Crazy Charly

Mobile's not short of a game or two based on the classics. Some, of course, are better than others.

Crazy Charly's attempt to ape Bomberman with a pack of monkeys might not initially seem like the most inspired of decisions, but it's one that holds up surprisingly well.

Like Hudson Soft's big bomber, the idea here is to clear a path through a series of mazes by placing explosives. Said bombs go offer a matter of seconds after they've been dropped, clearing grid squares in the vicinity both horizontally and vertically.

As well as opening up space to pick up items – gems and gold some of the early treasures on offer – they also take out your enemies, which take the form of a particularly nasty band of trolls early on.

As the levels progress, you also find yourself taking on other monkeys, themselves capable of dropping a bomb or two.

At this point, success becomes a question of trapping your rivals between your bombs and the ones they drop themselves – a particularly tricky task considering the pace at which Crazy Charly moves.

But it's the design of the levels, with their increasingly tight spaces, that raises Crazy Charly above the average Bomberman clone.

Only after every rival has been blasted from the board and every object has been picked up can you move on, making the best levels a case of cat and mouse. While it's tempting to be lured into the trap of hunting down your enemies, you can never escape the fact that you too are somebody's prey.

It's not the most original of concepts, of course, and it's unlikely Bomberman aficionados will be bowled over by the idea of playing the game as a monkey instead of a rogue robot.

Nonetheless, Crazy Charly manages to hold its own purely because the level design is interesting enough to keep you engaged. It's unlikely to break through any barriers of its own, but Elo Interactive's crack at mastering maze-based play is undoubtedly a blast.