Best New Apps: ‘Badland’ for iOS

The best movies convince you that you know exactly what’s about to happen, only to spin off in a direction you never saw coming. Badland is that feeling, unceasing, incarnate in an impressively long and involved iOS game. A sort of demented, Tim Burton-ized version of Jetpack Joyride or Super Meat Boy, Badland has but one control — you tap the screen to make your amorphous, squishy black blob lurch upward, and when you let go it floats back to earth. But the dystopian rainforest through which you’re flying is dangerous and ever-changing, with whirring saw blades appearing as unexpectedly as the falling stalactites. Some things you must surmount, others you must weave through at exactly the right moment — you’re a living Rube Goldberg machine trying to solve the world.

Your only goal? Survive. And you won’t, most of the time. There are side missions, and plenty of aids along your way that provide glimmers of hope, but your only hope is to plan three steps ahead, time everything perfectly, and hope that rock above you is sturdier than it looks.

$3.99, iOS