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Stair: Slide the Blocks to Ascend

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Stair: Slide the Blocks to Ascend

Stair: Slide the Blocks to Ascend's title explains the game's concept far more succinctly than I could. And it's almost as simple as it sounds.

Upon starting the game, a small lady-shaped silhouette prepares to jump, a curved arrow showing what her trajectory will be.

She leaps, grasps the side of a coloured block, and pulls herself onto it. She then turns to jump again, the trajectory arrow showing where's she's headed next - and that's where you come in.

A 2D endless jumper, Stair: Slide the Blocks to Ascend sees you manipulate blocks poking out from the sides of the screen to help the leaping lady complete her never-ending mission.

Jump up, jump up and get down

While almost every block can be moved horizontally, a few can be moved vertically, acting as a nifty risk/reward boost - the more time you spend zooming upwards, the less time you have to scope out the risks that lie ahead of the jumper.

Such hazards include blocks that can't be moved, and spiky blocks that will stop the jumper dead in her tracks, immediately ending the ascent.

What's really smart here is that even when the jumper is in mid-air, you have the time and space to adjust the world around her, making for some heart-stopping moments as you quickly provide a safe platform at the last moment, or fix things after a head-bumping fumble.

Likewise, before she bounces off, you can adjust the platform the jumper leaps from, sometimes making her life that little bit easier.

It's a slickly-produced game, with simple gameplay, intuitive controls, smart minimalist visual design, and a unique spin on a mobile genre I'd considered dormant.

Jumping-off point

With so many boxes ticked though, why does Stair leave me a bit cold? Admittedly, it's not quite my cup of tea, but the key problem for me is that the game is just a bit too simple.

That's not to say it's bad, or without challenge - Stair is a tricky game to master, its waltz-like rhythm growing quite hypnotic with time. The issue here is that you're receiving such a bare-bones package for the asking price.

Offering a single gameplay mode with just that get-the-high-score goal, you'll see almost everything Stair has to offer within a minute of play. Which is brilliant, if you like what you see, but hugely limiting for everyone else.

The other niggle is that the game is best played using both hands, with your device resting flat on a surface, instantly sapping it of the immediacy found in almost every other simple score attack game.

So, if you're the sort where only the optimal play experience will suffice, then you couldn't really whip this out at the bus stop for a quick blast which, for a mobile game, is a pity.

And while it could be daft to want a strong, pure gameplay experience like this to be artificially bolstered by additional modes, it just feels like something is missing.

If it were half the price - or free, like all of Alec Thomson's excellent earlier iOS games - it would be an easy recommendation.

But for now, Stair: Slide the Blocks to Ascend is a bit of a gamble to anyone who would look twice at its £1.49 / $1.99 price tag.

Stair: Slide the Blocks to Ascend

A pure, clever, tactile, endless jumper, Stair: Slide the Blocks to Ascend simply offers too little for the average player, but is worth checking out for its smart gameplay
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Giles Armstrong
Giles Armstrong
Having worked in the games industry since 2007, Giles knows a thing or two about how good video games are made, why bad games happen, and that great games matter. A Game & Narrative Designer by day, story-based games are quite literally his bread and butter.