This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Twitch Action Games, Crazy, Cool, or Kusoge. Additional details may be found in the original article.
To quote from the App Store description of Junpuusha’s Shovel De Touch ($3): “This game will realize your childhood dream that you used to want to operate an excavator.” We’ll pause for a moment so you can read that again. Including the part about $3.
Shovel De Touch is a Japanese simulation of a construction site dirt excavator.
You get two on-screen joystick-like controls for the excavator arm, enabling you to move the arm into different poses, as well as moving the excavating claw at the end. Lest you think for a moment that you’re actually going to excavate anything in this game, or be able to, say, move the vehicle around, rest easy: you can’t. Instead, Shovel De Touch puts shadows on the screen to challenge you to move the excavator’s arm into various “poses.” You do this until you have beaten your previous record for putting the arm into these poses.
And if you’re in the mood, you can try a Balloon mode where you use the arm to pop flying balloons.
In Japan, where it was developed, Shovel De Touch would be described as “kusoge,” a word with a meaning that we can’t print here. It’s almost staggering that this title is being sold for anything, and that the App Store is filling up with software of this caliber. We spotlight this only because the title is so ridiculous and because the comments on the App Store—normally a breeding ground for fake positive reviews—are so amusingly angry.
