App of the Week: Fotonica review
It turns out androids don’t dream of electric sheep — they have nightmares about running into the endless unknown
Fotonica is a running game unlike any other.
Conceptually, it’s essentially Canabalt in first-person — you sprint into the screen, jumping to avoid falling down one of the many holes in the track and plummeting to your doom. But it’s Fotonica’s execution that makes this title something else entirely.
Geometric genius
Visually, the game’s all whirling pin-sharp lines and abstract geometry. There’s a dream-like feel as fragments of real-world objects emerge from the darkness: a fragmented, broken train track in Fotonica’s first level, Brenta; a forest with impossibly sheer terrifying drops in Remolo; and an office block corridor in Palestro, which abruptly vanishes, leaving you stranded above endless darkness, hoping your leap will take you to the relative safety of a painfully distant platform.
Fotonica’s otherworldly nature is further emphasised by the controls, physics and soundtrack. The last of those is a heady mix of urgent, relentless electronica and spaced-out ambient rumblings. The controls are simple: hold the screen to run ever faster and then let go to jump; but your airborne arc is slow — more like floating. And although you can hasten your descent by pressing the screen, Fotonica always feels vaguely hypnotic, like you’re a robot running through its own fever dreams in a kind of dazed stupor, a sense heightened further on reaching top speed; then, the on-screen visuals are bathed in a golden hue while the audio muffles, as if the sound waves can no longer quite reach your ears.
You might also like › App of the Week: Molecules by Theodore Gray
A modern mobile classic
When Fotonica breaks structurally from the likes of Canabalt, it’s most successful. There are eight finite levels to explore and master, finding not only a safe route to the end but also the best path for grabbing floating orbs along the way. The split-screen multiplayer is also a blast, pitching two people in a head-to-head on any of Fotonica’s levels. Only in its endless mode does the game stumble, the first of the three levels being quite dazzling but the other two lacking in imagination and variety, more endurance test than hypnotic masterpiece.
Elsewhere, though, Fotonica does more than enough to ensure its place at the pinnacle of its genre. A slice of Canabalt, a dash of Rez, a smidgeon of Tron, and a hint of Mirror’s Edge — but somehow more than the sum of its parts — Fotonica is an exhilarating, polished modern mobile classic.
Download Fotonica for iPhone or iPad now
If you liked that › check out all of the other awesome apps in our App of the Week series
Stuff Says…
The pinnacle of stripped-back on-thumb platform games: bewitching, arresting and entertaining
Good Stuff
Absurdly fast and extremely beautiful
Amazing atmosphere through its visuals, controls and music
Varied level design and feel
Bad Stuff
Some endless levels rapidly descend into slightly dull endurance tests
Craig Grannell
Contributor 
