LambdaMu Games today introduced Crazy Critters for iPhone and iPod Touch.  A fun and unique twist of the original 1971 classic arcade game Whack-A-Mole, Crazy Critters now sees its players having to ‘fling’ a wide array of animals out of, rather than into, their holes in a variety of entertaining ways.  Instead of hitting the animals directly on the head with a mallet, players can also “stun” and “combo” these pesky little creatures with insane power-ups such as coffee, rockets, fireworks and more!  Crazy Critters is now available at www.lambdamugames.com/games/crazycritters/  (click on the App Store button) for $1.99.

.

Crazy Critters’ opening story tells of ‘The Professor’, an expert in the mysterious field of Animal Burrowing Phenomena, being kidnapped by an unidentified person/animal/man-bear-thing.  As gameplay starts, players take on the role of the professor's nephew, ‘Brian’, who just arrived at the professor's island.  Brian arrives just as the professor disappears and the global burrowing phenomenon starts all over again.  Players are immediately tasked with capturing the animals and calming them down, and Brian discovers small clues about the professor's whereabouts as he plays through the levels.  Ultimately, Brian discovers the culprits behind the burrowing and that the professor was kidnapped by them.  His final goal is to rescue the professor and stop his fiendish captors.

Once the game starts, animals of all types begin to pop up from their holes at random.  The object of the game is to flick the individual animals out of their holes, thereby adding to the player's gold tally.  In part, the more quickly this is done the higher the final score will be.  If the player does not flick an animal within a certain time, it will eventually sink back into its hole with no score and break the players’ streak.  Essentially, how much gold they obtain in a particular level depends on the value of an animal (influenced by difficulty level), the value of the multiplier (influenced by length of streak), and the number of animals involved in a combo.  Gold becomes increasingly useful in order to purchase items and power-ups that are later indispensible for countering certain types of animal abilities.

Each animal poses an unknown challenge (each has different traits/obstacles) to the player and thus they should play Crazy Critters strategically and not just look to fling out as many animals as possible in a given time – they must instead learn the secrets of each animal to score as high as possible!  By doing so, players can unlock power-ups and upgrades, one of which is the “endless mode” where players compete with other players for high scores.  What a player earns in upgrades and power-ups prior to entering this mode helps tremendously too!

Crazy Critters features full Game Center integration and hordes of achievements and new game-modes to unlock.

Crazy Critters is also available in a LITE version for players who want to experience a few fun levels of gameplay before purchasing the full version.  Crazy Critters LITE also features an incorporated SYNC DATA feature that allows players to export their progress from the LITE version to the full version (allows players to immediately continue playing when they upgrade their app).