Killawatt is a game about stacking speakers onto a truck with a wobbly, aerial crane. It's the latest addition to Samsung's arcade of surprisingly solid advergames, featuring Sammy, a conspicuously anglo, canine mascot. This time, however, Sammy has his black snoopy ears in a dreadlock-esque style, and he's gone rasta.

The interface consists solely of clicking and waiting. Sammy is hanging onto a crane toward the top of the screen, the crane moves over time, wobbling all the while, and precisely timed clicks will drop those speaker blocks in a pattern that makes further stacking feasible. Each level of stacking you manage to lay will give you increasing bonuses to your score, the initial level gives 200, the next gives 400, all the way to 1,000. But be careful, the whole thing can come down late in the game, taking your high score all the way down. A three minute time limit is also in effect.

Analysis: Once you play through the game a few times, you realize that the major limit to your potential score isn't the time limit, but rather the structural integrity of the speaker towers you're setting up. Then you shift your strategy toward carefully laying a strong foundation, as opposed to just spamming speakers. I think the developers could have done a better job of implying that, as time limits usually are the primary factor limiting your performance. The other balancing issue is the speed at which the crane moves left and right, it'd be nice if the position of the mouse more clearly altered the movement of the crane, and if the relative distance increased the speed of the movement. As it stands, waiting for the crane to get into the position you want is about as exciting as watching a stock ticker, which since you're not making money, isn't very exciting.

Overall, a charming, solid, and surprisingly deep exploration into catastrophic physics and cool reggae.

Play Killawatt

For a similar game, check out the previously reviewed Tower Bloxx.