It's summertime, and if you haven't already been away you are no doubt preparing to jet off on holiday (unless you're a millionaire masochist with a deep hatred of customer service in which case you'll be staying in Britain). As usual, you can expect to face countless hours in an airport passenger lounge, and then countless more hours collapsed on a sun lounger ignoring medical sense in an attempt to lose that deathly pallor in favour of a healthy Mediterranean scarlet.
Luckily, there are plenty of new(ish) mobile games to keep you entertained once you've finished that brick-sized airport novel about religious conspiracies and nano-technology in a Boston courtroom. Here's a selection of what I've been sent recently.
First up, some familiar puzzles games. PileUp! from Finnish veteran Mr Goodliving has taken the now well-trodden route from online casual gaming phenomenon to mobile title (see also Zuma, Bejeweled, etc). It's a presentable combination of Tetris, Dr Mario and Columns - groups of three coloured balls fall from the top of the screen and congregate at the bottom, but if four balls of the same colour get-together they disappear. When you clear a group, this'll dislodge other balls that roll down the piles, forming new groups and starting off a cascade for lots of juicy points. If you don't already have a shape-sorting game on your phone, this is a decent enough take on the genre.
Better, though, is Gameloft's staggeringly good conversion of PSP hit Lumines. This time, it's clusters of four squares that need to be guided down the screen - there are just two colours to worry about, and getting a group of same-coloured cubes together at the base of the screen causes them all to disappear. The trick here is that you have to wait for the line that regularly pulses across the screen to clear the connected cubes. This allows you to build combos, but presents problems when the piles get higher.
Gameloft has performed a minor technical miracle to bring the psychedelic disco light show visuals to mobile (I played the Sharp 903 version, though, and don't know how the game fares on lesser handsets). The developer also seems to have ported across all of the PSP game modes to add bucket loads of variety. If you only download one mobile game this summer... etc, etc.
Marble Galaxy from InfoSpace is a mobile exclusive, cleverly combining Puzzle Bobble with pinball. Your job is to fire a series of coloured balls onto a galactic pinball table, moving your, erm, ball-shooter left or right in an attempt to aim each ball at its respectively-coloured hole. Lots of obstacles, power-ups and bonus items litter the playing space and as with Puzzle Bobble the skill is in getting the angles just right. It's a nice little idea, very well executed, and with enough levels to see you through even the most soul-destroying flight delay.
Disney Mobile's Cars, an isometric driving game based around the forthcoming Pixar movie, has been a bit of a surprise. I was expecting a cheap top-down racer with a few plot elements wedged in between circuits, but this is actually a sort of mini-RPG where you play as Lightning McQueen carrying out missions given to you by NPCs and getting involved in racing competitions. The intricately crafted cartoon visuals and free-roaming design give the game an easy charm that you don't expect from kiddie movie tie-ins. The developer is talented Canadian outfit Capybara, also responsible for excellent 2D platformer, Monkey On Your Back.
Also from Disney Mobile, another unlikely hit, Muppet Dance Party. This puzzler artfully combines rhythm action presentation with a fruit machine sim and a block-sorter. And the Muppets. All bases pretty much covered then.
The action takes place in a gaudy disco where grumpy old men turned superstar DJs, Waldorf and Statler, are on the wheels of steel. You control a dancing Muppet who must control the differing notes pumped out by the disc-spinning OAPs, slotting them onto a sort of one-armed bandit display. Matching similarly coloured or similarly shaped notes creates combos - you can also reject up to three notes in a run to let you build better scores. It's more challenging and demanding than it sounds, especially when the BPMs really start pumping up.
You start with only Miss Piggy available but a quick jaunt through the challenge mode opens up other familiar Muppet stars. It's a ridiculous clash of puzzle game styles and unconvincing anthropomorphic felt puppets but somehow, thus ungodly clash works, and should appeal beyond the kiddie audience Disney has its beady eye on.
I'm going to add to this later on when another couple of games have arrived, including the unmissable-sounding Beach Ping Pong...
