iON Bond

Ion Bond doesn't sparkle as much as some other puzzlers on the App Store.

It's rough around the edges, scratchy here and there, and feels like it could do with an extra layer of polish to finish it off.

But there is an intriguing game of attraction and repulsion underneath that slightly ugly exterior, and it's a game that's rich with interesting ideas and fresh ways of implementing them.

There are niggles and frustrations, but they're set against a backdrop of flashes of inspiration. It's far from the perfect mobile puzzler, but there's enough here that it's worth a second, and possibly a third glance.

Each level of the game is a walled-in maze. There are a number of particles in the maze, and it's your job to connect the similarly coloured ones together.

To do this you draw lines between them. The particles are either positively or negatively charged, at least to begin with. Objects with different charges are attracted to each other, while those with the same charge are repelled.

There are neutrinos (little silver balls) to collect as well. You don't have to grab them, but you haven't really completed a level until you've cleared it of neutrinos as well.

Swiping a finger along the beam that connects particles severs that connection, although they'll still move for a while. Sometimes your swipes aren't recognised, but this doesn't happen that often if you're precise.

You can make bonds through some matter, but not through dark matter, which also destroys any particles that come into contact with it.

Later in the game you'll need to deal with colourless particles you don't need to connect, and particles that are neither positively or negatively charged.

There are a lot of puzzles to work through here, and while the presentation will put some off, there's enough to like in the line-drawing and line-breaking gameplay that a few jagged edges here and there shouldn't make too much difference.

It's the slightly frustrating controls, especially the inaccurate slices, that make Ion Bond a little tougher to like.

There's a solid game here, but it's overshadowed a little by its failings and foibles. Look past them and you'll find an entertaining puzzler.