Bounce Out

After you write the words 'match-three puzzler' for the 72,989th time, the experience starts to lose its sheen. In fact, it becomes almost intolerable. Just as something as innocuous as a rich tea biscuit will make you suicidal if you eat nothing else, the overused match-three puzzle formula is known to induce effects ranging from melancholia to bucking hysteria in reviewers routinely exposed to high doses.

So when a game like Bounce Out comes along, it makes a difference. This is one of the games RealArcade has optimised for touchscreen control, so if you're lucky enough to own a compatible device (in our case, the LG KU990) you can enjoy the novelty of matching three with a stylus. If you have an ordinary phone, of course, you'll have to make do with boring old keys.

Already a popular browser-based casual game, Bounce Out is as workmanlike as its slightly awkward title suggests, with no elaborate plot or cast of characters to bring order to the chaos of coloured balls. However, it's also one of the better puzzle games available in its unassuming way, and almost original beyond its very unoriginal premise of bringing identical objects together to make them disappear.

There are four different modes, but at its core Bounce Out employs a single mechanic. Rather than blocks, the screen is filled with marbles, and you can match them along three different axes – vertical and both diagonals – rather than the usual two.

The extra axis adds a surprising amount to the match-three formula, since going for elaborate combinations becomes a running secondary concern. Getting two lines on separate axes gets you a wedge bonus, for instance, and there's also a 'supernova' pattern bonus for those with the skill or good fortune to discover it.

You move the marbles by first selecting one with the stylus (or cursor if you're playing with a standard handset), and then selecting another with which you want it to swap places. If three or more come together, out they bounce. Hooray.

In Classic mode, the marbles spring back to their original position if they don't make a match, in a mechanic familiar from games like Jewel Quest and RealArcade's own Burger Rush. At the beginning of each level the game gives you a target, such as 70 balls in 50 seconds, and so you have to make matches as quickly as you can.

Since you can't move marbles around the screen, it's possible to snooker yourself in Classic mode by playing haphazardly and running out of moves. While it's not an issue in the early levels, you'll find you have to be careful to ensure that you can move after you dispatch the next three in the later stages.

To help you out if you do get stuck, you can press a 'panic' button to mix the marbles up, but you can only do this once per level, and since the mixing is random you're just as likely to end up with another screen full of unmatchable marbles as you are a series of profitable cascades.

In Strategy mode, meanwhile, you can swap marbles as many times as you like. But every time you do another two roll in from either side of the screen, meaning that you have to play smartly if you don't want to be inundated, going for fives and sixes rather than bog-standard threes, and spotting the possible matches along all three axes.

You start with a screen half-full and, as with Classic mode, you win when you reach a target established at the beginning of the level. You can also shuffle the marbles with the panic button, as you can in all modes.

Swapper mode is very like Strategy, the only real difference being that the marbles trickle in constantly instead of every time you move, so speed rather than parsimony is the watchword.

The best and most varied of the modes is Mania, in which each of the 45 levels specifies a different challenge. In one, you might be playing to get the balls below a watermark, while in another the goal might simply be to make a five, or to reach a set target by matching just one colour of marble.

Of course, there are power-ups, like the bomb, which takes out a satisfyingly big swathe of the screen, and 'colour', which gets rid of every marble of the same colour. Actually, that's a guess. Although I found a couple of bombs, I didn't find a colour in the hours I sat with Bounce Out, so the power-ups are fairly rare.

And that's it. Bounce Out is a modest, fairly original and fairly addictive puzzler that's exactly as unlikely to disappoint you as it is to blow your mind. It's no revolution, but if you're keen for a slightly new way to match-three things of the same hue, then this may well be the game for you.