Frenzic: Apple Arcade’s newest game disappoints

After a surprisingly long wait since its huge release, Apple Arcade finally added a new game to it’s roster of titles. It’s a little robot puzzler called Frenzic.

Frenzic, by The Iconfactory, places you in the role of a small robot designed to make power cores for other robots. And right out the gate the game takes its time introducing you to the various characters you’ll find yourself working with.

Unfortunately, while these characters look like they’re going to be quirky and full of personality this game has about as much story as the first Angry Birds game. You almost never encounter the characters unless the game has something new to introduce and then they show up very briefly to introduce the newest puzzle element before  disappearing for several stages.

The game itself has a very simple premise. You have to build powercores. The power cores are just shapes you have to fit six wedges into in a certain amount of time. The timer becomes your main antagonist because, unless you love the sensation of 1980’s/1990’s hit board game slash anxiety simulator Perfection, you’re going to find yourself losing a BUNCH.

Therein lies Frenzic’s main problem. It genuinely does not feel like a game designed for Apple Arcade. Instead, it feels like it was heavily designed to be something to generate microtransactions. Items to give you a second chance or a timer that has to regenerate. But as this is Apple Arcade, none of these elements exist and you just have a puzzle game that honestly feels less like a fun time and more like something that is designed to make you feel like you “could” have won but didn’t.

And the fact that the game is very much devoid of depth, it doesn’t feel all that rewarding when you do make progress as every stage. Regardless of layout, it all feels similar; make circles out of wedges, get extra points if each wedge is the same color. That’s it.

It’s just so remarkably basic that it’s somewhat of a letdown that this is how Apple Arcade comes back with new games, or in this case, new game. We’ve waited several months for something new and instead we get a basic smartphone game that runs off the ancient “three stars” method of stage rankings.

I get that when your game is called Frenzic that you’re supposed to expect frenzied game play but it just doesn’t work that well. Especially if you’re playing on Mac like I’m playing. The distance between the circles meant that your mouse has to travel a lot between circles and god forbid you play on the touch pad. I tried and lost on the seventh level.

For what it is, the game is alright. The art style is colorful and it has a traditional slow trickle of new elements designed to make the game harder but it genuinely just feels like this was being designed to generate microtransaction sales and never really adjusted when they wound out they were bound for the Apple Arcade instead.