Take one rope. Cut it. Fun?
Someone at ZeptoLab thought so, and from this simple notion came Cut the Rope, a fiendishly addictive and disarmingly charming physics-puzzler.
Admittedly, it involves a lot more than just slicing cords, with a massive cardboard box full of content to keep you busy long after you should have put your phone down.
Cut the Rope is probably the only other smartphone game to come close to Rovio's Angry Birds in terms of worldwide recognition, and for good reason. Its arrival on the BlackBerry PlayBook doesn’t disappoint.
Om and om and nomIn Cut the Rope your primary goal is to feed a sweet to a loveable monster called Om Nom.
Your have to get that delicious-looking sugar bomb into his mouth using a pretty self-explanatory tactic: you use your chosen appendage to slice through the rope and drop the sweet into the gobbler.
It only remains that simple for so long. A number of gameplay tweaks are introduced, often at a rapid pace, so that soon you'll have to consider all manner of physics-based algorithms (or a combination of guesswork and luck) in order to give Om Nom his prize.
Some of these elements are as simple as a bubble that conveys your candy skywards, while others are as complicated as a button that reverses gravity and boggles the mind.
Swinging in the breezeThe appeal of Cut the Rope lies in experimenting with and mastering its physics, timing swings, button-presses, and bubble-pops.
A three-star system gives you an excellent opportunity to go back and replay earlier stages, at which point you'll usually realise just how far you've come as you breeze through them with ease.
Collecting all three stars on a whim in a stage that initially proved mind-numbingly hard is immensely satisfying at one end of the scale, though the closing levels of the game are so difficult that you'll just be glad to get through them in one piece.
Difficult as the game can be, it's never monotonous and far from a chore.
ZeptoLab's excellently presented and wonderfully playful Cut the Rope will suck you in with its simplicity, chew you up with its constantly growing challenge, and wash you down with a nice glass of sugar-coated satisfaction.