Fright Heights

Behind the cartoon Halloween cuteness of Fright Heights hides a devilishly difficult little puzzler with a fresh central mechanic that's not quite like anything else on the App Store. It's a game of logic, space-management, and terrifying ghosts.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite manage to keep up its initial spell, lapsing occasionally into frightful difficulty spikes that leave you tormented rather than girded to continue. It's still an entertaining head-scratcher, but it fails to instil the drive to push on like the very best.

The game is all about spooking the inhabitants of a hotel. These buildings are made up of different rooms, and you're given a carousel of creatures and guests to fit into them. Each of the spooks at your disposal scares a set number of points in a set number of directions.

Each floor has a scare level you need to get over. The scares only apply if there are guests in the rooms, though, so you need to place the ghosts and ghouls to maximise their scare potential while still leaving room for foolish customers.

To begin with, things are pretty simple, but after a while the game ramps things up. You need to start creating combos, spooking multiple floors at the same time. Only the lowest floor disappears when it reaches its scare level, so you can build frights above it before scaring one last customer and watching the whole thing come tumbling down.

It's a risky business, and can lead to you getting stuck if the randomly assigned creatures and customers don't fall in the right order. You have a talisman at your disposal that turns the next thing in your pile into a hideous, powerful beast, but it costs Boo Bux to use it and sometimes it's too little too late.

Sometimes things pile up in a way that feels more frustrating than fair, and while some of the levels are cleverly designed, others just feel cruel, bottlenecking you with useless ghosts as you wait to try and chain together the floors you need to get enough points to continue.

There are times when things click and Fright Heights reaches its potential. The puzzling core is clever and fresh, and the cartoon graphics are endearing. But then things go dark, and you can't help but pine for what might have been.