Ballooney

Jesters were an integral part of the King or Queen's court. The funny part. Providing light banter before someone was relieved of the pressure of having a head on their shoulders, it was the jester's job to keep the Royals happy.

Never once though did we hear about them re-arranging piles of balloons.

While it may not be historically accurate, Ballooney has you doing just that. Towards the top of the screen, there's a large pile of assorted balloons. As the jester, it's your job to magic them down towards you, move them to the left or right, and then fire them back up to try and make groups of three of the same colour.

When you've made a group of three or more, you'll set off a chain reaction that pops them all, clearing that portion of the screen. Clear them all and you win.

There are four different colours of balloon to arrange to begin with, and more colours are added as you progress through the game.

Special balloons also crop up, scattered across the screen to try and spice up proceedings. When included in a group, they trigger their special power, such as exploding, or taking out all balloons that are on screen with the same colour as them.

Ballooney is your usual colour-matching puzzle game, then, given a medieval spin. Nothing wrong with that, except that it is marred by a catalogue of errors so vast, it would take an army of librarians a decade to even begin to classify them all.

For starters, the game has an awkward habit of forgetting what balloons you've pulled down towards you, meaning the balloons you've collected sometimes disappear altogether.

To make matters worse, the balloons at the top of the screen have been haphazardly animated, which makes setting up an oh-so-satisfying screen-clearing combo almost impossible. It's incredibly annoying when you take out a seam of coloured balloons, only to have to sit and wait for a while as the remaining balloons think about falling into the gap behind them.

And even when the balloons do eventually decide it's time to obey the laws of physics, they don't just slide gracefully into place, oh no. Instead they choose to randomly disappear and then reappear further up the screen. It makes keeping track of what's going on a task that's suitable only for Mensa candidates, and ensures the gameplay is more annoying than is safe for your handset's health.

Equally disappointing is the lack of gameplay modes to play through (there's just one) and the incredibly poor presentation. Fancy appearances are not as important as gameplay, but at least here they might have plastered over some of the cracks. Unfortunately, Ballooney is no looker, with stereotypical animé babes scrolling down the monotonous background as you play.

All in all, this is a disappointing attempt at what could have been a decent enough puzzle game. Games such as Astro Pop have proved that, if done correctly, this format of block-busting can be as addictive as any other game, so much so that we awarded that particular one a mighty Pocket Gamer Bronze award.

But Ballooney hasn't been done correctly. It's glitchy, it's bland, it's generic, it's not much fun, and it's one of the most disappointing titles we've played for a while. Jester? Joker more like.