Pang Mobile

There can surely be fewer more therapeutic experiences in life than popping balloons. That initial excitement as you clutch the brightly coloured object at arms length, the excessively loud explosion when you pierce its skin and then the gentle sound of sobbing children left clutching a wilted piece of rubber…

Erm anyway, Pang takes this very principle and employs it as the basis of a fast-paced puzzle game. Your job as the cutely crafted Japanese hunter is to pop a number of bouncing balloons using a special vertical-firing grappling hook style gun. When you hit a balloon or it hits the trailing cable from your gun it then splits into 2 smaller balloons, hit these in turn and they split again until the screen is filled with loads of tiny tough-to-hit bubbles. Though this reductionism might be satisfying it’s actually quite bad news for your onscreen hero, as unlike your common or garden balloons or bubbles these bouncing devils can kill upon the merest of contacts. Hence, there’s a genuine strategy required in order to safely dispose of your circular foes, as you try to take on one problem at a time and keep the number of targets to a minimum.

Further complications are added by various blocks placed around the playing screen some of which can be destroyed with a shot others cannot, but all play their part in redirecting the movement of the balloons and indeed your hero (some levels require you to climb up ladders). Then there are some completely random elements such as dragons or birds which mysteriously appear and fly about the screen helpfully eating bubbles or more likely getting in the way. Oh and did we mention you’ve got a tight time limit too? Just as well then that you’ve got a whole host of power-ups to help you out, from double-firing guns and force-fields, to clocks (which stop or slow-down the balloons), dynamite (which immediately splits the balloons into the smallest possible size) and even laser guns.

If all this seems a little hectic, then that’s because it is. Whilst you definitely need to adopt a strategy to take on each level, you also have to be pragmatic and react quickly to changing situations as you try to gage the gravity of your situation and sidle between bounces. Fortunately the control system doesn’t provide any additional challenges, with much of the game limited to moving left or right and pressing fire with the occasional trip up the ladder for variation.

Whilst Pang is unlikely to be one of those games you keep coming back to once you’ve completed its 20-level world tour (or indeed got stuck long enough on one level), there’s enough ingenuity in the level design and it’s quirky visual style to keep things fresh and enjoyable in the short term and there’s no doubt you’ll get a good bang for your buck!