Bubble Town 2

For such a violent and destructive weapon of the Age of Exploration, the cannon doesn’t half seem to pop up a lot in cartoony, gentle games.

Take Puzzle Bobble, in which cannons fire harmless bubbles into other, similarly un-threatening, bubbles of the same colour.

Or Bubble Town 2, in which a cannon fires cute disembodied heads into similar looking heads.

In Bubble Town 2 you have a finite number of heads to fire from your cannon into a group sitting at the top of the screen. Matching three or more heads, or Borbs as they’re called, takes them out of play, causing any attached below to drop down and replenish your ammo.

If you run out of shots, the cannon’s ammo is automatically replenished and the ceiling of the play area lowered, making angles tighter and bringing the Borbs closer to the ‘danger line’. If one passes the line, it’s Game Over.

Aiming is done via the touchscreen by holding your finger down and moving left to right. Fine tuning is performed via the trackball/touchpad, and helpful guidelines appear if you’re attempting an audacious shot off the side of the play area.

Firing is done by tapping anywhere on screen, which can occasionally be triggered if you’re trying to aim, but doesn’t happen often enough to become a serious problem.

Everything is wrapped up in some fantastically bright and colourful graphics and animation that give the game a good dollop of character. The music may be intensely annoying, but it’s still a very polished and well made affair.

The gameplay never gets boring during the course of the 45 levels on offer, moving through three further modes - Invasion, Ball and Boss Fights - and introducing new power-ups and obstacles like teleports and evil Borbs at a brisk pace.

Unfortunately, once the main story is finished there's almost nothing else to do. It does take around 2-3 hours to play through the main game, but the lack of an Endless mode, especially as this was included on the original Facebook version, means it won’t last long on your phone after completion.

Compared to most of the offerings currently on the Android Market, though, Bubble Town 2 is a very polished and enjoyable game, with a low enough price tag to overcome its reasonably brief length.