Maya: Temple of Secrets

If you were one of those people who 'completed' their Rubik's Cube by pulling all the pieces apart and slotting them back together so all the colours were in the right places, this isn't the game for you.

Because Maya: Temple of Secrets is very similar to a Rubik's Cube. It has that same frustrating feature whereby 90 per cent of the puzzle can be solved and looking neat and rightly matched up, but then solving the rest of it goes and messes all that back up again.

Unfortunately there's no taking this puzzler apart and cheating – if there was, we'd have done it at around level 15 instead of suffering a near brain hernia.

Maya's puzzles revolve – literally – around triangles. Each puzzle is made up of clusters of triangles, arranged in various formations. These triangles are differently coloured at each of their three points, and your goal is to flip and rotate them so each connecting point is the same colour.

Easier said than done, though easier done than the tutorial suggests. Multi-turn triangles, multi-flip triangles, turn/flip triangles – you'd be forgiven for giving up before you've even begun, and going off to find something a bit simpler to do like revising for your molecular biology PHD.

But actually, like any good puzzler Maya is very simple to pick up and play. All you really need to know is that '1' rotates a triangle and '3' flips it (so it becomes the mirror of itself). You move around the triangles using the joystick or numbered buttons.

An icon at the top of the screen indicates which actions can be used on each triangle as it's highlighted, as you don't always have free choice. Some triangles are fixed (and so serve as a good starting point) while others can either be rotated, flipped or both.

hese restrictions offer some structure to the puzzles. Without them they'd likely be too easy – they ensure that there generally is only one solution, and you have to find it.

As you progress, puzzles also feature an increasing number of triangles that are connected to others, so that when you turn one triangle, several triangles turn with it. That's where the challenge really begins as these combos become the key to every solution. You'll know the positions the triangles have to be in, but you'll need to work out how to get them there without messing up the rest of the puzzle. Like we said, just like that constantly mocking Rubik's Cube.

There is a story – of sorts – behind all of this triangle twisting. It centres on Maya the jungle explorer finding nine secret artefacts from a secret temple. None of this guff impacts much on the game; for every five levels you complete, one of those artefacts is unlocked, and it's inspired a jungle-styled visuals throughout.

There's a jungle bongo theme tune, which is suitably catchy, and Jurassic Park-a-like backgrounds full of green leafiness. There are few sound effects while you're actually playing, though, other than the odd tinkle when you're on the right track. Presentation-wise you're unlikely to be disappointed – puzzle games don't necessarily need to look good, and Maya delivers more than the average one.

Just getting through the game is going to be reward enough for most players, but there are bonus points to collect as well, which are given out if you've completed a level within its time limit. The game saves automatically so you can always turn on and continue, or go back and replay the five levels which unlocked one of the previous nine artefacts.

And you will, as it's really very addictive – the sort of game that whiles away an hour without you realising, and which you keep going back to even after you've begun dreaming in triangles. The learning curve is slightly haphazard – puzzles go from 30 second sprints to ten minute round-the-houses epics then back again. they also get more annoying later, on as well, not always just building on the skills you've learnt but dropping you into multiple linked shape-shifting hell.

Overall, Maya delivers more than 40 challenging levels that will take the average brain at least a few days to figure its way through. Part Rubik's Cube and part sudoku, it isn't a classic that'll be remembered in years to come, but it will have you thinking about equilateral polygons more than is probably healthy.