Dumb N’ Bummer by AIM Productions, Price: $14.99
Reviewed October 2003, by Howard Paw

An elephant named Dumb has been kidnapped by the vulture Bummer and his crazy cohorts, trapped in various mazes; it’s up to you to help Dumb escape his captors and make his way home while knocking a few vulture heads in the process. This is the basic story premise of AIM Productions’ action game, Dumb N’ Bummer.

Played from a top down perspective, the game looks very much like a scene taken out of PacMan. Instead of Mr. PacMan and the gruesome foursome ghosts running around the maze, you control an elephant while a fair number of vultures run after you. Fortunately for the action buffs, this is where the similarity with Pac Man ends. In this game, you are not left defenseless; the boulders that are scattered all around the maze can be used as weapons against the enemies. You simply need to push boulders towards the vultures, crushing them and thus, eliminating them from the game. Be careful though, for every killed vulture, an egg will appear and if you don’t destroy the egg in time it will hatch and another elephant killing vulture will emerge. Once you have killed and destroyed all of the vultures and eggs, you will be transported to the next level. Another way to complete the level is to arrange all of the marble blocks within the maze into a straight line, though this isn’t as easy as it may sound. Personally, I prefer to simply get rid of all the vultures and eggs , much easier and it somewhat pleases my sadistic nature (hey! Who wouldn’t enjoy squashing evil vultures?) The game features 40 levels of vulture busting action and as the game progresses, the number of vultures increases and they tend to get smarter and faster. They won’t simply blindly run into a wall and they’ll try their best to go around any boulder that can be potentially hurled at them.

Graphically, the game looks good. While it won’t be winning any awards for best graphics anytime soon, it still is pleasing to the eyes and looks very retro. The graphics reminds me of games that I used to play on my SNES and Sega Genesis. Dumb N’ Bummer also features background music and sound effects. Similar to the graphics, it’s nothing special but it blends in with the game quite nicely. There are options to turn off the music, sound effect or both right on the game screen, which is quite nice as you won’t have to leave the game just to turn off the sound.

The game is controlled by the D-pad on your Pocket PC and no other buttons are required. As much as I love the no frills control method of the game, it would have been better if the control buttons can be customized as not all Pocket PCs have a good D-pad that’s fit for gaming. On an iPAQ 5450, Dumb N’ Bummer is definitely hard to play as the D-pad on this unit is way too sensitive no matter how I tweak the button sensitivity. I was able to try this game on a Mitac Mio 339 Pocket PC (which has a joystick instead of a directional pad) and the game was immensely more enjoyable as the controls were 100% accurate thanks to the joystick. The control problem would have easily been solved if the controls are customizable or there was an alternate method of control like a virtual D-pad, but alas, this is not the case.

After playing a myriad card and puzzle games, it’s nice to play a simple no brainer arcade action game like Dumb N’ Bummer. The strength of this game lies in the fact that it’s easy to pick up while being challenging enough to hold your interest. But be warned though, try out the demo first and see if your Pocket PC’s D-pad can control the game reliably.