“I Hate You” is a mobile game to help you exorcise those phobias (review)

Overview

A lot of us, while being otherwise normal, functioning humans, harbor some deep and rather irrational fears against generally ‘normal’ items in daily life. Be it clowns, spiders, or even a trip to the dentist, sometimes a certain thing or event can create life-stopping fear or paranoia.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a gaming outlet to virtually crush, maim, and destroy these haunting bug-a-boos? Now you can with I Hate You, a mobile game (available in Google Play or the App Store) from the developer Sunrise Games that allows you to get in your car and literally run down your fears.

Gameplay

Pretty simple stuff here.  You start in the main menu, where you have two main sets of options to choose from:

1. Your phobia you’d like to run over.
2. Your vehicle in which to do the running over.

Additionally, there is a daily point/cash bonus mini-game and achievements list, but we’re here to avenge our nightmares, so let’s get to it.

As with most games of this type, you start with just a basic car, and you can ‘purchase’ bigger/faster ones with money gained during previous gameplay/mini-games.  Also, you start with just one phobia avatar, the dreaded clown.

Once your game starts, your controls are also pretty basic.  Your vehicle automatically
accelerates up to its max speed; you can control steering by tapping on the left and right sides of the screen. Tapping low-left and low-right brakes your vehicle in that respective direction.

Using these controls, your goal is to run over as many phobia avatars as possible before your health meter (essentially a timer) runs out.  Once this meter is empty, your game is over.  You have a short amount of time to buy back into your current game, or you can go back to the main menu to change vehicle, phobia, or just start over with your current settings.

Vehicle options range across numerous rather generic-looking car types (though there is a police cruiser and tank available!). More importantly, the phobias you can choose to pursue include the aforementioned clown, cockroach, boss, dentist, spider, vampire, snake, dog, rat, and ZOMBIE (of course).

During gameplay, you may also run across several ‘power-up’ items including added time, saws, guns, and magnets.  There are also three maps available: city, castle, and winter themes.

What We Liked

• Original game theme based on everyday issues.
• Simple but repeatable gameplay.

What Could Use Improvement

• Controls can be too simple at times, making fine maneuvering difficult.
• Sound and graphics are OK, but nothing more.