Abracadaball

Imagine a game based around the Harry Potter universe. Wouldn't it be fun, taking control of a group of young magicians as they assumed the giddying responsibility of apprehending violent sociopaths who should technically be dealt with by their legal guardians? It – or something very like it – would be great.

And imagine Zuma. Zuma's great, isn't it? A bit like Puzzle Bobble, but with the balls all moving in a line instead of clumped uncooperatively at the top of the screen. Zuma – or something very like it – would be brilliant.

And how about this: What if you were to make a game that was very like Zuma, and based in a universe very like the Harry Potter universe? It would be audacious, sure, baldly imitating not one but two successful franchises at the same time, but it would be bound to…

Already? Who made it?

Ah. Gameloft. Figures.

While it's tempting to dismiss Abracadaball (incidentally the worst name for any game ever) on at least two counts of grand theft intellectual property, it's not that simple. This game may be hugely derivative, but it's also massive fun.

First, let's deal with the Potterness. You play as four children gambolling about in the grounds of a magical school: the feisty Morgan Veridian, Beasley Aquariel (who wears a scarf and glasses), Kaston Kael (who's ginger) and Temmy the unicorn.

Each of them has a different special power, which you can deploy by pressing '1'. Temmy's Wicked Twister swivels around the screen destroying balls; Kaston's Big Bang is a fireball that crashes into the balls and explodes; Morgan's Rock and Roll sends a boulder ricocheting around the screen, smashing balls to pieces; and Beasley's Sub Zero freezes balls solid so that they're brittle and bustable.

And now, the Zumaness. The aim of the game is to hit coloured balls with other coloured balls, matching three to make them disappear. If the balls on either side of the vanquished set are the same colour and three or more in number, they come together to make a combo, which adds a little bit of green juice to the special move beaker. Get plenty of combos and you can do some terrible things to balls.

In amongst the regular balls are special balls that contain spells. Nineteen of them, in fact, spread across the categories of Destruction, Color, Time, Mana, and Mega Magic. There are too many to recount, but they include spells like Colorbane, which destroys every ball of the most common colour, and Stopping Sand, which prevents the balls from disappearing down the plughole at the end of the level.

Oh yes, the plughole. The balls follow the course of a furrow, popping out of a portal at one side and shunting the whole row towards another portal at the other end. If just one ball at the front of the row disappears down the hole, whoosh, they all flush down after it and the level is over.

Yep: that's Zumaness.

One of the things Abracadaball does well is to vary the layout of these levels. In some, the balls shunt along the channel, disappear into a teleporter, and spill from a separate teleporter into another channel. In others, you can actually move your turret by firing a ball at a sparkling site elsewhere on the screen, switching between the two to make the most of the balls that load into your barrel.

There are 72 levels all in all, including nine boss stages. You can subtract the bosses from that total, since they're pathetically easy to beat, but the 63 you have left over is still more than enough. This isn't a game you'll rattle through in a single sitting.

In longevity, as well as in everything else, Abracadaball is unfailingly generous. Not only will it take you a long time to finish, but features an embarrassment of spells and special moves, plenty of well-written (if familiar) dialogue, and beautiful presentation. It may stand on the shoulders of giants, in other words, but it's no dwarf. Give it a spin.