OLYM

OLYM takes mechanics from the broadly impressive MUJO, radically simplifies everything, and then nearly beats itself to death with gating and IAP.

First, the good bits. The general mechanics are pleasant, offering a fresh take on well-based match games. You tap three or more connected tiles to collapse them into a stack with a bonus number.

When a group of tiles has a count equal to or greater than the number on a soldier at the top of the screen, you can tap it to off them.

Strategy largely rests in figuring out how best to make use of your limited number of moves, especially when the game starts introducing odd-shaped wells and increasingly durable soldiers to duff up.

To help you along, you get a few toys to play with. There's lightning to zap a single tile, a board shuffler, and a button to add a row to the foot of the well, simultaneously obliterating everything on the top line.

Visually, the game's clear if plain, and the irritating audio can be silenced. Unfortunately, the same's not true of the Facebook login nag that appears during every launch. OLYM would also very much like you to buy gems via IAP.

This becomes clear as you work your way through the 130 levels and repeatedly smack into puzzles that prove impossible to finish within the moves limit.

The game feels a lot like TwoDots in that regard, unsubtly nudging you towards paying for a few extra moves. Just to drive the message home, your five lives and two special powers are replenished on a timer, the powers taking an inordinate amount of time to refill.

Despite this, OLYM remains a perfectly agreeable way to waste a few hours, and while it's markedly inferior to MUJO, it's also more approachable.

Just be very aware at all times that as much as you're playing OLYM, OLYM is playing you.