Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
If you enjoy a good brainteaser and have spent an evening or two at the symphony, Auditorium is the high culture iPhone game you’ve been looking for.
Prolific game developer Electronic Arts took everything great about the original, online version of Auditorium and combined it with the iPhone’s touch screen ability. More than the sum of its parts, EA has created a game that engages three different senses in addition to your patience and concentration.
The idea of the game is to use different tools to bounce and bend light particles, called “The Flow,” into “Audio Containers,” to oversimplify it a bit. When you’re successful, a nice piece of music plays to let you know that you’ve got it right. Things get a little more complicated when you have to change the light’s color to match the color of the audio containers by passing them through differently colored rings.
There are several controls you’ll use to do this, and unfortunately the game decides which one you use and when. There are arrows to simply direct “The Flow,” as well as tools to repel and deflect the light in your chosen direction. Though the game’s website touts “Attract” as the most useful tool, I found it to be the hardest to control and the least intuitive. I got stuck on level 3.1 (the 14th puzzle, technically) because I couldn’t master “Attract,” but up until that point I was really enjoying it.
Auditorium is undeniably addictive, so although it might be hard to put down once you’ve started, it’s great to pick up for a few minutes here and there when you need a break. The colors and the music are oddly relaxing for a game that’s so frustrating when you can’t get it right.
Auditorium’s regular price is $3, but if you’re some sort of savant who can power through all five “acts” included in the game, you’ll have to pay $1 each to download the higher levels.
[Meghann Myers is an editorial intern at Macworld.]