Happy Squirrels

Calling Happy Squirrels a tower-builder is only slightly inaccurate. While much of the gameplay in Happy Squirrels involves the same sort of gameplay that you'd find in a tower -builder like Pocket Minions, it's actually all about building a tree.

Happy Squirrels is not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but you'll be disappointed if you're expecting any innovation beyond the superficial novelty of its arboreal subject matter.

Almost everything about the game feels familiar. You have a finite amount of currency (nuts) that you use to build rooms for the cute-but-demanding denizens (squirrels) of your tower (tree).

Flashy rooms require more currency and time to build, while simple rooms are more affordable and take as little as ten minutes to construct.

For those who don't feel like waiting, Happy Squirrels provides a secondary form of currency (potions), which you can use to have a room appear in the tree instantaneously.

Both nuts and potions are relatively easy to find at first, but as the tree gets higher the currency-harvesting avenues available to you start to disappear, and so in-app purchases become increasingly tempting. A pack of 25,000 nuts will set you back 69p/99c, while 9,000,000 nuts costs a cool $99.99.

Outside the overly familiar elements, Happy Squirrels plays well and the tower-building itself is intuitive. To help ease the pain of waiting for rooms to build, Happy Squirrels introduces a few simple tilt-to-play mini-games that reward you with nuts.

Unfortunately, the controls in these games are rather slow to respond, which makes quick manoeuvring impossible. Still, they're a nice addition and offer a welcome diversion from clicking on acorns and watching status bars creep across the screen.

With the exception of the mini-games, however, there's really no break in the monotony of watching the tree grow. The graphics are rather cute and the piano soundtrack is enjoyable, but these two elements don't compensate for the lack of a cohesive storyline and ultimately fail to provide a reason for investing hours of your life into this game.

If you're a fan of exacting freemium tower-builders, Happy Squirrels follows the same safe formula found in many of these games. If you've never played a game from this genre before, you could certainly do worse than Happy Squirrels - but don't expect much in the way of thrills, excitement, or strategy.