Chicken Little

Mobile gamers' brains are already full to bursting with puzzlers perfect for a bit of gaming on the go. It's no longer enough for developers to just churn out another symbol-matcher and expect it to top the charts.

So what can be done?

Well, you can either come up with a superlative example such as Chuzzle, or vouch for the traditional economic model of piling 'em high and selling 'em cheap. So either the game bods will have to focus like crazy on creating truly innovative experiences or they'll have to go the other way and offer more whiz 'n' bang for your buck than anything out there.

Chicken Little goes for this second option. What you get, then, are a number of classic puzzler variants. You start off with access to only two modes of the 'Acorn Drop' game. Clusters of some variously coloured balls come from the top of the screen, which you can rotate. Match up four or more acorns at the bottom of the display and they'll evaporate in a point-giving flourish.

What makes Acorn Drop really worthwhile though, is the amount of extra elements introduced into the game. Not only are there the standard acorn-destroying bombs and drills, but there are also more original game elements such as bolts that slice through the acorn clusters, splitting them up.

These mini-games are level-based. Complete enough of the occasional bonus levels and you'll get acorns that can be used to buy extra games from the main menu. You can choose either of the other two games once you can stump up enough acorns.

One member of this duo is a building bricks version of Tetris. You control a trowel and have to catch coloured bricks that fall from the top of the screen. Once caught, you have to drop them down to the bottom of the screen, stacking up similarly-coloured bricks to make them disappear.

The other game takes the classic Othello as its source (that's the boardgame not the Shakespeare play). In a pleasant departure from the side-on view of the other experiences offered, this last game is viewed from an isometric perspective.

These two extras act as a great break from the initial game. That said, making Acorn Drop the main offering is clearly the correct choice. The other two lack its innate playability, with the trowel-wielding Tetris variant being a bit too tough to avoid meandering into the frustrating territory.

Visually, everything is solid, featuring a bold colour palette, but the content can't compete with the many of the better single-game puzzlers out there.

Similarly, everything also has a slightly clunky quality to it, which is largely caused by the controls. Sure, the games all do what you want them to, but they don't compare to the best puzzlers out there, lacking the silk-smooth flash-style movement that's becoming the standard for mobile puzzlers.

Despite these niggles, Chicken Little remains a value-packed puzzle title. Acorn Drop is highly enjoyable, surprisingly so in fact, and the other two games offer a welcome diversion once your interest in multi-coloured nuts begin to wane. Exactly how they relate to the Chicken Little film (the cute onscreen characters aside) is anyone's guess, but the game remains a welcome addition to the puzzle genre.