Game Reviews

Dingle Dangle

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iOS
| Dingle Dangle
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Dingle Dangle
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iOS
| Dingle Dangle

Physics puzzles featuring cuddly creatures are getting to be as widespread on the App Store as violent shooters starring hordes of the undead. That level of saturation rarely leads to experiment or innovation, though, with games tending to cash in rather than expand on the craze.

Thankfully, while Dingle Dangle might have one of the worst names in the history of gaming, it's different enough from the raft of other games in the genre that it's actually worth some of your time. It's no classic, but it's no dud either.

Dangle of attack

The game is all about fishing for furry critters from the bay door of your floating pirate ship. You control your rope with a slider at the right of the screen, pushing a finger down to lengthen the line and pushing it up to shorten it.

Your only other means of control is tilting the device to swing the rope. You'll need this to navigate through tricky, narrow stretches, and to use the Dingles as a makeshift battering ram in order to smash down flimsy-looking walls.

Each level has a three-star rating system, and the more stars you collect the quicker you unlock the more difficult challenges. Most of the stages have pretty simple solutions, but if you want the bigger scores you'll need to think carefully and make sure your tilts and slides are at just the right time.

As the game progresses you'll have to find bugs that change the colour of your Dingles, as well as dodging spikes and gouts of fire that spray up at you.

Dingle fell

Theis mix of the cerebral and the dexterous makes a nice change, and while the levels are never particularly challenging it'll take you a few tries to get the best scores on most of them.

Dingle Dangle might not have the same addictive qualities that set out the very best of the genre, but it's still an entertaining little game. There are a few niggles here and there, but nothing so terrible as to make the game not worth a try.

It won't make it to any top ten lists by the end of the year, but Dingle Dangle is an enjoyable, clever little puzzle game all the same.

Dingle Dangle

It's not going to set the world alight with its brilliance, but Dingle Dangle offers a couple of hours of soft, harmless fun
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.