Bowmasters

Painful to watch, but awesome to play

Bowmasters is a nicely designed stress-relieving game for mobile platforms. It features more than 60 abnormal, weird, quirky, and insane playable characters,  a number of neatly architected locations, and also seamless combination of physics + flight animation + illustrative sounds of agony.

Nothing helps you relax your weary brains like a good old potion of cartoonized violence. And Bowmasters is all about this. Similar to the Angry Birds games, you will need a good eye, the ability to calculate the energy with which you send a projectile to your opponent, and of course, distance. Sometimes random and uncontrollable factors seem to interfere - like wind velocity and direction - so you should watch for it.

Every successful shot congratulates you with the sounds of agony produced by your counterpart and also picturesque blood fountains. This thirst for grotesque violence nicely coincides with the game's loony-cuckoo and absurd approach. Look at the characters:

• Skeleton-astronaut;
• Software-developing Hipster;
• Psychotic uncle Sam, Santa Claus, allegedly under the influence of certain drinks;
• A grumpy Lumberjack...

The list goes on and on.

The style of controlling them doesn't differ much - mechanics stay almost always the same. But they do have unique personalities, special moves, and unique weaponry, with the latter affecting your strategy in a way. For example, the angry Hobo throws heavy trash bins, and the fireman employs makeshift Molotovs.

The more projectiles reach their goal, the less flesh your opponent has on their body until they are finally finished. But before you're pronounced a winner, you get the privilege to perform a fatality, just like in Mortal Kombat. The easily recognizable voice commands you to "Finish him!", while your adversary waddles helplessly.

More fun in PvP

If the campaign mode has been completed and you don't know what else could be done in Bowmasters - the online PvP waits for you. Or you can play with a friend of yours in the same room, taking turns until one of you gets a javelin through the skull.

There are other modes, like Apple Shooting, Dueling, Bird Hunt, etc. - all waiting to test your skills.

The game may look repetitive after you unlock all of the characters, but it's just a delusion. Every character has something unique about himself - from the quirky, memorable look to the personal weapons and special attacks. By the way, to activate a special attack, you need to tap on the screen while the projectile's still flying through the air.

It knows how to keep you excited, provides you with giggles, and just enthralls you with never-ending blood spatters. It may, at times, annoy you with the ads. But the game itself is costless, so it's hard to complain when you get so much fun literally for nothing.