Circulate (iPhone)

Familiarity breeds contempt, so Circulate brings a little twist to its familiar formula by chucking the puzzler in the washer-dryer and setting the cycle to spin. That's oversimplifying proceedings a little, but twisting your handset to solve puzzles is the closest thing to a clean rinse this unique game gives the genre.

Tilting allows you to roll a drum filled with coloured balls. With two game modes on offer, the general aim in both of them is to twist the drum so balls match up in groups of three or more in order to clear them.

In Death Match mode, that's pretty much your only aim. Red or blue balls drop out of the centre of the drum with your target being to turn the drum so they group together and disappear off the screen.

It's a piece of pressured play, because Death Match comes with a clock. You start with half a minute and can only add time to the clock by clearing balls from the drum.

Things are spiced up by the random appearance of steel balls and mines. These challenging elements make it a contest that rides on little more than instinct.

Puzzle mode offsets the pressure of Death Match nicely. In contrast, its levels offer a string of varied goals with each passing moment. With the clock counting up instead of down, the drums in each level are like mazes in which you must match coloured balls.

Your performance is rated according to the haste with which you navigate past each drum's walls, holes, fireballs and tricky tree-like branches.

It isn't always about matching coloured balls either. There are often numerous obstacles to avoid, pitfalls to aim for or separate chambers to drop particular balls into.

No one could accuse Circulate of lacking variation. The contain a wide range of tasks and, even better, they're unlocked in groups rather than one on one, meaning you can skip a level and come back to it later if it's proving to be a long-term stumbling block.

While the challenges are filled to the brim with diversity in terms of design, the appeal of making what are essentially the same moves over and over again is questionable.

Simplicity makes Circulate accessible, yet also limited. The game never fully draws you into play, which makes it easy to set down when you hit a wall and never pick it back up again.

And that's a doubt that just tips the balance against Circulate. This is a puzzler with invention and mirth in spades for as long as you're the master, but there's no shaking the feeling that all this quickly dissipates as soon as you reach your own personal limit.