DIRAC - There are some nice ideas here, but they don't quite come off
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iOS
| DIRAC

Dirac is a puzzler with a neon twist to it. It's about connecting dots, dots that are emanating from a pulsating node in the centre of the screen.

But it's more complex than that as well. There are bonuses you need to encircle with connected dots, and a colour system that means the lines you're drawing will disappear if they hit a different hued dot.

And it has its moments. But in the end it boils down to a challenging high score chaser. And after a few tries, you'll find that the momentum of the game starts to wane a little.

It's connect the dots then? Are there pictures?

There are no pictures. The dots seep out from a blobby protuberance in the middle of the screen, and you join them together with a finger. To start with there are two colours, but more are added on the harder difficulty levels.

You need to connect at least two dots to clear them, but you get more points for joining more dots. If a dot of another hue hits a line while you're still drawing it, it pops and you don't get any points at all.

Surrounding dots with closed lines bags you a score multiplier, but it's a pretty tough ask when the screen is full of dots moving around trying to break your lines.

Capturing boosts in a closed line will help you out as well. And new objects are added as you play through the more difficult levels.

To begin with there's a sense that you're engaging with something a bit different, that there are solid ideas here that could lead to something special. Unfortunately though, that doesn't quite come to fruition.

After an hour or so Dirac gets a little bit one note. It doesn't have the twitchy, frantic nature that some games have, nor does it have the cerebral question-posing of less arcade-y puzzlers.

It sits in the middle ground, and that lack of identity means it never quite manages to click. It's entertaining enough, but there's no hook here, nothing sharp enough to drag you back when the initial fizz wears off.

Right, so probably worth giving a miss?

I don't know if I'd go that far. But it's definitely not a game that you have to have on your iOS device. Like I said there are some neat ideas here, but they fade away a little bit too quickly.

If you're looking for a reasonably challenging, more complex puzzle game, then you'll get along okay with Dirac.

It's not going to shatter your world or make you lie down on the floor and have heart palpitations, but you'll have a bit of fun with it. Just not as much as you might like.

DIRAC - There are some nice ideas here, but they don't quite come off

Dirac starts out brightly, but the further you get into it, the more you realise that it can't quite follow up that initial interest
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Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.