You are a nutty professor who has (despite ridicule) dedicated the past 10 years of your life huddled away in your basement developing a black hole generator. Now, as luck would have it, the Earth is under attack from an unending barrage of asteroids, and only you and your life’s work can save the planet! You must use your one-of a kind contraption to strategically place black holes to steer the asteroids away from the Earth.
Clickgamer’s forthcoming game “Black Hole“, is a fun time-management game that will have your fingers tapping. Placing a black hole is simply a matter of touching the screen, and any asteroids near the black hole will be drawn toward it, instantly changing their trajectory path(s). Use multiple black holes to guide the asteroid exactly where you want it to go, or just give it a push in the right direction. You can just redirect the asteroids away from the Earth to keep it safe, or collide two asteroids to obliterate them and earn points. Chaining collisions together will also earn you some big combo multiplier bonuses.
There are several special types of asteroids that, when destroyed, have some unique properties. Frost (blue) asteroids slow down all asteroids within their blast range, Electric (yellow) asteroids will destroy nearby asteroids with a chain lightning bolt, and finally Missile (red) asteroids will destroy the three asteroids closest to the Earth with missiles. If all else fails and an asteroid gets dangerously close to Earth, you have one last-line of defense, tap the Earth to send out a massive shockwave to destroy all of the currently visible asteroids. You only have three of these (level-dependent) so use them wisely.
Black Hole has two game modes, endless and level-based. Endless is fairly self-explanitory, you play as long as you can until an asteroid destroys the Earth. Level-based is broken down into three difficulty settings Easy, Medium and Hard. Each difficulty has 6 levels, with the easy levels lasting 1 minute each, the medium levels 2 minutes each and the hard levels 3 minutes each. 
Therefore, if you are able to successfully complete each level on your first try, Black Hole’s “level” mode will only take you 36 minutes to complete! Although, Crystal integration with per-level leaderboards, challenges and achievements will definitely offer plenty of incentive to go back and replay the levels. The “Easy” levels, while rather simple, do a really great job of introducing you to each of the special asteroid types. One other nice aspect of the levels is that they are themed (ie. ICE AGE focuses heavily on the Ice asteroids, etc.) and help build up your skills for the endless mode.
Excuse us while we geek-out for a moment…
At first our sci-fi geeks had a bit of an issue believing the game’s premise and it bugged us. We were under the false impression that black holes would not actually deflect asteroids, but instead would just swallow them up. One quick google search and we’re all good, turns out it’s plausible. 😉
In conclusion
Regulars of the “path management” genre will probably find the easy/medium levels to be a bit too easy, but the hard levels and endless mode will offer a bit more of a challenge. Casual gamers will find both the gameplay and controls approachable and intuitive. We are hoping that the final release (or a future update) will contain more levels as the level portion of the game feels a little bit short. The game’s soundtrack has a infectious club beat with nice deep bass elements and sound effects that really come out with headphones. When coupled with the nice explosion animations of the special asteroids, it makes for a pleasing experience for the senses. No word on pricing (we’d venture that this is a $0.99 or $1.99 title) or exact release date, but it should be available soon. Overall we enjoyed Black Hole and felt that it is different enough to offer even time management junkies something a little new and different. We’d recommend checking it out when it’s released.
