Rattler amuses, but not for $1.99

I’ve become known around the office as the guy that does reviews for the goofiest iPhone apps out there.  I guess it’s a fair assessment.  As I’ve discussed numerous times, there are a lot of very fun and silly ways to use your iPhone, and I think an app shouldn’t be discounted just because it isn’t life-changing or overly feature-laden.

So when I found an opportunity to play with Rattler, a new app by WhereWhiz, I jumped on it.  The verdict?  It's got promise, but it could be a lot better, and the price tag isn't yet warranted.

Well, what is it?  It's a virtual snake--A Western Diamondback, to be precise.  What does it do?  Well, there is the first problem...not much.  It slithers around, hisses, and reacts to taps on the screen.  If you tap too much, the snake strikes out at your finger.  This is by far the best and coolest part of the application.  But, in the end, it's just a slightly interactive, animated snake.  There is no game involved, no feedings, and no custom settings for the snake's appearance.

But it is kinda fun to watch the little thing wriggle around.

And it does have a few customizable features like different background options (4), switching between daylight and night time, and, coolest of them all, a sliding scale to change the snake's aggressiveness.

I pretty much leave it at the highest level.

The reason this app was created, I get the feeling, is to see how far you can go with animation using the iPhone's fairly simplistic processor.  The amount of detail they have been able to render out of this mini-computer is impressive, but anything created for any console gaming system since 1993 will do better.  Impressive for the iPhone, but not over all.

As I played with this app, ideas kept springing to mind.  Why not let me customize the snake's color and look?  Why not give me an option to feed the snake and watch it attack and eat a cute little bunny (I'm sick like that)?  Why not add some cool and goofy customizations--like feeding it an image from the photo library of your boss or mother-in-law?  Or why not allow you to change the background to a personal photo (say, the family around the Christmas tree)?  There could be a lot of dumb fun to be had with this app, but the developers have not yet squeezed the lemon.

And this is why I cannot recommend this app for the $1.99 asking price.  If it were free, I'd be more forgiving, but coughing up any dough in this early stage of the app's development is not a great idea.  I'd wait for version 2.0.  If the developers listen to customer feedback, I'm sure the improvements will be massive.  It's all potential at this point.

You can buy Rattler HERE.