Funky Ducky

The simplicity of the puzzle game concept is unrivalled in video games, and a good puzzle game's blend of addiction, accessibility and brain-over-brawn works like a dream on mobile, even in this day and age of mobile phones with 3D graphics chips.

Puzzlers are also the easiest game type to produce in terms of the raw power that's needed. Yet actually executing a well-balanced mixture of simplicity, originality and function isn't as easy as you, me, or indeed game developers might think.

Witness Funky Ducky, which is the follow-up to the popular – if limited – Bubble Ducky. You play the eponymous Ducky, who has to wander around an 8x8-square grid containing a random selection of lily pads, starfish, clamshells and other items.

Your job is to create chains of identical objects, which must be adjacent to each other, including diagonally. How? By moving Ducky onto a square, all the items linked to that square's item will be highlighted. Press '5' and they'll disappear, to be replaced by a random selection of new items which fall from the top of the screen. And repeat.

You start with 10 moves, and each time you remove a chain costs you one of those moves. However if a chain has enough items in it you'll see rubber ducks appear, which is an indication that extra moves are up for grabs. The number of ducks relates to the number of extra moves you earn by triggering that chain.

Proceedings are made a little more interesting with the appearance of mines. If you accidentally add them to a chain, they destroy some of the surrounding items, which could ruin the next big chain you were planning to fall into place. You can defuse the mines by stepping onto them and clicking, but this means you lose a valuable move.

To be honest, these mines are about as exciting as Funky Ducky gets. The laid-back nature of the game – with no time limit rushing you to make your moves – may be a breath of fresh air, but the fact remains that there probably isn't enough to the game for most players to have a crack at it for more than a few times.

Granted, the strategy element to Funky Ducky does offer a decent mental workout, and a semblance of what a good puzzler can be. But there's nothing truly engaging or indeed addictive when compared to many of its genre rivals.

Overall, Funky Ducky is disappointing, despite its graphical vibrancy. The crux of the matter is that its simple central game mechanic doesn't develop enough, so can't sustain genuinely prolonged play, let alone compete with more polished puzzlers like Luxor, Connexions and Pile Up. However, there's certainly potential for future incarnations.