Flavor Monsters preview

You may recall last week, while attending Gen Con Indy 2012, we covered a game called Flavor Monsters. Presented by Truth, it's a game designed to raise awareness that Big Tobacco actually uses flavored tobacco to appeal to kids. While we covered the basic concept of the game and gave you a brief tour of their impressive booth (which you can also check out at Dragon Con and Comic Con in the coming months), we haven't yet discussed our hands-on preview of the game.

The demo at Gen Con, while relatively short, gave us a nice look at the core gameplay mechanics of Flavor Monsters. The one level we played had us protecting a skate park in the middle of the city from invading, mutated, fruit-like creatures.

With a top-down view of the city, we were tasked with eliminating the threat by zapping the monsters, all by simply tapping on them. A simple tap on the screen fired a quick electric bolt at them, while pressing down kept up a steady flow of energy. Of course, pressing down for too long could result in overheating. Once the monster is destroyed, coins will appear, which you can collect for future use.

After a few minutes of destroying the basic creatures, a giant Honey Buzzer appeared. What's a Honey Buzzer you ask? THIS is a Honey Buzzer!

Once he spawned, I had to capture him for testing. He was much stronger than the rest of the monsters, but I eventually succeeded. The next level was an extraction chamber device where I had to trace the smoke he was making and poke him repeatedly in order to successfully capture it. Needless to say, I did a fantastic job, and upon completing the assignment, I was rewarded with some information about the Honey Buzzer themed around the concept of flavored tobacco.

While brief, my experience with Flavor Monsters was a good one. As a free-to-play game for iOS and Android devices, Flavor Monsters provides you with high-paced action fun for no cost! There are some in-app purchases you can choose to make to get better items and devices, but ultimately, it's up to you.

Looking ahead, more levels, items, and monsters will be added to the game. You'll be able to check those out at Dragon Con in Atlanta, GA (Aug. 31-Sep. 3) and New York Comic Con (Oct. 11-14).

Perhaps the best reason behind supporting Flavor Monsters, above all, is to increase the awareness of flavored tobacco usage by Big Tobacco.