New iPhone Games: Lifeboat by Fuel Games

“There’s a big wave!”

“The boat is listing!”

“Everyone to the lifeboats! Women and children first!”

Ok, so its not a disaster movie, but you can have some fun with this casual tilt-based game from Fuel games called ‘Lifeboat’. Tilt and tap away in quickplay mode for instant fun, or get serious with career mode.

The idea of the game is  you’re the captain of a sinking boat, and it’s your responsibility to get everyone off the boat into life rafts.  These little life boats move around the boat, and you tilt the boat (your iPhone) back and forth as little people slide off the deck, and hopefully into a life boat.

Like a disaster movie, you can’t save every soul, and you will lose some to the sharks, and some will drown. The upside is, all is not lost when they fall in the water. You can recover them by simply tapping on them to bring them back to the boat to try again.

Each level has a number of people that are available to save, and a time clock that counts down to that fateful moment where the boat is vanishing into the dark depths and you can’t save anyone else. If you save enough people to satisfy the goal for that level, you progress to the next one.

Saving people also has secondary rewards. You also get time extensions and money. In career mode, you can use this moola to buy upgrades to the ships handling (although I want to know why we are spending money to upgrade a sinking ship………..), buy extra time or buy your passengers the ability to swim.

Obviously, ‘Lifeboat’ is not extremely complicated and definitely isn’t an epic game of any sort. It wont appeal to everyone. However, for 99 cents, it’s a worthwhile time-waster.