Zadzooks: Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow review (iOS)

A legendary animated science-fiction universe returns via a complex mobile game to delight hard-core fans in Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow (Jam City and FoxNet Games, rated 12+, free with in-app purchases available, for Android and iOS devices).

Devotees to the twice-cancelled cartoon comedy, which ran original episodes on Fox and Comedy Central between 1999 and 2013, will dive into rebuilding New New York, meeting the old Planet Express crew and saving the galaxy from a smitten toad.

An original story from series head writer David X. Cohen and creator Matt Groening takes a player on a desperate treasure hunt in the distant future to acquire seven ancient alien artifacts spread across the cosmos to restore the fabric of the space-time continuum.

The adventure mixes object collection, character actions, city building, enemy battles and quests with interminable waiting and the dreaded in-app purchases.

Players eventually take control of the lives of former pizza delivery boy Phillip J. Fry; gaseous, alcohol-swigging robot Bender Bending Rodríguez; grumpy professor Hubert J. Farnsworth; Mars University student Amy Kroker; staff doctor, John A. Zoidberg; and many others from the “Futurama” family.

Besides rebuilding and decorating the earth city with help from pokey Robot 1-X units, they will visit Mars, Omicron Persei 8 and the moon via the Planet Express spaceship to collect awards and find those artifacts.

Through a top-down perspective within a tablet or smart phone, the player can click on various characters to start missions, on several buildings to generate currency (distributed as rent at set time intervals), and generally poke and swipe a finger at everything that looks interesting.

While space traveling on branching paths, the player lands on nodes that become arenas with attacking hostiles in fun, turn-based fights in a retro, 8-bit presentation.

Tapping on a metered battle ring around a character can protect against damage while tapping on an enemies’ meter at the right time will deliver more damage.

Now, of course, all of the building, enhancing, traveling and unlocking is mainly accomplished through transactions using different types of in-game currency.

They include a plentiful supply of Nixonbucks; rarer Hypnotons (used to unlock areas of the city) and career chips (to level up characters); and the not-so-plentiful pizza slices.

It will become very obvious to players quickly that the key to succeeding in the “Futurama” universe is tied to patience during the ridiculously timed events (often hours at a time to finish) and those pizza slices.

Basically, the game is a time-wasting minefield of waiting for actions to complete to earn a reward (it takes Amy 60 minutes to charge her phone and receive nine Nixonbucks, for example) or using accumulated slices to complete tasks. Of course, you never have enough slices.

Pizza is a rare commodity, and the game tempts with buy messages to purchase up to 3,500 pizza slices for $99.99. That’s right 100 bucks, and not Nixonbucks, real currency. Now, to actually acquire that many slices by playing the game could probably take until 2999.

Now, when paying in pizza, the time is waved and the player gets instant gratification.

The very good news for those willing to deal with this insanity is that developers worked with the creators to present an incredibly deep version of the “Futurama” universe with plenty of humorous dialogue snippets from many of the original cast.

All of the animations and static imagery look plucked from the show, and the avalanche of detail afforded as well as the reverence to the source material is amazing.

For example, to unlock Bender, a player will need to find a cigar, bottle of beer and build a Suicide Booth on the map. All of which are familiar items to this cranky robot.

Better yet, a player can purchase a multistory-tall Bender Pharaoh monument (seen in Season 3, Episode 17, “A Pharaoh to Remember”).

Or, decorate the city with landmarks such as Malfunctioning Eddie’s Rocket Car Emporium, the Church of Trek and the towering nightclub The Hip Joint; or add characters including the robotic thespian Calculon, janitor Scruffy Scruffington, former police officer Smitty and robotic Roman pleasure seeker Hedonismbot. All will make “Futurama” fans giddy.

Promotions are promised to open new levels and secure more bizarre items.

For example, for the July 4th weekend, players could buy the Watergate Hotel (boasting color television and mattress stains) and the animated body of Spiro Agnew carrying around the bottled, disembodied head of Richard Nixon (the president of Earth), all for only 375 pizza slices.

That’s roughly $15 hard cash to cover the slice cost for those unwilling to slowly accumulate the coveted, gooey currency.

For a game that highlights the passion of the developers for the beloved “Futurama” universe, it’s really a shame that these ridiculous in-app purchases hang over New New York City like creativity-choking smog.

I’ll bet fans would be more than happy to pay a steeper set price to open up the colorful world and really dig deep into its animated lunacy.