Alice in Bomberland is a fun arcade-type game where the ultimate goal is to collect all the lost pages of her story that are scattered throughout several crazy worlds. While the game is fun, the controls really take away from the overall experience.

The game is based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” You’ll see all the characters and places you remember from the story. If you’re not into reading, you can skip the storyline and jump right into the game. However, the excerpts aren’t very long and do help to immerse you into the game a bit more. Once into the game, you take control of Alice who must move around to collect the missing pages of her story for points. The catch is, you must also avoid the massive amount of bombs, missiles and other explosives that are constantly being shot at Alice.

Each level has a minimum point requirement to advance. Pages offer points as well as power-ups. To get to these items, you can either move Alice left, right, up and down, or you can make her jump. There are different types of levels that will decide how you control Alice. In one type of level she is constantly falling down a hole, so all you have to do is move up, down, left or right. However, other levels actually have a floor, so tapping up will make her jump. As you progress through the game, you’ll have a variety of power-ups to collect and Alice will also gain more abilities. For example, you can get a power-up that will allow her to become smaller, making it easier to avoid bomb blasts. Alice will also gain the ability to double and triple jump in the air. These abilities will be crucial to avoid getting hit by bombs.

You start off each level with full health, which is displayed as hearts on the right side of the screen. If bombs hit you, you lose points and health. There are no checkpoints, so if you die you have to restart the level from the beginning.

Each level is hand-drawn and they are all beautifully done. You really do feel like you are in these crazy fantasy worlds. The sound effects are great, but the music sometimes doesn’t feel like it fits the game’s style. One other issue I had is with regards to animation. The bombs and explosions are all done well, but Alice’s movements are not. For such a great looking game, Alice’s animations seem a bit too simplistic. When turning directions from left to right, or up and down, it’s the same image of Alice flying through the air. There is absolutely no change in body movement when she flies upward instead of downward. I think there is much more that can be done here to make movement seem more fluid and realistic.

The worst part of this game is the control scheme. To move Alice around, you use your thumbs on the bottom corners of the screen. Your left thumb moves left and right while your right thumb moves up and down. First of all, this is difficult to figure out at first and your natural instinct will be to touch the middle of the screen. When you do this, a notification box appears stating where to look for the controls. Once you’ve found them, the arrows make it seem like you should tap on them to change direction. However, all you have to do is leave your thumbs down and slide them around to control Alice. Even after you’ve wasted time figuring it all out, you’ll still fell awkward while controlling your character. The controls just do not seem natural. There has to be another way!

Alice in Bomberland is definitely a fun game to play. With the amazing art style and great storyline to follow, you’ll actually feel like you’re embarking on a crazy adventure. The game can be really challenging, forcing you to have quick reaction times to avoid bombs, so hardcore gamers will enjoy it as well. If the next update brings changes to the controls and a little more detail to Alice, then this game will really shine. As it is right now, you will either love it, or be incredibly frustrated by it.