Chicken Coup

Like a farmyard twist on line-drawing wonder Flight Control, Chicken Coup has you guiding roosters and hens away from the salivating jowls of hungry foxes. It's simple, it's good-looking, but it's incomplete.

Developer Trendy Entertainment puts its own mark on the line-drawing form, introducing a clever combo system and tricky level design - not forgetting the fabulous Unreal Engine-fuelled graphics. Unfortunately, missing features and performance issues make Chicken Coup feel half-finished.

In each of three levels, the object is to send chickens into two coops: a brown one for roosters and a white one for hens. Touching and then dragging a chicken into the coop does the trick. You can link multiple chickens together by dragging a finger over them, forming a long chain that nets you bonus points.

There's a risk to creating long chicken chains, however: foxes. These crafty creatures slink onto the screen with an eye for seizing a chicken. Lose too many and it's Game Over. Fortunately, you can deposit foxes in the red barn, clearing them from the barnyard.

It's a simple game with slick presentation, which makes it so odd that a few basic features are missing. For example, the only way in which you can pause the game is by hitting the 'sleep' key on your device. It's a crude way of pausing, but the only available option since the feature has seemingly been overlooked.

Similarly, the game supports Game Center, but there's no way to check the achievements list within the game. Speaking of missing features, where's an Endless mode? It's odd that a high score-chasing game like this is without an Endless or Survival mode.

What's surprising are performance issues. The game slows when chickens fill the screen - not just on older handsets, but iPhone 4 and iPad too. It's worth mentioning because it affects your ability to move chickens and foxes around the screen.