![]() In our view, the title is almost worth purchasing solely for the work that has been done on its graphics and sounds.īut as a game, Zen Bound is only good, not great: while we commend Secret Exit on having come up with another title that looks and sounds great on the iPhone, we’d really like to see its incredible design talents used to add greater depth to the gameplay. ![]() This isn’t an 8-bit-quality beep and bloop theme it’s a full, multi-track score that can actually be downloaded by customers in 320k MP3 format for free. The audio is even more impressive, with gentle, zen-like sounds that have clearly been designed for 3-D impact with headphones, and a beautiful soundtrack that honors the zen theme while injecting a little energy into the action. As with Spin, Zen Bound is almost a lesson in Western execution on Japanese aesthetics, giving its backgrounds, objects, and post-stage menus an almost reverent though subtle beauty and polish that most iPhone games to date just lack. Two paths are offered: the Tree of Reflection, starting with animal shapes, and the Tree of Challenge, which starts with blocks.įrom an execution standpoint, Secret Exit has again done a very nice job here. You don’t need to worry about time the only limitation is that you’re given 50 meters of string, enough to give you no trouble beating if not mastering the earliest of the 51 levels. If 70% or more is covered, you can wrap the string around a second nail to end the level and move on, or continue wrapping towards a “medium goal” or 100% completion. A seemingly wooden 3-D model of an object appears in the center of the screen, a string attached to it with a nail, and you use your finger to spin it around, converting its surface to “covered.” You’re given the current percentage of coverage on the top of the screen, and the surface of the object changes color to let you know what the game considers covered. To be clear up front, Zen Bound is a nice game idea. Random Ideas has also dropped the price by a couple of bucks, making the title a no-brainer purchase if you like the new free version, iZen Garden Lite, which includes ten total stones to place in the garden, the same four choices of sand, and two of the audio tracks-including our favorite, “Bells.” In our experience, the relaxation these bells bring, left in a speaker dock, alone justifies the download the full iZen Garden also includes a wonderful Tibetan Singing Bowls track, and sampled audio from waterfalls, a brook, the ocean, and the like. The good news: in the six months that have passed since our first review, iZen Garden has expanded to include eight different audio tracks, and packed in 10 different categories of elements, each with a wide variety of items that can be placed in your garden, rotated, and scaled to your preferred size. It can be as much like a small but real zen garden as you prefer, or thanks to a huge number of new “element” items, completely unlike one. Fill it with stones, plants, butterflies, or anything from nature, activate the sound effects, and rake the garden with an adjustable rake. Now iZen Garden is on version 1.71, and on the surface, it hasn’t changed it’s still a single screen 2-D sandbox, filled with sand, that you can customize as your a miniature zen garden like the ones seen at temples inside and outside Japan. As we’ve accumulated applications at a rate of dozens per week, iZen Garden ($3) from Random Ideas is a true rarity: it’s an app that we continue to enjoy many months after the initial purchase, and credit with inspiring us to care about the meditative relaxation app genre.
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