Level With Me review - An arcade game about balancing

Level With Me is a game about balancing. But it's also a quick-fire arcade game. Sure it's a quick-fire arcade game with a big focus on balance, but it might walk a slightly different path to the one you're expecting.

And anything that messes around with your expectations is fine by me. Especially in a world where you can glance at a game's App Store icon and know exactly what it's going to offer.

Level With Me is tough, it's frustrating sometimes, but at least it's trying something different, and for that alone it's worth picking up.

Everything takes place on a single screen. There's a plank of wood on a pivot, and then things start to drop on it. Each challenge takes no more than a few seconds to complete.

It's your job to tap the bottom of the screen to release bubbles. These bubbles rise up, hit the plank of wood, and change the tilt on it.

As more things drop down from above you need to be quick to recognise which way the pivot is going to twist and react accordingly. Otherwise something's going to fall into the sea and it's game over.

The levels all have their own little rule sets. There are ones where you need to roll a hedgehog around to pop some balloons, one where you're balancing a sled, and one where you're basically juggling a bouncing ball.

And because they come in such quick succession there's always something new for you to do. Sure you're just making bubbles appear, but the different challenges require different ways of thinking.

You're always on your toes. And since you only get a point if you complete one of the levels, while your score might not be huge, beating it always feels like an achievement. Because losing is really easy.

Do things get a little one note after a while? Yeah, they do, but then that's the sort of experience we're dealing with here. It's a throwaway mobile title. A little morsel. A cheeky nibble.

That doesn't mean it's not a lot of fun in the short term though. It's a brief fling of a game, a summery dalliance that won't leave you fulfilled but will put a smile on your face and a spring in your step.

There's not much meat here, but there's a decent compulsion loop. And if the game clicks with you then there's a chance it'll stick around on your phone or tablet for a while.

It's not the finest example of simple gaming on the App Store, but it does set out to do something different with the genre, and it pretty much succeeds.

So grab it, try your hand at some balancing, and have a lovely old time. It's not revolutionary, but it's a shuffle around in the right direction and sometimes that's all that you're after.