A to Point B. In the beginning, they were indeed as basic as A to B, but as time wore on, more finesse has been adopted in the form of added challenges (i.e. enemies or power-ups). Harbor Havoc 3D falls in the latter category.

Developed by Backflip Studios, this game puts you in the harbor master chair of some of the world’s busiest ports, full of ships steered by quite possibly the worst helmsmen ever. The primary objective is to guide ships of one color to their corresponding dock color by touching the vessel and drawing a path to get there. However, as the game progresses, more and more ships arrive, and it’s up to the player to keep them from running into each other.

The core game play is an extremely easy concept to learn, but quickly becomes quite difficult to master. The easiest level is “Far East,” a tropical sort of environment, where there are only boats. After that, comes “Atlantis” where underwater rovers and submarines come into play, moving on a “bottom“ and “middle“ tier respectively. Then comes the “Artic” where you get the subs, the boats, and one more, on a “top” tier: The helicopter.

Managing three tiers of vehicles on three different planes is quite difficult. Of course, Backflip didn’t think that was hard enough, and thus added a forth, unlockable, level called “Lighthouse” (score 25 or higher on the other three maps to access it). This level is everything the previous levels had — only in the dark. The only light stems from a spinning lighthouse, and thus leads to many frustrating attempts trying to guide ships nearly blind.

Despite the aggravation invoked by Lighthouse, it was quickly forgiven by the game’s social features. This game is actually powered by ngmoco’s Plus+ platform. So players are able earn achievements, view leaderboards, issue push notification challenges to friends, and score postings to Facebook and/or Twitter feeds.

To be honest, most everything out of Harbor Havoc is positive, and the game is only made sweeter by the Plus+ integration. Everything looks and sounds great, and the only real complaints lie within the difficulty of Lighthouse and that some harbor/boat colors don’t always match up exactly (leading to a few crashed ships). Overall though, this is really only picking nits, so if you are looking for a newer path-drawing type of game, this one certainly comes recommended.