Tesla Tubes - I don't want to make an awful joke about it getting its tubes tied, but...

It's nice when a game tries something a little different. But it can be frustrating if it doesn't see its interesting ideas through to fruition.

And that's what's wrong with Tesla Tubes. It's a simple puzzler about connecting pipes, and for the most part you've seen everything it has to offer before.

Then it'll throw a curve ball in and you'll sit up and take notice. It might be a bridge that lets two pipes cross the same space, or a rock that blocks a possible path.

But just as quickly it slips back into boring routine and you're left completing the tasks it sets with almost literally no effort.

I guess they're tubes more than pipes, but I understand your concerns. The game takes place on a grid. There are nodes of different colours scattered around the grid and you need to connect them like-to-like.

But connecting them isn't enough. You also need to cover all of the grid in the tubes. There's a move-limit as well, if you want to get the most stars. Any mistakes you make can be scrubbed over with a restart though.

And for the first 30-or-so levels you won't see anything that'll make you interested. And then the game starts to slip in innovations. They'll be there for a few rounds, then disappear. And you'll be disappointed.

It's like the longest tutorial the gaming world has seen, as though the game is scared to trust you with its new inventions and tucks them safely back into its bag of tricks before you've really got a chance to enjoy them.

And that's a massive shame, because the simple fact that they're there means there's a lot more going on in Tesla Tubes than that first glance suggests.

Well, it would if it got smacked into shape. There's ingenuity here, and some new mechanics that move a somewhat stagnant genre forwards. You just don't get to see them often enough.

In fact, there's a very real chance you'll get bored of the game before it even introduces any of them. And that's just bad pacing. Sure everything is shiny and pretty, but you pretty much play the first hour on autopilot.

With a reshuffle that moved the new ideas front and centre, rather than leaving them in the background, Tesla Tubes could be very interesting.

As it is, it's just a curio that you'll lose interest in before it kicks into gear.