ShapeShape

What do you do if you're a featureless cube, without any arms, legs or limbs of any kind (have you been spying on me? - ed) and you need to get to work, or pop down the shops?

Even worse, what if the situation is even more urgent than that and you've got to rescue your family of similarly square inflicted folk from the clutches of evil?

Then, my friends, you'll either panic, or realise that you're actually playing InXile's latest iPhone puzzler, where pushing a block around a series of spike-infested levels on a mission to salvage members of his family is the order of the day.

Of course, the plot matters very little. ShapeShape is a bamboozler in the same ilk as Rolando and co., serving up a simple and immediate idea in a bright, breezy and iconic fashion.

Set out in almost silhouette like levels, you push and poke ShapeShape's square face by simply placing your finger next to it. The pressure from your solitary touch bursts out and pushes the shape in the opposite direction. Success is a question of balancing out the force from your push so that you don't end up flinging it straight into the spikes that appear more frequently with each passing level.

The primary goal is merely to get to the exit before time runs out. Early outings give you a minute to hurl yourself across to the door, though this is cut in half by the time you reach the onset of ShapeShape's hardest levels. Points are also awarded if you manage to reach the exit with flair, nabbing every star on the way, avoiding contact with any walls or completing it on your first go.

Spikes aren't the only hazard, though. After an initial set of simple levels, ShapeShape begins turning fruity. Walls start shifting in and out, with the prospect of getting squished mid-move ever rising. Forces of gravity and pulses of energy begin to move your shape of their own volition, making smart steerage a question of mixing up quick pushes with delicate touches. It's genuinely surprising just how challenging things get in places.

And that's only the fifty levels ShapeShape comes with. For those of you who think you can do better, InXile has packed in a level editor that, within the confines of some fairly wide borders, lets you place your own walls, pulses and spikes to guide your shape through. You can even save them as a batch, effectively creating your own collection of levels once you've exhausted those already on tap.

There doesn't, as of yet, appear to be a way of sharing said levels with other iPhone folk, but such community features are surely only a matter of time if ShapeShape kicks off.

Such success should only be around the corner for InXile's action cum puzzler. Its overtly clean and classic gameplay sells this as a puzzle party to rival any other. It's not revolutionary or shape-shifting in any form, but it does have a surprising capacity to keep pushing you on, from one level to the next. It's almost like someone's pushing you forward.