Angel Poring is a cute new game from Gravity Europe, who has just released it for the iPhone. The game is based around the tiny creatures that appear in Ragnarok Online.

Obviously, you’re not going to get Ragnarok on a phone, so the creatures appear in their own standalone game, the object of which is to clear the screen of the little creature as they fall Tetris-like down your phone, although you can’t directly affect their decent.

The object of the game it to pop them like so much bubble wrap. In and of itself, this does not appear to be a particularly engrossing pass time, so the game's makers have jazzed up the difficulty with some added surprises. You get to play with differing types of creature, Devil, Fire Devil, Angel and Metal Porings, over seventy levels. As well as bashing the screen you’ll find yourself furiously shaking your phone to make the Porings breach semi permeable barriers,

Although it has a lot to offer, one of the things which I did find problematic was that, with my finger in contact with the screen, what I was trying to do was obscured, which makes the game a little more difficult than it could be. I suppose that if you like the game enough you could invest in a stylus.

The problem is, that a large amount of the game is about swiping your fingers over Porings of the same colour to make larger combined creatures, which can act like larger bombs. This is all well and good, but you have to take your finger off the screen to see if you have been successful.

The game can be either played alone or if you fancy there is a two person mode as well. The screens are colourfully bright and cutesy, with a breezy rumba track which will annoy you in less than five minutes with its saccharine beat; you might want to turn it off if you’re in company.

Interface issues aside, the game does start to become addictive in the way puzzle games have a habit of doing and like it or not you’ll find yourself getting stubby finger, bashing the hell out of your phone's screen. Overall, it’s well worth a look.

7

Charles Packer