Replica Island for Android

You're a little green robot with rockets on your feet. You "wake up," and you have amnesia. To piece together the puzzle of your memories, you have to fly around a bizarre island filled with strange creatures. Sound fun? It is.

Replica Island is a 2D side-scroller game (think the early versions of Super Mario Bros.), and it definitely has an old-school feel. This open-source title was built specifically for the Android platform, and the fact that the main character is a dead ringer for Android's mascot is no coincidence.

Early on, you learn that Professor Kabochanomizu built you for the purpose of finding a mysterious entity known as The Source--but you're not the only one looking for it. Mr. Roduku, the head of a large corporation, has assembled a team to find it first, and you have to get there before they do.

You fly around the island collecting the jewels that give you power, all the while searching for The Source, meeting new people, and smashing nasty little enemies by dropping your full weight on them. You can also send out a ball of energy and use it to control other robots, which is very handy. Each level is a memory of yours, and you must pass the level in order to open the next memory. In a clever twist, though, you don't recover your memories in chronological order. The game has 40 levels in all--enough to keep you from beating it in one sitting.

Playing Replica Island is definitely easier on devices that have a directional pad, which is what you use to move the robot left and right. That said, the developer has implemented tilt controls, which work pretty well but are trickier to master.

The game's major drawback is that most levels are too easy and too similar. The difficulty doesn't increase much as the game goes on. Additionally, some levels seem a bit repetitive, and you start craving new, more varying challenges. Still, the simple plot will likely compel you to keep playing through to the end. The game has three different endings; and after you choose one, you'll have to play through the entire game again in order to see one of the others. If you didn't feel like things were getting repetitive the first time you played through, you almost certainly will on the second (or third)--so choose wisely.

This is a fun little game, and I wish the Android Market had more like it. I'd prefer the gameplay to be a little more challenging, but if the makers come out with Replica Island 2, I'll certainly download it.