Donald Duck's Quest

There was a great electronic toy doing the rounds when I was a child in the 1980s. Called Big Trak, it was a hulking electronic vehicle that had six wheels and required half a million batteries to power it.

On its top side was a membrane numeric keypad which was used to program up to 16 commands. You could instruct the Big Trak to move forwards and backwards (for varying distances), turn left or right, and even dump the cargo it was carrying in the optional trailer.

Back in the '80s, it was almost dubbed an intelligent robot able to find its way around the home, and was loved by dads as much as their children. Yet in reality Big Trak lacked infra-red obstacle detection, line-following sensors or anything to allow it to interact with its environment. It didn't really 'know' where it was going, unlike the fascinating robot toys of today.

And back in the present, the Big Trak concept reminds us very much of the premise behind Donald Duck's Quest, a puzzle game from Living Mobile.

That's because you don't have direct control over Donald during his adventure to find his friends. Rather, you 'guide' him around the environment by using an arsenal of red directional arrows found along the bottom of the screen, each with a number at the side representing how many are available to be used on a given level.

Obviously, the arrows equate to the direction Donald Duck will travel. The twist is that you must place these arrows on to the playing area in the appropriate points and press the right shift key to set Donald on his way – he then walks over them and switches direction according to the arrow's instruction.

Work it out correctly and you should have created a perfect route for the hapless duck to get to his goal, such as finding one of his nephews, rescuing Uncle Scrooge or similar.

As the game progresses, things get progressively harder, with different obstacles such as keys to unlock doors and pressure pads you have to walk over to open yet more doors being introduced.

It doesn't sound like much but it's enough to really make you think – after the first couple of levels you'll find yourself concentrating hard, scrutinizing the level layout to work out the perfect arrow distribution.

Aptly for a Disney title, the graphics are colourful and competent, remaining faithful to the characters, while the playing area takes up the entirety of your mobile's screen. The music impresses, too, and is probably the most accomplished we've heard on the mobile for a while with the two catchy tunes setting the tone particularly well.

It's also good news in terms of bang for your buck, as the game is spread over a rather generous 42 levels. However, the catch is they don't really change massively and it all eventually gets a little repetitive.

Having said that, Donald Duck's Quest remains a deceptively strong brain-teaser with above-average presentation and a fair degree of originality. And although it's clearly aimed at the younger market, adults will certainly get some enjoyment from Donald Duck's exploits as well, especially once progress has been made onto the tougher later levels.

Nevertheless, this is no Big Trak, and ultimately you can't ignore the fact there's not enough variety to keep most grown-ups going for the long haul.