Hands on with Alley Gator on iPhone

As if the smell wasn't enough to scare you away, the concept of hungry alligators racing through your local sewer system ought to be enough to keep you from urban spelunking. Instead of being snacked on, the latest Glu Snax lets you bite into a quick bit of action that looks good and plays effortlessly.

Alley Gator has you guiding an alligator through obstacle-ridden sewers all for the glory of posting a killer finishing time. Situated at the centre of the screen, you move your gator left and right along the inner circumference of each tube-shaped level by tilting your device in the corresponding direction.

It starts off simple enough, but the obstructions grow larger and more frequent as you work through the game's 25 levels. Pipes jutting out from the sides of the sewer walls impede your progress, appearing in greater numbers and closer together with each passing stage.

The first level featured a few easily avoided pipes, but it became much harder darting out of the way in later levels that packed pipes close together. Quick manoeuvring of your handset is critical to slipping past obstacles and maintaining top speed.

A total of six environments are being promised, two of which we played through: a brick sewer system and a frozen drainage pipe. Along with visual variations such as frozen pipes in the icy stages, unique obstacles are also thrown into the mix. Giant snails impede progress by skulking around, forcing you to dart about the sewer with quick tilts.

Each level comes with a time limit, the clock ticking down in the upper-left corner. Reaching the end of the stage before time runs out isn't just a matter of avoiding obstacles, though. Posting a good time requires nabbing power-ups, as well as maximising the amount of time spent traipsing through the water. A small stream winds through every level, which can be exploited to keep your gator moving more quickly than on a dry surface. It's tough given all the things that prevent you from just swimming through each level.

Power-ups, which come in the form of green goo vials and stopwatches, help give you an edge. The former temporarily transforms you into a huge invincible gator capable of smashing through any and all obstacles without being slowed down.

Stopwatches freeze the clock, giving you a couple extra seconds of race time. Both are useful, though the stopwatches were more critical to ensuring a reasonable finish in the half-dozen levels we played than the green goo power-ups.

Stages last no more than a minute or so, which makes Alley Gator a great bite-sized game. Limited replay value is introduced by hiding red peppers in each level that can be collected for bonuses. Since the levels are so short, going back to collect any missed peppers is less an annoyance and more a welcome challenge.

That said, Alley Gator is a derivation that differentiates itself on the merits of its presentation. Big, bright graphics keep it from looking like a cheap game, though it's intended as such. A sub-$2 price point ensures affordability where originality has been passed over. It's all good, though, because we had fun taking it for a spin in advance of its September release.