This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: War! Military-Themed Games + More. Additional details may be found in the original article.
To be clear up front, we’re not going to say that Discovery Communications’ Cannon Challenge (Free) is a breakthrough iPhone game, or even that it’s especially deep. It is, however, both a smart little time-waster and a novel form of advertising for the Discovery Channel’s TV show Future Weapons.
You’re placed in command of a “Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon,” a tank with the ability to fire rounds on arcs to hit targets scattered across a landscape. With limited ammo, you need to judge your cannon’s elevation and power to make sure that all of the targets are neutralized. Other than these adjustments and a firing button, there’s nothing more to do.
As simple as the gameplay may be, the colorful and visually varied 15 stages in Cannon Challenge kept us playing from start to finish—admittedly, a half an hour or maybe an hour, tops.
It’s based upon a web-based Discovery version and appears to share downsampled art and the same powerful cannon sound effect, with the benefit of smoother touch-based controls and pick-up, put-down convenience. Great? No. But fun for what it is, and modestly educational on the NLOS Cannon concept? Sure.