Mush

Ever felt so happy you could fly? Or completely weighed down with glumness? Then you too could star in your own Windows Phone game!

Mush takes such emotional metaphors and builds a couple of nifty platform-puzzler game mechanics out of them.

Playing as the title character - a big fuzzy (and well-adjusted, it seems) ball creature - you must explore each of the game's 12 fantastical realms, collecting knick-knacks and searching for your friends.

Emotional rollercoaster

You control Mush by tilting your phone to make him move from side to side. Equipped with this basic range of motion, you set out to find your friends.

Each buddy represents a broad emotion - happiness or sadness for example - and upon encountering them you'll be taught how to change Mush's emotions with a swipe of your finger. Yes, he's easily swayed.

Make an upward swipe on the screen (like a smile) and Mush will turn happy. This will have the side-effect of making him swell up with air and float to the ceiling.

Later a downward swipe will make him sink to the bottom of pools of water. Another emotion sees you turning your phone upside down (that's confusion) in order to shift the whole world's physics 180 degrees, while anger is represented with a shake and makes Mush go all destructive.

Feelings in check

Mush gets a whole lot more interesting the longer you give it. It's actually pretty dull in the early stages, with the early floaty happy levels being both sluggish and overly simplistic to play through.

Once the other mechanics start being introduced and combining with one another, everything gets more interesting (despite some occasionally flaky gesture controls) - including the level design.

Speaking of design, Mush is a truly lovely-looking game. Sure, we've seen plenty of cute, hand-drawn worlds in smartphone games, but few with this level of artistry and even fewer on Windows Phone. Only ilomilo really matches it for sheer adorableness.

Mush takes a little time to get its hooks into you, but if you can exercise the emotion of patience (I dunno - maybe a slowly drawn spiral?) you'll inevitably end up pretty happy.