Apple Arcade review #81: Doomsday Vault

Coincidentally, we are also working on a game about a Doomsday Vault — although that’s the only thing the two games have in common. In this take on the eponymous seed bank, you play a bouncy explorer in some sort of protective suit who traverses minimalist post-apocalyptic landscapes in search of seeds, which are brought back to the vault for cultivation.

This is another puzzle platformer, with climbing, jumping and navigation occurring on a grid. You can’t move diagonally, which makes movement a bit cumbersome at times, but at least the virtual controls are decent: you can tap and hold anywhere on the screen to bring up the “stick”. And dots showing where you can walk compensate for the lack of an adjustable camera.

The game is thematically interesting but it looks clinical, and the game mechanics are simplistic. I like the musical score quite a bit, though the rest of the soundscape is pretty sparse.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Doomsday Vault, but it’s not particularly exciting. I don’t know how the vault evolves as you acquire more seeds, or if any other game mechanics come into play, but my first thirty minutes with the game were passable but unremarkable.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/no/app/doomsday-vault/id1457773760