[app id=”586208678″]
Toad Slash is an iPhone game developed by Brendan Prebble. Similar in many respects to Fruit Ninja, this hacking, slashing gem of a game has a spooky vibe and tons of icky creepy things to kill.
There’s a definite Halloween theme at work in Toad Slash, with Jack o’ Lanterns providing both a backdrop and a major element of the game itself. Your goal is to slice up ugly toads, frogs, tadpoles, fish and snakes as they vault up into your field of vision. But beware: if you accidentally slash open one of the glowing pumpkins you will end the game. Just one wrong move, and the whole game is at an end: there are no second chances here.
The sound design is pretty decent. It’s mostly ambient, marshy noises: lots of crickets, howls, cackles, and other spooky sounds from the night. It’s suitably atmospheric.
I do have a couple of minor gripes. Toad Slash doesn’t auto-orient itself: if you turn your phone upside down, the game action stays upside down. More problematic for me, however, is the fact that you don’t get bonus points for cutting the same animal twice. In fact, the animals can only be split in two, and not any further than that.
The whole point of the game is slashing up stuff: limiting just how much you can slash kind of dampens the fun. In other games that are similar to Toad Slash, you can cut up objects two or even three times, and I wish that was the case here. I realize that would mean a change in how the scoring system works, but I think it would be worth it.
Still, the explosions make for great fun. If you’re tried of slashing up fruits or sushi pieces in similar casual gaming titles, Toad Slash is worth checking out. It has a good level of difficulty, and despite a few very minor issues, it’s worth the price of purchase.
SCORE: 8.5
Toad Slash is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later