Colorbs

Colorbs by One Minute Games is a match-three title that uses bright, gumball-like game pieces.

But despite the presence of these cheerful spheres, Colorbs is as middle-of-the-road as a mobile game gets. It's certainly not bad, but there's nothing about it that stands out.

It's a decent distraction that doesn't give you any strong feelings one way or the other. If not for the game's bright colours, you could fool yourself into thinking it was developed by inhabitants of the Neutral Planet from Matt Groening's Futurama.

Each game of Colorbs opens with a small number of orbs scattered on the ground.

Players can make matches of three or more same-coloured orbs by shifting rows horizontally. Shifting also causes orbs to fall through any available gaps.

Since the game ends if orbs stack up high enough to touch the top of the screen, keeping the pile trim by any means necessary - whether through matches, or by dropping orbs through a gap - is essential.

There are extra challenges to deal with, too. Every time you shift a pile, more orbs drop from the ceiling. Some are marked with numbers, and every time you shift (that is to say, every time you take a turn), the number drops.

If the marked orb reaches zero before it's cleared away as part of a match, it turns solid black.

Black orbs can't be cleared via traditional matching mechanics, so if too many of them stack up survival becomes that much more difficult. They can be cleared away using bomb orbs that drop on occasion and clear away entire rows if they're matched up.

There are other tricks and traps to deal with as well. Dual-coloured orbs can match up with other game pieces that bear one of their shades, and chameleon orbs change their colour every so often.

As you make matches, your level increases. Higher levels mean more score multipliers, but it also means a larger spectrum of orbs - which makes it just a little more difficult to make the matches necessary to keep the pile manageable.

Again, Colorbs is fine. It's the kind of game you pick up and play for long enough to tell yourself, "Well, this is all right."

As soon as you put it down though, nothing about the experience sticks with you. The orbs are just dots of colour against a plain white background (and the red orbs bear a similar hue to the brown orbs, which may be problematic for people with colourblindness).

There's no music; just plastic sound effects of game pieces colliding gently with each other.

If you purchase and play the game, you're probably not going to feel any buyer's remorse. You're not going to be monumentally impressed, either.

The App Store isn't lacking for memorable match-three titles, so unless you're specifically looking for a puzzle game that won't increase your heart rate by a single beat, you're better off shopping around.