Moorhuhn: Space Mission

It was the Soviets who placed the first animal into space, a dog called Laika. The Americans followed, and have put at least two chimpanzees into space since that time. All very impressive, you might say.

Well, not so impressive, we think. There's another space-faring animal out there, as it happens – Moorhuhn, the bird-like, humanoid space-walker who's the star of Twist Box Games's Moorhuhn: Space Mission.

The story goes that having embarked on a short space walk from his vessel, poor old Moorhuhn realises that he's lost the 1.7billion-digit entry code (don't you just hate it when that happens?) that enables entry back inside. All is not lost, however, as there is a fail-safe system to take care of this very eventuality. So, while the oxygen slowly depletes, Moorhuhn can enter the code via graphical symbols.

We're not entirely sure how he's supposed to have remembered these symbols either, but it could serve as well as anything as the basis for a good sliding puzzle. However, as anyone who boldy goes this way will soon discover, Space Mission is a game with a disappointingly limited scope.

Set before you is an 8x8 grid made up of a variety of space-themed objects. The idea is to match a minimum of three of these separate objects up. Doing this tops up your oxygen tank, which may or may not be depleting as you go, depending on whether you have chosen to play with it depleting for an extra challenge.

To match the objects, you first move through the horizontal and vertical axis, and then select the area on the grid that you want to slide, moving it in any of the four directions that you want it to go. When you match up the objects they disappear, and the space they vacate is filled by the objects directly above, while new symbols appear from the top of the screen to replace the objects on the very top row that have dropped.

Once you have refilled the oxygen tank, you head on to another identical level. The change of difficulty simply comes from selecting the Oxygen setting mode, as mentioned earlier; here, Moorhuhn's oxygen supply slowly diminishes because there's a hole in the tank, so you'll have to be quick with your object-matching in order to battle against the falling air gauge.

It's a suitably bleak theme for an unshowy game. There aren't any sound effects and although the in-game music is of a decent standard, it's rather repetitive. And while the graphics are clear and colourful, they're merely what you'd expect from a puzzler.

Space Mission is pretty big in terms of levels, but it's all too repetitive. The game does try to add further incentive by giving you a new picture to put in the gallery when you've completed a level, but unfortunately that's not enough to support the simple game mechanic with any genuine longevity.

Still, perhaps that's fitting. After all, how many of those space faring animals made it to a ripe old age, eh?

Moorhuhn: Space Mission

For all its sci-fi trimmings, this is just another average sliding puzzle game that hasn't got enough to keep you coming back for more
Score
Chris Maddox
Chris Maddox
Liverpool fan, Chris, loves to watch the mighty Redmen play. In between matches however, he's an avid mobile games reviewer for Pocket Gamer. Chris has assured us that he only thinks about Liverpool FC a mere 80 per cent of the day.