Barrr

Pirates.  Salty old sea-dogs. Loveable rouges. Pirates!

Barrr is a uniquely styled, time management game.  The game complies with the simple queue management principles found whether you are managing aeroplanes at an airport, boats in a harbour or diners at a cafe.  As pirates arrive at your bar you must guide them, queue them and keep them happy. Pirates need to drink, be entertained, use the toilet facilities, and finally pay.

Pirates enter the bar and will indicate which activities they wish to do. To insure you maintain control of your bar you will direct the pirates by tapping on them and then tapping on where they want to go in the bar.  The game is as test of dexterity as it is of pattern recognition. You will have multiple pirates with varying demands in your bar simultaneously, creating queue-management and puzzle gameplay elements.

As you progress through the games 4 locations and 60 levels new bar facilities will become available. The upgrades are slowly unveiled to maximise the games play time,  This however is to the detriment of the enjoyment of the game.  You need to slog through fifteen two minute levels before you are even offered the ability to upgrade various facilities or improve your pirate patron’s bladder controls.  Sadly about halfway through the 60 levels you will have unlocked all available upgrades and with nothing left to discover you are only left awaiting the change of location.

Graphically the game is hard to dislike.  The pirates are, for lack of a better word, adorable and the endearing music has an uncanny knack of getting stuck in your head and you will find yourself humming various musical melodies long after you have stopped playing.  The audio and visual maybe be too cartoony and not appeal to all gamers, but it really does help negate a potentially stressful and frustrating game.  The graphics and sounds fit the game perfectly and really brings the entire experience together in a cute yet limited package.

For all its cartoon charm and jolly jaunty music nothing can mask the problems that Barrr, and all queue management games, suffer from.  Once the basic mechanics and challenges have been mastered the game can only overload you with more pirates to manage and queue.  At that point the game becomes nothing more than a test of thumb agility and how much tolerance you have for a game that you have long fallen out of love with.

Mark Craven

Barr is available on the Android Market for £1.49 – Link