Domino Quake

First impressions count for a lot in our image-obsessed society. We worship touched-up idols of perfection and buy based on brand names, so it's no real surprise that companies are often more concerned with presentation than the product itself.

Not JavArt however, who can't be accused of spending the lion's share of the Domino Quake development budget on eye candy. From the odd kiddie font and awkward translation ("Yuppi Yeaaah!"?) to the fiddly sprites and clashing colour schemes of the levels, this game could stand in for the dictionary definition of the phrase 'lacking polish'.

And yet despite all this, we were still playing it around a week after we first got our hands on the game, intent on completing all 60 levels. In fact, we even had to ask the developers to send us updated final code from the beta version as the penultimate level couldn't be completed.

You see, once you strip away the rough skin, there really is a rather wonderful game to be discovered at the heart of Domino Quake. In fact if you were to flick back a few pages of that metaphorical dictionary, you'd also see the game used for the definition of 'diamond in the rough'.

Cast in the role of Gus O'Line the dragon (for which there's no real justification, apart from the ability to fly around levels) your task is to arrange a series of dominoes so that pushing just one will cause a chain reaction in which they all fall down.

To make things more interesting and to invoke the spirit of '80s board games Domino Rally and Mouse Trap (ask your dad), the levels are split across multiple platforms and littered with all manner of interesting tools, such as springs, see-saws, cannons and dynamite to propel the dominoes around.

What's more, there are also a handful of special dominoes that perform specific tasks, such as splitting, falling more slowly, bouncing dominoes back the way they came, and so on.

Rather than being faced with a blank canvas upon which to experiment, you're given broken layouts of combinations of dominoes and tools, which need to be fixed through the movement of up to five pieces in order to make all the dominoes fall down. Hence your challenge is to trace the path from the opening domino (although several levels don't tell you which this is) and work out where things fall down.

There's a time limit to add a little extra pressure too, which also heightens the anticipation for that moment of truth when you topple the first domino and then bite your lip to see if it all works out.

The combination of problem-solving challenge and the resulting domino show to celebrate success (or highlight failure) works wonderfully, and calls to mind the satisfaction of watching Lemmings hop safely home (or repeatedly fall to their death). And it's all the more satisfying for being wrapped up in one to two minute chunks of gaming.

Domino Quake does fall over in some areas (aside from the presentation). The tension of the time limit is somewhat undermined by the fact you're given unlimited retries at any one level, the placement of equipment and dominoes can be a little fiddly (especially on later levels) and the lack of any freeform experimentation seems an odd oversight.

The ability to create clever domino layouts of your own (and maybe even upload them to a central server to show off) would have added considerable extra value, and more than made up for the lack of multiplayer challenge.

We hope JavArt is saving that feature and hopefully an even weirder assortment of pieces for a sequel. If it could also manage to add a more crowd-pleasing front end to the experience, it could well have a record breaker on its hands.