CandyMeleon

Apparently, the formula for financial success in video games is a simple one - so simple that anyone can replicate it. It goes like this:

Sweet animal + desirable item as objective + simple physics gameplay x sweet cartoon art-style = cha-ching.

The respective makers of Angry Birds, Where's My Water?, Cut the Rope, and Tiny Wings are clearly au fait with this simple rule.

The question is, did Bulkypix do its maths homework before it handed CandyMeleon in to the App Store headmaster?

Oy vey...

You play as the eponymous CandyMeleon, a monster with a big goofy smile who likes to eat sweets. If you like, you can unlock different chameleons with different powers and colour schemes, which all cost money that you earn through play or plunder from your own bank account.

Your job is to collect candies by either catching them with your mouth or firing your extendable tongue so that they stick to its tip. You move your chameleon about by tilting your device, and you tap the screen to fire your sticky protrusion.

Sweet tooth

The more candies you get, the more points you accumulate, and the person with the highest score among your Facebook friends is the winner.

You need to avoid enemies, too, and these come in many forms: fish that jump at you from the bottom of the screen, spiders that catch your tongue in their webs, ladybirds that pinch your health, and so on. To even the odds a little, you can upgrade candies with in-game currency, netting you more points per candy.

There's a Time Trial mode in addition to the main game, in which you have to last as long as possible with a timer constantly ticking down, and you can add precious seconds to the clock by eating candies. It's all super-simple stuff, and all of it works.

CandyMeleon isn't deficient in any way you can put your finger on - it just lacks that intangible quality known as oomph. There's very little danger of the central character becoming a household name, and the gameplay lacks the tightness and invention of the best casual games.

It's not a bad game, but you've played much better.