In a mythical land, a priestess is captured by an evil wizard.  The priestess calls out to a sleeping young girl, and in her dream the girl transforms into a shaman.  Now, in her dream, the girl must collect colored orbs to awaken her powers and rescue the priestess from the wizard.  Raanaa: The Shaman Girl is a free-to-start 3-D platformer for mobile devices, but reviewed on iPad here.

I do wish the press release I got about this game made it more clear that it was a free-to-start game, not free-to-play.  You can play the first level, but the next two are locked until you buy them.  It took me about 20 minutes to beat the first level, so I don’t know if the ones you buy are that short as well.  If so, I can’t see this game having much staying power unless the levels you buy are much longer or they add more later on.

To control Raanaa, use the bottom left part of the touch screen to move her around, and the right bottom area to jump.  Touch anywhere else on the screen to move the camera around.  For the most part, the controls work surprisingly well. Although it was easy to mistakenly move the camera around when trying to jump, but luckily the game is pretty forgiving.  If you fall off a ledge you’ll start close to where you left off.

In the first level you’ll jump around small green islands collecting colored orbs.  There are also V shaped tokens to collect, but these are there mostly to tell you where to go next.  When you collect enough orbs, you can go to a statue and awaken one of Raanaa’s powers, like being able to spring off of clumps of earth, double jumping, and even flight.  Once you have all your powers, you’ll fly toward the wizard, avowing his laser blast.  Do this enough times and you’ll save the priestess and turn the wizard to stone.  And that’s pretty much the first free level.  You can replay it to try and find all the V tokens and get a better time with less failure.

While I’d prefer that this be a full game you pay a set price for, or maybe reworked for consoles, I have to say this 3-D platformer worked out better than what I thought it would.  It’s free to try, so if you’re curious, it won’t cost you anything to start.

Kid Factor:

Raanaa: The Shaman Girl is fairly non-violent.  If you fall off a cliff or run out of energy while avoiding the wizard’s spells, you just wake up from your dream and that’s it.  Reading skill isn’t needed, as all instructions have spoken voice, but parental supervision is recommended for the in-game purchases.

Tags: Game Reviews