KiKORiKi

Platform games need to find the right balance between accessibility and challenge. It's all well and good making a super-tough game for hardcore gamers, but that means cutting off a vast swathe of your potential audience.

Of course, you can go too far the other way as well, with hand-holding hints and a difficulty setting that let players win with their eyes closed.

KiKORiKi just about manages to get things right, with its easy play mechanics balanced out by the challenge presented by the need to swap between different characters at different points.

The game puts you in control of a walking cartoon ball and lets you out to play in a reasonably lush world. There's a story about the KikoRiki wanting super powers and evil taking over the world, but it's secondary to the on-screen action.

You control your be-legged ball with a combination of button-presses that will be familiar to anyone who's played a platform game on a mobile before.

Levels are brief, but there's still enough to do in each that you don't get bored. There are stars to collect, flowers to grab, and a variety of different enemies to despatch or avoid. The environment offers up challenges, too, from rocks you need to smash to armadillo-dug holes you need to avoid.

Swapping between characters lets you use their different abilities. Some can float above obstacles, or smash enemies with their horns, while others can phase through solid objects to explore what's on the other side.

Stars act sort of like rings in Sonic, and if you lose all of them, by being hit or falling into holes, you'll have to go back to the last checkpoint to start again.

KiKORiKi is an entertaining and well-constructed little platformer that has enough ideas up its sleeve to stay entertaining throughout its 12 levels. There are times when it missteps ever so slightly, but more often than not you'll be having too much fun to really notice.