Anna Montana

When you consider that Tetris, the most popular game of all time, has been deconstructed as an abstract simulation of tidying up, it's a surprise there aren't more games about housework.

Anna Montana (aka Desperate Housekeeper) isn't Tetris, of course, but its mixture of I-spy and time management gameplay wrapped up in the process of performing domestic duties does provide a satisfying opportunity for those with a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder when it comes to residential elbow grease.

The game places you in the shoes of the eponymous heroine, who, in need of cash, finds herself cleaning for various celebrities in one of Hollywood's gated communities.

Linear in flow, Anna Montana has you working through the various homes - 12 in total - using your armoury of cleaning objects such as duster, bin, spray and vacuum cleaner.

Neatly, when you select one of these items anything in the room that it can interact with sparkles, alerting you to the fact. This is useful for stains in particular, some of which you need to rub a duster over while some require you to wield a brush.

Creating further complexity is that each item possesses limited cleaning power, which forces you to wait for it to recharge if you have multiple stains or piles of dust to clean.

Some activities are also multi-layered. For example, you may have to pick up all the clothes from the various rooms you're cleaning before disposing of them in the washing machine and then the tumble dryer.

Learning these rules and what to do with each stain and misplaced item - they are always found in the same position when you replay rooms - provide the basis of the game.

Access to each level is limited by a fixed period of time in which you have to complete a certain percentage of the available tasks. The better you do, the more cash you receive. This feeds into the levelling up process as you improve the cleaning power of your items by buying better ones in the shop.

You can boost your earnings by sneaking high value items in your swag bag, but too much thievery will eventually cause problems with your employers.

Yet despite the inclusion of alternative endings and OpenFeint support, including leaderboards and achievements, Anna Montana doesn't really shine after you've come to grips with its initial learning curve. You're simply repeating the same activities in different locations.

There's little distinction between these locations, either, and Apple's peculiar approval rules when it comes to using the likenesses of recognisable celebrities means much of the original game's humour has been removed by the character rework forced by its initial rejection.

Still, the art style fits in with the atmosphere, the v1.1 update increases the size of the game by 50 per cent, and the gameplay does provide moments of frantic panic as the clock ticks down, but overall Anna Montana is more functional than fun.