Froggie

It's fair to say that frogs only ever seem to be doing one of two things: hopping, or sitting quietly waiting for a bug to land in front of them so they can whip it into their mouths with their weird, long, sticky tongues.

The hopping bit has already appeared in a game, courtesy of the classic (and very similarly entitled) Frogger, which had you guiding a frog from one side of an obstacle-filled passageway to the safety of the other. Froggie instead focuses on the bug-snatching side of a frog's existence and turns it into a tongue-twisting test of your reaction speed.

Playing as the not-so-ingeniously-named Froggie, you spend the game watching as a variety of insects pass across the screen landing on one of nine lily-pads. These lily-pads are handily organised in the same formation as your mobile keypad, and to send Froggie's tongue flying over to one of them you simply press the number that corresponds to that lily-pad. Providing you've pressed it quickly enough, as the bugs don't sit still longer than a split second, Froggie then swipes and swallows whatever is sitting atop it.

The game isn't all about just mindlessly swallowing any old manky fly, though. This isn't Whack-a-Mole with a tongue instead of a mallet. Some bugs leave a decidedly bad taste in Froggie's mouth – namely pig flies, bees and spiders. Eat any of them and the effects range from deducting points you've earned by eating tasty houseflies, butterflies and dragonflies, to robbing you of precious time.

Yes, not only do you have to eat the right kinds of bugs, you're also up against a tight time limit. A bar to the side of the screen indicates how much you have left, and if it goes empty before you've completed that level's objective, you've failed.

Froggie's objectives come in three different types. There are six areas in total and each has three levels within it: Flies Feast, Combo Crazy and Points Proud. The first is a race to eat a certain number of flies (say, 50) within the time limit. In Combo Crazy you must complete a set number of combos, and Points Proud is a straightforward race to achieve a certain points total.

You might be wondering how a frog pulls off a combo seeing as it's not in possession of, say, a skateboard or a set of kung fu moves to string together such things. But in Froggie's world you don't need them – you just need to eat a series of insects in an order which is displayed on the screen every minute or so. Manage to spot and eat, for instance, a green housefly followed by a bee and then a dragonfly, and you'll earn big points and a chunk of time in return.

In the Combo Crazy levels they're obligatory, and by the second world they're compulsory to make it through any level just because without them you'll run out of time before you've completed your task. This means you're almost always given a couple of things to concentrate on at one time: looking out for the next bug in the current combo, and for the ones that will give you a lot of points or the houseflies you're trying to accumulate.

It's actually surprisingly difficult, especially since your prey moves across the screen faster than a wasp on its way to a pint of beer. Essentially, Froggie might look like a harmless kids' game, but its difficulty level will keep the most hardened gamer coming back for more.

So while it's an entertaining enough game, it has its fair share of frustrating points. If you don't complete a combo within a set timeframe, it resets and gives you another one – which almost certainly spells disaster since you desperately need the extra seconds and won't have time to complete another combo. And sometimes the insects move on just that split-second too quickly, so that your tongue is working overtime but you're never actually catching anything.

Despite this, it's got the one-more-go factor in abundance. Froggie might be frustrating, but when you fail a level, mentally exhausted, five flies short of your 50 target, it's hard to resist the temptation to have another try. It's no classic, then, but it's a good time-eating game to have on your mobile.