Big Bucket Software is back after their solid 2014 adventure game Space Age [$1.99], returning to their breakout hit The Incident [$0.99] in a sense with Stagehand [$1.99]. Featuring Frank, the protagonist of The Incident, and a retro, pixel-art style, your goal is to keep Frank running along by controlling the platforms underneath him. You drag to keep him running, or to jump from one to another, trying not to obstruct him, as if he gets slowed down, he will get scrolled off the screen and that's the end of Frank. Sorry, buddy. But you do have conveyor belts that will speed Frank along so he can recover some of the gap between him and oblivion. Helpful! It's all a clever concept, and it has the production values you'd expect from Big Bucket. But, this game feels like it's in a place out of time, because it's a $2.99 endless game with little to unlock, where the replay value is in getting high scores. It's a quality game, but it might not have the depth in the modern context of the App Store to make everyone happy.
What's interesting about Stagehand and its little-used stage modification gameplay is that the difficulty is centered around performance and endurance. You'll have to deal with brick walls, spike balls, and more, over time, and the spike balls in particular start appearing more and more. But, it's not like there's a sudden increase in how many there are, any increase in difficulty is so subtle you might not notice it. You just have to figure out how to handle di...