Baby Nom Nom

The App Store is not short of puzzlers with cute heroes, and some of them are very good indeed. Every developer wants to make the next Cut the Rope or Where's My Water?

The problem is, since there are so many great puzzlers featuring adorable characters on the App Store already a game has to be really exceptional to compete with the very best the genre has to offer.

Baby Nom Nom's a good puzzler, but it's not a future classic. Here's why.

The idea is simple: you have a maze-like wheel that you can rotate, and you have to guide grains of rice from the centre to the exit, where a bowl and a hungry child are sat waiting to eat. The more rice that makes it to the bowl, and the faster it gets there, the higher your score.

If the rice goes past fruit placed along the maze you'll get bonus points, and at the end of the run you're given a star rating. It's standard issue stuff, and it's as compulsive here as elsewhere.

There are two phases to the puzzle action. The first is making it through the maze quickly with your rice, trying to keep it clumped together so as to ensure that no grains go astray. The second is right at the end of the run: ensuring 100 percent of the grains make it to the bowl.

It's a delicate balance between speed and precision - get to the exit quickly at the cost of too much rice and your speed will be in vain.

It's largely a success, too. Getting every grain into the bowl and seeing the resulting smile of the little tyke waiting is very sweet - especially as failure to do so results in a stroppy tantrum from the hungry tot.

The gameplay is straightforward, but developer Playrise builds on the central conceit well, layering on difficulty so that by the time you reach the halfway point you'll struggle to obtain all three stars.

There are 36 levels across three very similar tribal themes. They're tough to beat, but even so it's hardly a bounty. Once you've completed everything there's little reason to return to previous levels, other than for higher scores.

The principle reason that Baby Nom Nom doesn't earn a seat alongside the casual gaming greats is that the central character just isn't that charming.

Whereas you enjoy returning to previous levels in Cut the Rope partly because it means you get to interact with Om Nom a little more, the bratty star of Baby Nom Nom is an incentive to stay away. You'll tire of having the rice bowl thrown in your direction long before you're finished.

There are minor quibbles with the controls, too, in that they occasionally suffer from dramatic oversteer. Though it was rare, there were times when I failed a level due to the maze rotating far too quickly, which was slightly frustrating.

Even despite these quibbles, Baby Nom Nom is a good game, and if you want a new casual puzzler you should buy it, plain and simple. It's not as good as the titans of the App Store, but it's still a thoroughly entertaining way to spend your gaming time.