iSlash

Once you get past about Level 30, the only experience you can compare iSlash to is that unbearably tense feeling when you're stuck at road junction faced with a never-ending stream of traffic that just won't let you out.

This freemium port of the 2010 iOS mega hit isn't about driving, but trying to carve up a tiny piece of wood without hitting one of the ninja stars zipping around it produces almost the same surge of panicky adrenaline.

With a suitably Eastern design, right down to the animal wood carvings you have to cut up and the near Zen soundtrack, Bulkypix's game still looks sharp two years after its App Store debut.

Each of the 100 stages presents you with a wooden design upon which the aforementioned ninja stars bounce almost randomly around. Some are big and sluggish, while the rest are dinky and nippy, so your eyes will have to work overtime to keep track of them.

It's your job to slice off as much wood around the stars as possible without hitting them, or dividing them up into multiple groups. Cutting big wedges at the start of a stage is normally easy enough, but the final swipes across cramped, star-crammed areas are always tense affairs.

Early on, using your finger to make swipes feels natural and rather impressive in a way that Mr Miyagi might approve of.

However, by the time you get to the second set of levels - labelled Ronin, to signify that you need to be a samurai to finish them - your chubby digits will feel far too imprecise.

By then you'll probably have already used up the limited supply of power-ups - such as bombs to blow up stars, auto swipes to finish levels, and hourglasses to slow time - to crawl through to Level 50.

It's here that you'll reluctantly turn to the in-game store to top up some, or all, of these powers with relatively small in-app purchases (all of which also remove the in-game ads).

iSlash is still a sharp novelty ninja game, but you'd need to be a martial arts master or have deep pockets inside your kimono to see it to the end.